The BER Certificate provides information on two very important factors that determines the energy rating of your home.
The first is the Building Energy Rating.
The second is the Carbon Dioxide Emission Rating
BER (Building Energy Rating)
The Building Energy Rating is displayed graphically to indicate where your household falls within the relative scale.
What are the UNITS A BER is expressed in terms of how much energy your household uses per square meter of your household area. This is based on an annual basis. For example: The result shows a BER of 165KWh/M2/year. This will equate to a C1 rating This means that the household will use 165KWhrs of energy per M2 per annum. If you have a 100M2 house then you will use up 16500KWh of energy per annum.
Putting this into perspective! The current price per KWh of electricity is 16.4 cent. The current price per KWh of gas is 6.21 cent. Splitting the energy consumption 50:50 your annual energy bill would be in the region of 1865. (This excludes standing service charges Per Month for both the ESB and Gas)
CDER (Carbon Dioxide Emmission Rating)
The Carbon Dioxide Emission Rating is generated from the report as how much CO2 your household emits into the atmosphere per annum
What are the UNITS The CDER is expressed in terms of how much CO2 per square meter of household area your household will emit on an annual basis. For example: The BER result shows a value of 20 kgCO2/M2/year. This rating is compared to a maximum permissible CDER (MPCDER) for a household of average size and facilities. The rating will dictate whether your household is within compliance of the building regulations. Taking our 100M2 household: This would mean that 2000kg of CO2 would be let into the atmosphere per annum.
Putting this into perspective Everybody knows that your car emits CO2into the earth's atmosphere because they can physically see it coming from exhaust pipes. The fact that in the residential sector we emit 20kg of CO2 per household per year is amazing. From when you switch on your light in the morning to heating the house in the evening your household is emitting CO2.
