OK, so you need to get a BER, what happens when you hire me?

• We agree a price and we make an appointment for the survey to take place. This can be in the morning, afternoon or evening, 6 days a week (Sunday is possible if no other time is suitable). The survey typically takes 2 hours to complete, if it's a large building with lots of rooms, extensions, odd shapes it can take longer. You can remain on the premises or leave me there on my own and I can return the keys later. I can also pick up the keys elsewhere if that suits.
• SEAI (who licence the BER assessors) require all assessors to show a client a standard contract to be signed, there is no funny stuff in it, it explains what is involved; procedures, liabilities, total cost. If an assessor is not showing you this document, ask why? It is a condition of our Code of Practice, this can be accessed from here.
• There are a number of questions I might ask about the property, answers for most of them I usually find out during the survey but if you can supply answers beforehand it helps. The two most important pieces of information you can supply is the MPRN of the building, this can be found on an electricity bill (it does not need to be a recent one) and when the building was built, including any extensions. If there were any changes to the insulation of the building since it was built you need to tell me about them. Other questions generally relate to the heating system.
• For the survey I will need to go into all the rooms within the building, as well as the attic, hot press, boiler house, etc. I have my own ladders to access attics so you do not need to have one. I will also take a number of pictures of the building, from outside and inside. These are to prove to SEAI various features of the building which affect the BER, such as type of building, heating system, windows, walls, lights, hot water cylinder, etc.
• For an existing building a survey must be carried out to produce a BER, if an assessor attempts to provide you with a BER without having surveyed the property, the BER will be invalid, incorrect and you will have wasted your money.
• After the survey, I will go back to my office and enter in the survey information into various software programs and calculate the BER. I will also calculate the effect of any changes in the building which would affect the BER. These would be practical changes relevant to this particular building and range in price. I will always contact you before registering the BER to tell you what the rating is, and give you the option to make any changes which would improve the rating, as per the list I prepared earlier. Sometime a few small changes can result in changing to a better rating and may be worthwhile for you to do.
• If you are happy with the rating the BER can be registered and printed out with the advisory report and then mailed to you. Generally it is mailed within 24 hours of the survey. If you want to make some changes which would affect the BER, I would hold off on registering it, wait for the changes to be done, re-survey the changes and then register and issue the cert. Depending how far the building is from my office, this re-survey is free.
• Any changes which may affect the BER can be discussed, the various grant schemes which may apply, relative cost and effectiveness of these changes, all can be discussed. I do not sell or install insulation, heating systems, windows, etc, so I have no reason to recommend any one system over another, I am independent, no one else is paying me to do this job.