The passing of an act has issued new rules and regulations for the tenant as well as the landlord. The act will be requiring every landlord to provide their new tenants with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This is a renting formality and the law is in action from October 1, 2008, and this has in details all the information on the house and the EPC. The tenant must be having all of this information. If you are a tenant in a rented house before October 1, then you do not have to be concerned about the EPC at all.

The new law ensures that the property owner provides the EPC to the tenant without charging any cost. As a tenant, you can ask for the EPC just after you have made a decision on seeing the house on rent. However, check the document before entering into a rent contract with the property owner.

A little more about EPC

A brief knowledge on EPC is a necessity for every tenant. EPC or Energy Performance Certificate is information on the energy efficiency of the house you wish to rent in. The certificates include detailed information on the power and energy capacity of the respective house on rent as well as the consumption and conservation of electricity and other sources of energy in your perspective rented home.

Each of the Energy Performance Certificates of the respective houses is valid for a ten years span; that is applicable only for the self-contained properties. For those living on a rented or shared room of an entire house need not possess the EPC, as they enter into an exclusive contract with the proprietor.

Know about the EPC rating standard…

The rating standard of the EPC is based on many factors that rule the overall energy efficiency of the house. Factors such as, the age of the house, property layout, the overall insulation system, heat consumption, lighting and the entire construction system are responsible for setting the rating standard of the concerned house. Based on these parameters, the energy efficiency rank is standardized to find a healthy comparison between each of the rented houses and properties. The highest marked standard rank is denoted 'A'. However, most of the houses are found lying between 'D' and 'E'.

The importance of an EPC for every tenant

The Energy Performance Certificates are the major sources of information regarding the significant details of the house and its many features. Besides providing the appropriate information regarding the house on rent, the EPC also offers recommendations to make the stay better and healthy. The certificates also include the cost of living while staying in the house, though that depends mostly on the number of members that can live comfortably in the compassed property. In addition, the cost also includes conditions such as the daily heat consumption of the household as well as the average fuel price at the time of the EPC formulation.

The additional advantages of the EPC

As a tenant, the EPC helps you in choosing the right house by providing a good comparison of many other houses and properties around. It contains a separate recommendation section, where certain changes and alterations are recommended regarding the energy efficiency to be done to obtain a better rank for the house. There are a number of methods described explicitly that needs to be followed to achieve a better rating in the energy efficiency chart. The recommendation report vividly describes them and also describes the cost saved each year due to the conservation and the eventual reduction of carbon emission.

You as a tenant can also make good use of the recommendations by following a conservative expenditure of the fuel, and cutting down the electricity and power consumption as well as the rate of carbon emission in the environment.

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