I had an energy expert give my home a full MOT – this is what I learned

Like many others, I’m currently feeling the pinch. With temperatures dropping and energy prices rising, I feel like I’m spending more on my household bills than ever before. However, I’m currently on a mission to change that, so I asked an energy expert to give my home a full MOT in the form of the OVO Home Energy Report.

As a homes journalist, I write about the many ways to save energy at home almost daily. And while I’ve picked up some valuable money-saving tips along the way, I can’t deny that many are very generalised. I know that a regularly serviced boiler will be cheaper and more efficient, and I know that turning the thermostat down just one degree can make a huge difference to my energy bills. But every home is different – and my house is completely different to yours.

Thankfully, the OVO Home Health Report can bridge the gap between these generalised tips and each individual home, coming up with tailored tips to specifically save energy in your home. And after trying it out myself, I genuinely believe that those who want to save money on their energy bills should do the same before next winter.

What is the OVO Home Health Report, and who is eligible?

The OVO Home Health Report is a service (unsurprisingly) provided by OVO Energy. While this company is first and foremost an energy supplier, it has made no secret that it wants to be an energy saver, too. In the past, it has offered customers free radiator keys and even an Alexa voice command to help people use their electrical devices when there is more renewable energy available on the national grid.

But rather than offering everyone the same product or service, with this new venture the Home Health Report offers a bespoke assessment of each individual home – checking everything from your insulation and window seals to offering personalised steps you can take to make your house more energy efficient.

The qualified energy assessors will then provide you with a bespoke report outlining all of the details you need to know about your home and energy usage, and submit a new, up-to-date Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) to the government to make everything official.

If you’re an OVO customer, the Home Health Report will set you back just £40, but it’s even cheaper (£25) if you’re an OVO Beyond customer. But you don’t have to be an OVO customer to make the most of this service (in fact, I’m not with OVO either), as non-OVO customers can also book a slot for £100.

Considering this service will also provide you with a new EPC for your property, which will typically cost between £60 and £120 on its own, I’d say that’s an extremely competitive and affordable price.

For full transparency, OVO offered this service to a member of the Ideal Home team for free, and I was the lucky one to take them up on this offer. However, the team and I will never recommend products or services that we genuinely don’t believe in, and we will always give an honest and impartial review of something – even if there are a few niggles along the way.

It’s also worth noting that OVO is only currently offering this service to homeowners and hasn’t expanded to rental properties yet. However, they confirmed that they are running rental trials to see if they could make it more accessible for everyone.

What happens during the OVO Home Health Report?

The day before my OVO Home Health Report slot, I received a phone call from energy expert Sean to check whether I had any questions about the process and to confirm what time he would be arriving. As the website is extremely informative and I like to do my own research anyway, I didn’t actually have any questions – but I still appreciated the gesture as someone who likes to plan her day.

Thankfully, Sean arrived exactly when he said he would, showing me his ID badge to confirm he was who he said he was (although, admittedly, the bright green OVO uniform was the biggest giveaway). Inside, we spent the next 10 minutes talking about exactly what I wanted to achieve from the session, and what he would be doing over the next couple of hours.

To start, he began walking around my house, drawing a floorplan of the property for his notes, measuring the size of each room with a laser measure tool, and also taking photos of areas that would help him to better understand the construction of my house and to create my personalised plan. And while you don’t have to follow your energy expert around your house, I’ll be the first to admit that I was nosy and wanted to see exactly what he was doing for the purposes of this review.

During this initial walk-around, he also asked me many questions about my energy usage, any bad habits I have (like leaving my plug sockets turned on), and questions about the construction of my home. He also asked whether I had any concerns about my home, which is where I could really get into the nitty gritty of it.

Although the majority of my mid-terrace Victorian house was built in 1901 and is incredibly sturdy, a bodged 1980s extension has caused us nothing but trouble since we moved in four years ago. It’s extremely poorly insulated, and in the winter it basically feels like we’re outside.

Of course, Sean could instantly feel the temperature change when he made his way into the extension. And while he congratulated us on our windows and doors (apparently we have top-grade double-glazing and the best exterior doors you can buy, which we didn’t know to be the case) and found the towel rail to be sufficient for such a room, he could tell that something wasn’t quite right.

And after checking the interior and the exterior of the extension, he was able to deduce that this extension wasn’t attached to our next-door neighbours as we’d always been told it was. Instead, it was separated by a partition wall and wouldn’t have had to comply with building regulations changes that occurred in the 1980s. So, basically, with three exposed walls and a flat roof, we were leaking heat like no tomorrow.

As we plan on hopefully selling the house next year, this new information came as somewhat of a shock to me, but Sean then went into detail on what we could do to improve it – if we wanted to do so before we moved.

And it was this honesty that impressed me throughout the whole report. Although I had assumed that an OVO energy assessor would try and convince me to switch to OVO or buy OVO solar panels and other products, I never once felt as though I was the subject of a sales pitch. In fact, on one occasion, Sean went into detail about what my own energy provider could offer to help me save money on my energy bills.

As he continued his assessment, he also inspected my boiler and explained the importance of the boiler flow temperature before looking over every inch of the rest of my house – from the thickness of the walls to the types of radiators I have. Throughout this process, he was also more than willing to answer any questions I had, including many about condensation on my windows and loft insulation.

Sean relieved my condensation woes and took the time to inspect my loft, measuring the thickness of the insulation in the process. It was during this particular step that he told me that my loft insulation was under the recommended amount (we have 100mm of insulation, but the recommended for new builds today is 270mm), and proceeded to show me numbers and calculations on his tablet to see how adding extra insulation would affect my home’s heat loss.

What was so surprising, though, was that my EPC rating actually improved after this Home Health Report. After some digging, Sean was able to see that the previous assessor had either not been able, or chosen not, to get into the loft. So, he had just assumed that my 1901 property didn’t have loft insulation – turning my C-rated property into a D-rated property. Considering your EPC rating can affect your house price, this made me very happy.

After about an hour of checks and inspections of my whole home, Sean was finished. So, we sat down for a debrief where he went over my new EPC certificate, explained the areas where I could limit heat loss and save energy, and went into the changes that I’d need to make to make a noticeable different in my energy bills.

For my home, the short-term goals are to install thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) to my radiators, and switching my appliances off at the plug and unplugging chargers when not in use. The long-term goals (if I were to be staying in my home) would be to invest in a smart thermostat and a smart heating system, improve the insulation in the extension, add some insulation to my loft hatch, and potentially add some solar panels into the mix as my south-facing roof is the ideal location for them.

At the end of the session, he also went into detail about the many grants and upgrade schemes available if I were to make any of these bigger changes to my home. And while we probably won’t with a house move on the horizon, it was still interesting information to take with us to our next property. In fact, I’ve already told my husband that we’ll definitely be booking another OVO Home Health Report when we move to our new house.

Around five days after the initial session, I received my personalised report via email. This provided me with a copy of the new EPC rating for my records, and a 20-page report that went into detail about my home, what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and how we can improve. The information about grants and schemes was also included in this report in easily-digestible bullet points.

All in all, the experience was an extremely positive one and it taught me more about my house than I had imagined it would. And with the OVO Home Health Report in my back pocket, I can make changes specific to my house and my energy usage.

Of course, what works for my house might not work for your house, which is why I’d encourage everyone to take OVO up on their home health check. You can book your slot here.