Andy Hall wrote:
On 5 Mar 2006 13:50:48 -0800, wrote:
Andy Hall wrote:
On 4 Mar 2006 14:14:09 -0800, "dg" wrote:
The only people it will seem to benefit are the firms set up to manage
the accreditation, and sell the training.
It is being promoted as a means for unqualified people to do some
training pay licence fee and then to become a "surveyor". It takes much
more training and experience than that to be able to conduct a building
survey - well an meaningful building survey to be more precise.
From what I have seen, the reports will be no better than the current
'Hombuyers Survey and Valuation' - a tick list. The buyers will think
that a comprehensive survey has been done, and may well be in for a
shock after the purchase. But at least they will get to know the
properties energy rating.
dg
That assumes that they can measure.
Thats unfortunately more realistic than it sounds. The very few people
that have tried (one was qualified and looked at heating system and
building personally) were unable to get the energy consumption of this
place right. Or even close.
I despair. There are ready reckoners to do that, PC programs. Even
doing it by hand only requires the ability to add and multiply using a
calculator and looking up of numbers in a book. Primary school
arithmetic. First form physics. Or at least it was.
The problem I see over and over is people cant be bothered to get the
basic facts right. The last one, who looked at the place personally,
could not be bothered to establish the type(s) of building
construction, which of course is key to energy consumption figures. Nor
could he be bothered to ask how the existing system performed, which
would have been a simple check on his errors. He ended up recommending
a boiler of about twice the required rating. Unfortunately a ready
reckoner would probably not have picked up his mistakes.
As for physically measuring, same story here, not bothering, and
producing erroneous information and inappropriate recommendations as a
result. Imho the British workforce is in a lot of cases rather lazy.
Not all of course.
NT