Your house can be difficult to heat and the draft rushes down your legs, even though you still have energy label A. With the labels there is often a significant gap between paper and physical reality. With often a negative role for the solar panel.
When Marja Vos looks outside, she sees four recently completed new-build homes across her street in Oudebildtzijl. They are modern houses with solar panels, a heat pump and well-insulated walls. The developer promotes them online as energy-efficient homes.
It is houses like these that make you think of an energy label A. Not of the house that Vos rents from the housing association Wonen Noordwest Friesland. It was built in 1981 and has not been extensively renovated since then. It largely has to make do with what insulation was installed more than forty years ago.
And she notices that. “As soon as I turn off the heater, it cools down here in 45 minutes,” she says. To stay warm, she always wears a thick fleece vest when she sits on the couch. “If I don’t do that, I will end up with a high gas bill.”
“It’s often draughty,” she continues. “‘Yuck, cold legs,’ I often hear visitors say when we sit here at the table. And we suffer a lot from moisture. I have containers of salt everywhere to soak it up.”
Doubts about a high label
Anyone who hears Vos say this, suspects that her home will not have a very high energy label. Yet her home has a label A on paper. It is clearly stated on the document issued for this purpose in 2020, drawn up for the housing association by an energy inspector. “Although we never saw that inspector.”
It sounds strange, living in a house with a label A and still chilling on the couch. “When we talk about it with friends and I tell them about our label, they don’t believe me either,” says Vos. She wrote to Wonen Noordwest Friesland several times to denounce what she considered an unjustified label. But every time she was rejected. The label is correct, the corporation says.
Vos has strong doubts about this. “I don’t think this is an A.” She therefore responded to a call from this newspaper for tenants to report if they suspect that their label is incorrect. Also because she wants to know what actually happens. “Because no one can explain that to me properly.”
Criteria for label difficult to find
If you, as a layman, google what the criteria for an energy label are, you will not be able to figure it out. There are numerous websites where you can enter your zip code and house number to request your label, if this is ever determined. But such sites do not provide any clarity as to why you receive that label. If you want to get that, you must make an appointment for an inspection.
Then you end up at Ties Gerbrands from Enerkorp from Lemmer, for example. At the request of the LC he examines Vos’s home. He makes an extensive tour of the house, takes all kinds of measurements and digitally maps the rooms. When he gets back downstairs, he comes up with a sobering conclusion. “I don’t actually come across any really strange things.”
Vos’ house is really a label A. And the cause of this can be found on the roof where eight solar panels have been installed since the end of 2019. At the time, these still counted heavily in the calculation of the label (see box).
To illustrate this, Gerbrands calculates Vos’ house in three ways: based on the current method and with and without solar panels based on the old method from before 2021. The latter is relevant because the criteria for the labels are after 2021. tightened. More about that later.
Solar panels make the difference
These calculations result in a label B for Vos’ house under both the old and the current method. Although, according to Gerbrands, a comment should be made about this. The house’s score is just below the criterion for an A. “This is a very small deviation and this could be caused by the fact that, for example, the type of solar panel used in residential construction is known and a more detailed calculation has therefore been made.” ‘
Things will be different if you calculate without solar panels. Then the energy index, the figure that indicates how efficient the home is (the lower, the more efficient), suddenly increases considerably. Vos’ house is no longer a tight A but goes towards the bottom of C. It explains the difference between the living comfort in practice and the label from theory.
Situations like Vos’s are more common. The same seemed to be the case with several tips the newspaper received. For example, the tenants of a housing association in Burgum also emailed about their house with label A, which is drafty and cold. However, a look at the neighbors explains the difference, in the street only this house has panels. Local residents have a considerably lower label in their comparable homes with C.
Labels are not a good indication
And this also applies nationally, says Bastiaan van Perlo, energy policy officer at the Woonbond. “We get questions about this quite often,” he says. “But we have little certainty whether they are really wrong. It is only once in a while that something is really wrong.”
When Van Perlo looks at the complaints, he often understands the residents’ doubts. “I understand why the label is correct, but I also understand why people feel that it is not so.” And that is not a good development, he thinks. “The problem is that people will lose confidence in the label.”
“Labels are not a good reflection of the quality of the home,” he says. “It is not a good indicator, especially in older homes. They are about theoretical consumption and not about the costs and comfort you actually have. That is a loss.”
Andrea Evenhuis of the Frisian tenant platform Nieuw Elan also looks at it this way. “That may also be an error in the system. A label is not about comfort but about the technical specifications. But of course that says little about how people experience a home.”
