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Totally, it seems like a very vague assessment of building performance and doesn't really tell anyone anything very useful. It's easy to use as a yardstick when you can pretty much have a guess at what it's telling you anyway, but pretty much useless in scenarios like above, which will presumably become more common as people try and upgrade/retro-fit older homes.
Polygon-
Agreed, the EPC recommendation for our Passivhaus was that we should get solar water heating, despite already having hot water via PV (sunamp unit) and not being able to use solar thermal for the vast majority of the year due to the thermal store background temperature being too high... I explained this to the EPC person but they just scratched their head.
JonoMarshall
I mean yeah they probably didn't fancy this, which is fair enough. But you would have thought the reporting system could accommodate a rating of 'undetermined' which is accurate. If we (all people, everywhere) are to improve the energy efficiency of our houses we have to do better than assuming.
I'm biased perhaps because I've seen some totally misleading or outright wrong stuff on EPCs or surveys. In my opinion there is plenty of scope for giving a range of possibilities for things not surveyed, rather than just saying 'assume insulated, therefore assume good'.
You may be right that the age, type etc gives further clues; to be honest I'm just ranting because I'm grumpy, but in general I think I've got a point.
Edit: wrote the above without noticing that you're the one looking at the house. Good luck; let us know what the outcome is!