Building Retrofit Plan

When planning to improve the energy efficiency of your home it can be confusing to navigate the variety of technologies, grants and funding programmes. In November 2024 ReFLEX launched the pilot of our new Building Retrofit Plan service, to support homeowners and businesses to decarbonise affordably with measures such as insulation, heating, solar and batteries.

Our expert team will assess your property to understand how you use energy, what aspects of your home can be and should be upgraded, and what low carbon technologies that could improve your home. We will then provide you with a plan recommending the most appropriate retrofit measures for your home and the order to do them in, to give you the best chance of qualifying for any funding options available, ensure they work effectively and protect the fabric of your home.

We provide three different levels of property assessment so you can choose how in depth an evaluation you need and what budget works for you.

During the pilot stage we will be offering discounts of up to 50%. The pilot discount is funded by Innovate UK as part of the Rural Energy Hubs project and it will support discounts for between 32 and 60 properties depending on the level of service selected by customers. This discount is on a first come first serve basis, so get in touch quickly if you are interested.

Our prices during the pilot stage:

• Building Retrofit Plan £295 + VAT (discounted from £595 + VAT)
• Energy Performance Certificate Plus £235 + VAT (discounted from £335 + VAT)
• Energy Performance Certificate £170 + VAT

What's included in each of the services:

• Building Retrofit Plan

  The Building Retrofit Plan is our most in depth service for evaluating your home energy use, retrofit options and the potential funding options you may qualify for.

  What's involved

  This service starts with an assessment of your property by one of our expert surveyors. This typically will take about half a day, depending on the size of your property. The survey will include:

  • Full Energy Performance Certification Survey
  • Retrofit Assessment and Condition Report
  • FLIR Thermal Imaging
  • Ventilation Assessment
  • Basic Radon Assessment and Testing Advice

  After the survey our surveyor will use the data gathered to do an in depth evaluation of your property and then create a detailed Building Retrofit Plan for you. Your plan will include:

  • Detailed 2D and 3D Plan Drawings of your property that meet RdSAP requirements, so you can provide them to installers when seeking quotes for work.
  • FLIR Thermal Images showing where heat loss is occurring throughout your property, so new energy efficiency measures are sure to target problem areas.
  • Energy Performance Certificate providing your home with its official EPC rating, which can then be used to determine funding options and grants that you may qualify for.
    • We can do an EPC before retrofit and then a follow up EPC to upgrade your property’s EPC rating after the work is complete.
  • Calculations of the thermal performance of your home to help assess the best options for insulation, heating and ventilation measures.
  • In depth analysis and options appraisal of the types of heat and power measures that would be suitable for your home.
  • Analysis of grant funding and/or affordable finance that you may qualify for including details of the organisations that would undertake this work for you.
  • Radon advice if you live in a high risk area.
  • Routemap of recommendations for the measures to retrofit your home. This will include the technology to use for heat, renewable generation, energy savings and insulation, finance and grant options, and vitally, the order in which to undertake the work so that you can access all of the funding you may qualify for and ensure that measures installed benefit you and the fabric of your home.
    • E.g. If you install solar and batteries before you insulate, then this could increase the EPC rating of your home to a level where you may no longer qualify for insulation grant funding.

  One of our surveyors will do a consultation with you after you receive your BRP, to talk through the plan with you and refer you on to installers and programmes that can get the work underway.

• Energy Performance Certificate Plus

  The ECP Plus service includes a full Energy Performance assessment of your property, as well as an options appraisal and plan recommending measures to retrofit your home, including potential funding options.

