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

• You both agree a price and make an appointment for the survey to take place. The survey typically takes 1 hour to complete, if it's a large building with lots of rooms, extensions, odd shapes it can take longer.
• 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 the assessor might ask about the property, answers for most of them are usually found 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 the assessor about them. Other questions generally relate to the heating system.
• For the survey the assessor will need to go into all the rooms within the building, as well as the attic, hot press, boiler house, etc. They generally have their own ladders to access attics so you may not need to have one. They 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 or newly built 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, the assessor will go back to their office and enter in the survey information into various software programs and calculate the BER. Some assessors will also calculate the effect of any changes in the building which would affect the BER. These should be practical changes relevant to this particular building and range in price. Sometime a few small changes can result in changing to a better rating and may be worthwhile for you to do.
• Then the BER will be registered online and printed out with the advisory report and usually mailed to you.