Frequently asked questions

DomiReno is a Belgian renovation-budget wizard. You walk through a structured path of questions about your home and renovation plans and get, at the end, a grounded minimum budget with margin, a grant estimate per region and an energy-label impact projection Before/After. The goal is one concrete thing: give you an honest first estimate before asking for quotes or turning to an architect. It's not a contract, not a binding price and not a substitute for professional guidance — it's the compass with which you approach those discussions better prepared.

Private owners or prospective buyers in Belgium who want to understand roughly what a renovation costs. Useful both before purchase (does this house fit within my budget including works?) and during planning (which categories weigh heaviest, what does an energy-label jump deliver?). Contractors and architects work with their own calculation tools; DomiReno is not a B2B instrument and is deliberately worded for private individuals without construction-technical background.

We cross-validate our unit prices against 5 independent Belgian professional sources and provide an explicit margin of ±15–25 % on a well-filled calculation. That's not miracle precision — it's the realistic spread of Belgian market prices for the type of input we collect (surfaces and choices per category, without CAD plans). With incomplete input (surfaces estimated rather than measured, unclear state of the home), uncertainty is higher on the upper end. The grants dataset was last fully re-verified in April 2026.

For unit prices and reference costs: Livios, Bobex, Homedeal, Wienerberger, Buildwise — each used for a specific part of the model (project examples, market validation via quotes, material prices, technical reference). For grants: Mijn VerbouwPremie, vlaanderen.be, Energiesparen, OVAM, Renolution, environment.brussels, Primes Habitation, SPW Énergie as official bodies. All sources are explicitly listed on the result screen in the trust strip, so you can verify them yourself.

The margin reflects the realistic spread of Belgian market prices for the level of input we collect. Bouwprijs.be (a peer tool) claims 10-20% for more detailed input with CAD/plan parsing; we're in the same order of magnitude but deliberately a bit more conservative on the upper end because we start from surface estimates. The lower end (15%) is the best-case scenario where you provide all surfaces exactly and encounter no surprises on site. Once our photo-intake rolls out further, the upper end of that band will come down.

Not yet automatically. ABEX is the biannual construction-cost index from ABEX vzw that adjusts construction prices to inflation and material-cost evolution. Bouwprijs.be communicates automatic ABEX correction as a feature; we deliberately don't yet, because we don't want to sell a promise we don't automate. The underlying infrastructure is partly running: a URL validator checks our external sources every month and flags drift (see monitoring dashboard). A monthly auto-refresh of grant amounts is still on our roadmap. For now we validate manually at every dataset update — traceable via the "last verified" date we show on every trust strip.

Construction costs vary within Belgium between large-city cores (Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent) and peripheral areas. Causes: logistic cost (parking fees, loading/unloading zones in the city centre), local wage structure and availability of specialised contractors. Based on your postcode we classify your project in one of three clusters and add an uplift or discount of ±4% to the total. That figure is explicitly visible on the result screen, so you see which regional assumption was made and can validate it yourself.

A fixed price is legally binding only when a contractor fixes it contractually in a signed quote. What we produce is a statistical estimate based on your input, our sources and our regional factor — not an offer to execute works. Communicating a figure without a margin would suggest we offer a certainty we cannot substantiate, and that is exactly the kind of false precision DomiReno explicitly distances itself from.

For Flanders: Mijn VerbouwPremie (the clustered grant for roof, wall and floor insulation, windows, heating, ventilation and solar energy), the asbestos-removal grant via OVAM, and sub-categories per work. On the result screen you see which grant is linked to which category. The free version shows the total and regional status; in Pro you see the estimate per item with the underlying formula and the source we used.

Yes. On the result screen you see explicitly which region was detected from your postcode and which grant engine is active. Flanders has the most complete dataset (Mijn VerbouwPremie). Wallonia has been running since 2026 on the temporary Primes Habitation 2025-2026 regime — amounts are fully calculated per income bracket. Brussels is on temporary pause since Renolution was suspended (1/1/2025); once awarding resumes, Brussels is automatically back in the estimate. Our UI is fully trilingual (NL/EN/FR) and region detection + energy-engine defaults are region-aware. For concrete applications, our advice remains: use the estimate as a first orientation and confirm the official allocation via the regional desk.

Mijn VerbouwPremie works with three income brackets: the lowest incomes get the highest grant percentages, middle incomes an intermediate bracket, and higher incomes a base rate or no grant depending on the category. You choose your income category yourself on the result screen (deliberately there and not in the wizard, to touch sensitive fiscal input as late as possible) and the grant estimate adapts live. Which bracket you are officially assigned is decided by the desk based on your most recent tax statement — our estimate is an estimate.

No, and that's important to understand. Our grant estimate is an estimate based on current regulation and your self-reported input. Effective allocation depends on (a) correct execution according to the grant conditions — for example by an accredited contractor, with the correct material performances —, (b) timely and complete submission via the right desk, and (c) the available budget at the time of application, which can be limited per region and per year. Use our estimate as orientation for your overall plan, not as guaranteed reimbursement.

We estimate your expected energy label after renovation based on the insulation, window, heating and ventilation choices you make in the wizard. It's an indicative jump — for example 'D → A' — with which you can judge which combination of works delivers the greatest energy return. Roof insulation alone rarely takes a D below a C; roof + heat pump + windows does. The exact contribution per renovation item (how many points each choice delivers) is a Pro feature; the summary jump is free on the result.

No. Each region has its own official certification by an accredited professional: in Flanders an EPC drawn up by a type A energy expert, in Brussels and Wallonia a PEB certificate by an accredited PEB certifier. For new-build or major energy renovation, this is supplemented by an EPB declaration (Flanders) or PEB declaration (Brussels/Wallonia) drawn up by an accredited assessor. Our projection is a planning tool: it helps you decide before you invest. For legal obligations — sale, rental, reaching the energy-label target for 2030 or 2040 — you need an official certificate that can only be delivered by an accredited professional.

Free (with a free account from the result screen onwards): total budget with margin, regional grant status, high-level energy-label jump, an overview of which categories you activated, and saving and comparing your projects. Pro (€29 one-off per project, VAT incl.): full per-category breakdown with all underlying items and quantities, grant estimate per item with source reference, energy-label impact Before/After per individual choice so you see which intervention delivers the most, AI intake of your energy certificate or asbestos inventory (upload the PDF and the wizard fills in automatically), PDF export of the full report and a separate scope-of-works for the contractor. The detailed comparison is on the pricing page.

One-off purchase, €29 per project, no recurring cost and no automatic renewal. After payment you have lifetime access to that specific project and can view or download the report as often as you want. If you later create a second project, for example for another property, you can choose to unlock that too or keep working for free — you're not locked in.

Pro is a digital product that becomes immediately accessible after payment. Under Belgian consumer law, no right of withdrawal applies, because you expressly consent to immediate execution at the time of purchase. In case of a technical issue, a double charge or another valid reason: feel free to get in touch and we'll resolve it reasonably. The full terms are in our terms of use.

We use your address and wizard input for one thing: running the calculation. During the wizard, we send your input to our server to perform the calculation, but we don't permanently store anything as long as you're not signed in. Only when you actively save a project or unlock Pro do we link the data to your account in our database. We don't sell data to contractors, lead-generation sites or comparison platforms — that's not our business model. How we store data, where the servers are and how to exercise your GDPR rights is fully in our privacy policy.

For the wizard itself, no; for the result screen, yes. You go through every step anonymously; only when you want to see your total budget do we ask you to sign in or create a free account (an email address is enough). The account is then also needed to save your project or buy a Pro unlock. The idea: see how much the wizard asks of you before you share your email address.