  What's involved

  This service starts with an assessment of your property by our expert surveyor. This typically will take about 2-3 hours, depending on the size of your property. The survey will include:

  • Energy Performance Certification survey
  • Retrofit Assessment

  After the survey our surveyor will use the data gathered to do in depth evaluation of your property and then create an EPC Plus plan for you. Your plan will include:

  • Floor Plan Drawings of your property that meet RdSAP requirements, so you can provide them to installers when seeking quotes for work.
  • Energy Performance Certificate providing your home with its official EPC rating, which is then used to determine funding options and grants that you may qualify for.
  • Options appraisal of the types of heat, ventilation and power measures that would be suitable for your home.
  • Analysis of grant funding and/or affordable finance that you may qualify for including details of the organisations that will undertake this work for you.

  One of our surveyors will do a consultation with you after you receive the EPC Plus report, to talk through it with you and refer you on to installers and programmes that can get the work underway.

• Energy Performance Certificate

  The EPC service will undertake a full Energy Performance assessment of your property and provide you with an Energy Performance Certificate.

  What's involved

  This service starts with an assessment of your property by our expert surveyors. This typically will take about 1-2 hours, depending on the size of your property. The survey will include:

  • Full Energy Peformance Certification survey

  After the survey our surveyor will provide you with

  • Energy Performance Certificate providing your home with its official EPC rating and lodge the certificate.

  The EPC will include standardised assessments and recommendations of the types of energy efficiency measures you could undertake to improve the EPC rating and energy performance of your home.

  Our customer team can refer you on to installers and programmes to support you to undertake these measures.

About the service

• What is the Building Retrofit Plan service?

  The Building Retrofit Plan (BRP) is a new ReFLEX service which offers business and home-owners support in evaluating and improving the energy efficiency of their properties. We’ll survey your home and provide a step-by-step bespoke retrofit plan to guide you on the low carbon technologies you could use to improve your home – including insulation, heating, EV charging, solar and batteries - and advise on the order to complete the upgrades so that you can take full advantage of any available funding to help you.

• What does the BRP survey include?

  We’ll complete a thorough assessment of your property and energy usage and use the information to identify aspects of your property that can be improved. The survey will include a Full Energy Performance Certification survey, a Retrofit Assessment and an occupancy condition report, FLIR Thermal Imaging, Ventilation Assessment and Radon testing (if you live in a radon high-risk area).

Is the service right for me and my home?

• I rent my home, can I still have the survey done?

  Yes, but you will need to get your landlord's permission. We need to see a signed and dated letter from them authorising us to go ahead with the survey.

• How do I know if my property is suitable?

  We can carry out a survey on almost all residential properties - it needs to be habitable, i.e. water-tight and have electricity and running water.

• I have already had some work carried out by Warmworks, will I still be able to have a survey?

  Yes, we can still carry out a survey and see what other measures might further improve the energy efficiency of your property, in addition to the work done by Warmworks.

• I can’t afford to get all the work done in one go, is it still worth having a survey?

  Absolutely! The service is all about looking at the work in phases, and identifying the best order to carry out the measures to ensure that you can access any funds and grants that may be available. It is also a long-term plan, so you may decide to do one or two measures and then a while until you do the next – it’s all about doing what is comfortable for what you can afford and letting you stay in control.

• What if I live in a conservation area or have a listed building?

  We will take into consideration the listed status of your building and area, so that any potential restrictions, adaptations or additional permissions required are taken into account in your Building Retrofit Plan. Each measure will need to be looked at separately and any work would need to be sympathetic to the property. Once you have the BRP we may advise you to consult with your local planning authority and possibly a conservation architect.

• I have already insulated my home, replaced all of the heating and have solar panels – is it worth me still having a survey?

  We look at each property individually and we would need to speak with you to consider whether there are potential further measures that could improve you energy efficiency or not. If you have a current EPC we would always look at that before we arrange to come out and do a survey for you. We would then arrange a telephone call to discuss your options and whether a BRP is a suitable survey for your property. If you don’t have a current EPC, it may be that the EPC is all you need rather than a full BRP. We want to provide a service that is open and honest and good value for our customers so we will always consult with you.

If you have any questions that we haven’t answered here, or want to find out more about the Building Retrofit Plan service, please get in touch with our team at info@reflexorkney.co.uk