Green gauge reveals my home's guilty, guzzling secret

How green is my house?'Our lovely house earned a dismal F from the men who tested our Building Energy Rating'. The first in an occasional series on energy efficiency

"You're taking this quite well, considering," says Aodhain Mac Phaidín, an architect and an energy expert, in his softest Donegal accent.

"I gave a guy a D1 the other day and he was really upset, well distraught actually."

He'd just broken the horrifying news to me that our quite lovely house is in fact the bricks and mortar equivalent of a big ignorant SUV - a hopeless energy guzzler that earned a dismal F in the new Building Energy Rating (BER) system.

But before anyone feels moved to daub "thermal terrorist" on our walls, think on - if you live in an old, poorly insulated house this could be you and, if you plan on selling it after 2009, then its BER is something you'll have to know. Even if your house is not old it could come in with a low score thanks to old building regulations which didn't put too much emphasis on energy efficiency.

From January 1st, 2009 every property that comes on the market - new or old, for sale or rent - will have to have a BER certificate so that buyers or renters will be able to judge exactly what their energy bills are going to be. It'll be up to homeowners to pay for the audit.

If the result was painful, the process wasn't. Mac Phaidíand Dr Kirk Shanks (of the Sustainability Research Development Group in the Dublin Institute of Technology) measured the house, noted how it was built, whether it has extras, from big stuff such as double glazing (yes) and solar panels (no) down to energy-saving bulbs (not enough apparently, too many electricity gobbling downlighters) and a lagging jacket (yes, but badly fitted so as good as a no). Even the attic insulation wasn't up to scratch. It's insulated but with only 60mm of insulation when 300mm is recommended. Detached houses have lots of walls which, unless they're properly insulated (in our case dry lining was recommended), then it just mean additional opportunities for heat to escape. Our old polished wooden floors also came in for low marks - gaps here and there and not insulated.

The positive part of the experience was that BER isn't just a letter on a piece of paper. It comes with a chart showing homeowners how they can improve their ratings which in turns means savings on gas, electricity and oil bills. In terms of the bigger picture, it also means a reduction in CO2 emissions.

If we took all of the seven options suggested in Kirk and Aodhain's report we could increase our rating to a less mortifying C1 and cut both our energy and CO2 emissions by 54 per cent.

"You can save even more by the way you use the house," says Mac Phaidín who is working with Shanks on a exciting new project for the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. They will be acting as "energy mentors" to seven households around the country, chosen as part of the "Power of One" campaign.

These will first have the dreaded energy audit and then they will be helped though education, advice and practical assistance to lower their energy consumption.

It's a six-month project and the progress of the households can be followed through www.powerofone.ie. Logging on should give all homeowners ideas of how to save energy.

"Occupant behaviour can make a huge difference to energy consumption, even just doing small things such as zoning heat," says Mac Phaidín who is also presenting a new energy awareness programme An Teach Glas on TG4.

So what can we do with that F on the BER certificate? The first thing it means in this house is a trip to the DIY store for some serious insulation, now ... if not sooner.

Aodhain Mac Phaidín and Dr Kirk Shanks conducted the survey under guidelines from The City of Dublin Energy Management, (www.codema.ie)