NatHERS Certificate

By the introduction of the HSTAR or HERO portals to create NatHERS certificates directly from the thermal modelling files of the modelling software, the national administrator for the NatHERS scheme now creates a detailed and well formatted document called the NatHERS universal certificate. It offers a uniform and useful list of relevant information regarding the project, its components and the overall energy efficiency metrics of the dwellings resulted from assessment with a thermal modelling software.

Structure of a NatHERS certificate

 The NatHERS certificate includes information about the building’s design and construction, such as the size, layout, orientation, glazing, insulation, and heating and cooling systems. It also includes the building’s thermal performance results, as well as recommendations for improving the building’s energy efficiency.

A NatHERS certificate has several sections. The first page of the certificate is always allocated to show the details about the dwelling being certified, the credentials of the NatHERS assessor who performed the simulation, general construction elements’ specifications and the star rating performance of the dwelling. On the first page, there is also a QR code that can be scanned to access the certificate on the Government registry government portal. The next pages of a NatHERS certificate provide details about each element of the dwelling which have been addressed in the thermal assessment. These elements are all the envelope elements of a dwelling which include floors, ceiling, roof, external walls, windows and skylights in addition to internal walls, ceiling fans and ceiling penetration elements.

Class 2 multi-unit buildings NatHERS summary certificate

Each unit of a multi-unit residential development must have its own NatHERS certificate, and since each of these certificates can have many pages, it might not always be practical to provide this level of documentation for a development application. Therefore the results of the thermal modelling of a multi-unit development can be summarised in a different document which can be placed adequately on the architectural plans before being stamped and secured by the NatHERS assessor. This summary certificate shows general details of the project, the average star rating performance of the whole multi-unit development and then lists the certificate numbers, heating and cooling loads and star rating of each unit of the proposed development.