One of the reasons for this is that issues such as cracks, poor finish or rotten window frames have no influence on the height of the label. “I cannot indicate a large crack in the frame in the software,” says Gerbrands. “While of course a lot of draft can come from that.”
Mismatch especially for 2021
The mismatch between label and living comfort is mainly found in labels issued before 2021, as is the case with Vos, for example. The installations, solar panels for example, still counted a lot at the time. “That could sometimes really take two label jumps,” says Van Perlo. “You don’t get that so quickly with the new system. Some brakes have also been put in place.”
However, there are still some peculiarities. For example, an apartment may receive a lower label in the old system than in the new one, without anything having changed in the home. Which can also raise questions among residents. “That is also a complex story,” says Van Perlo. “But that is also true. The new system focuses more directly on energy consumption per square meter. And an apartment is better off because, for example, less heat leaks through the outside walls.”
The Woonbond has therefore been calling for a recalibration for some time and believes that less value should be attached to the energy labels for existing buildings. “The net heat requirement, how much energy is needed to heat a home, says much more about the real quality of the home.” To identify the priority for sustainability, the energy consumption of twenty or thirty homes in a neighborhood would actually be measured. should be kept at the average. “Then you have a good idea of the actual situation. Corporations are also keen on it. But changing that is not that easy.”
Back in Oudebildtzijl, Vos finds the outcome of Gerbrands’ research disappointing. “Because you have panels, you nominally have an energy-efficient home. But most of my energy use is gas to heat the house. What matters is that we gradually use less and less fossil energy. But it does not work like that.”
How does an energy inspection work?
When energy inspectors, such as Ties Gerbrands from Enerkorp from Lemmer, include a home for an energy label, they look at various components.
- How is the insulation of the house? For example, how thick is the insulation in the cavity walls, is the roof insulated and was the material applied during construction or was additional insulation added later?
- What kind of glass is in the windows in the living room and bedroom? Single glazing is a big minus and can nowadays also be seen as a defect. Double glazing scores better and HR to HR+++ of course even better.
- Has anything been done in the crawl space? Is the floor insulated and how was that done? Is the crawl space filled with chips or shells or are plates stuck to the floor?
- How is the house heated? A heat pump scores better than a central heating boiler, but with the latter a lot also depends on how old it is. An economical modern boiler gets a higher score.
- Is there mechanical ventilation in the home? And does it only extract in the bathroom or also in the other rooms?
- What options are there for generating your own energy in your home? This mainly concerns solar panels, where the number and location also play a role. But for example, a solar boiler to heat the water also counts.
The inspector enters his findings into government-developed software. The more boxes that can be checked, the higher the score and the higher the label. The different components do not all count equally. For example, solar panels significantly increase the label, but the influence of whether or not mechanical ventilation or floor insulation is not that great. Ultimately, it is about the expected energy consumption of a home.
For housing associations, the labels are often assigned in bulk. An inspector then examines several homes in the neighborhood and their energy label also applies to comparable homes around. Fraud with the labels is possible, but it is risky because the government checks the issued labels randomly. If an inspector’s labels turn out to be incorrect, all labels he has issued will be withdrawn.
Energy labels are only valid if they are registered in the EP-Online register. They are then locked up for ten years. They have been mandatory since 2008 for sales, rental and delivery. You can check your energy label yourself (or that of your neighbors) at ep-online.nl.
Many reports about energy labels
The Woonbond, the interest group that stands up for tenants, receives many questions about allegedly unjustified energy labels. ,, Yes, this is a common topic,” says spokesperson Mathijs ten Broeke. “We receive experience stories and questions about this both at our hotlines and at our Tenant Line.”
An unjustified label can be detrimental to the tenant. According to Ten Broeke, the label plays a role in various ways.
- An unjustified good label, for example B instead of D, can lead to an excessively high maximum permitted rent. This only applies to homes that fall under the Home Valuation System. This system, better known as the points system, determines how high the basic rent may be based on how good the home is. The energy label plays a role in this.
- It can influence the pace at which the home is made more sustainable. The landlord can first make other residential complexes more sustainable that have a worse label, because they often tackle those homes first. Corporations have been instructed by the government that by 2028 they will no longer be allowed to rent out homes with a label lower than D.
- For tenants themselves, the label can provide an incorrect picture of energy consumption. This can put a significant damper on the final bill if energy costs turn out to be higher than expected.
You can challenge an unfair label. ,, If you rent a social rental home and have valid reasons to doubt the energy label, you can contact the Rent Assessment Committee,” says Ten Broeke. ,, You must then clearly substantiate why you doubt the energy label and the rent you pay must be close to the maximum rent that the landlord may charge for the property. The Rent Assessment Committee will only judge if the energy label also influences the rent you pay.”
