Just selling your home with HIPs can produce over 4000 tonnes of co2 pa.

Just to sell your home with HIPs needs at least 2 visits, and by not having the Energy performance certificate element carried out by the Building society surveyor. That’s the equivalent  co2 emissions of over 500 homes.

At the moment with HIPs supposedly starting in August 1st 2007,  with 4 bedroom and larger properties, to sell your home you will need a sellers pack and energy performance certificate or EPC. (However if you market as large family home you do not.)

If  HIPs is ever rolled out on all homes, and the buyer of your home needs a mortgage, then taking the 3 month figures from 2006, that 153,139 new mortgages. That will need an EPC.

Plus your home will also need a Bank or building society survey, as the optional HIPs home condition report is not accepted by the building societies and banks.

• Research by the Council of Mortgage Lenders shows that most lenders still expect to be carrying out their own inspections five years after the introduction of the packs on August 1st 2007.

So that’s 2 visits to your home, even if  the bank or building society surveyor does not actually come in, he or she still needs to see it.

I have based the math on an average survey being a conservative, 6 miles there and back to the office, with co2 based on fuel emissions only.

Home c02 emissions average.

Detached bungalow floor area 64 sq meters average size home. Carbon dioxide emissions 3.50 tonnes per year  with 150 mm roof insulation and double glazed no cavity wall insulation. Detached home 3 bed  home 150 mm roof insulation double glazed. Carbon dioxide emissions 6 tonnes per anum.

So lets say each survey is 6 miles times 2 one for  the surveyor one for the EPC, that’s almost  2 million miles every 3 months or 8 million miles per anum, at say 30 mpg the co2 emissions just for these surveys is 820 eight hundred and twenty tonnes every quarter

We can add an extra third on for homes needing HIPs that are not sold. So that’s 1093 one thousand and ninety three tonnes of carbon emissions, on just driving to do the surveys every 3 months.

Every year 4000 tonnes  of carbon emissions, just to sell your home with HIPs and hips was supposed to make you more energy efficient and reduce co2.

Co2 calculations with e generation

Did you know the EU directive on which the EPC is based only requires homeowners to seek such a certificate every decade.