Air source heat pump. How to cut the costs?

[tothemoonandbackbuses]

Just bought a house with an ashp. It was built 5 years ago The house is warmish if the ashp is set to 15 but not toasty warm. It does however use £12 of electricity a day!
I have turned the room stats down to 10 and turned the booster off in the hope of using less electricity and I am accepting that the only really warm room will be the living room with the log burner.
If I turned it off entirely would I have to drain the system to protect it?
Any other ashp users with any tips for reducing running costs?

OMG that cost is insane! No advice re the heat pump per se, but is the house sufficiently insulated? Because if it is, and you’re still paying that much for a pretty cold house, I’m going to stop dreaming that a heat pump might be the answer to my gas bill woes.

Watching with interest as I'm in a similar position to you and we moved in January. Elec has been using 50kWh a day, equating to c.£10 daily (prior to today's giant price hike). We're on a waiting list for a smart meter, but have been told it's a very long wait. So my husband has been fiddling with the settings and taking a meter reading at the same time daily to see what works. He's got it down to 35kWh a day, by setting timers for the heating and reducing the temperature of the hot water. We'd like to reduce it further still, so will keep on fiddling.

My parents have this type of heating and I think that insulation is key. Their house is properly insulated including external insulation & the cost to heat the house is now really reasonable.

Yes it’s very well insulated
It isn’t a nice square shape though so that doesn’t help.
There isn’t much info out there in the actual running costs surprisingly.
If the tank has another winding we will probably add another wood burner with a back boiler to help it out.
I suspect without the heat boost the water will only be tepid.

Blimey! I thought these pumps were the future!

It used 33kwh in a 24 hour period. I will recalculate again tomorrow.
We can’t afford a totally new heating system or pv solar panels atm, which do reduce the running costs.

PILs have one it took them years to get it working "properly" it's still a bit shit (scalding water on a Thursday) but it's not bankrupting them anymore.

@QuebecBagnet

Blimey! I thought these pumps were the future!

I think they might be the future for the environment but not for peoples purses, clearly.

You need to run a heat pump differently to conventional heating. It uses most of it's energy getting up to heat, so every time you turn it off and let the heat in the house drop and then switch it on again it will be working hard and super inefficient.

We have ours running all the time with our thermostat set at 16-18 in the day, and 14 at night just in case the temperature drops that far overninght, although the house is well enough insulated that this is rarely an issue (ie not at all this winter with it being so mild).

It’s not been turned off yet. If I do turn it off, it will be off for a considerable amount of time eg a couple of years

I don't think they work well with radiators.

Underfloor heating (and a well insulated house) and they can work well because UFH works well at a much lower temp than radiators need to heat rooms.

I have UFH in a new build and it still didn't, 4 years ago, make sense to go for one. If I knew then what I know now it may (just may) have been a reasonable expense. Going forward a few years, who knows?

is this what we are all supposed to have in the future if so how do they expect people to pay the instilation and bill that it would create

it sounds like it will be worse than what the utilities are now

i dont get it at all

Heat pumps are great for the environment - but the running costs are rarely talked about.

You are still using energy in the system. And you have to pay for that energy.

We have an ground source heat pump (maybe that is what makes the difference?) with radiators in an not yet isolated house. Ours is very energy efficient. and much cheaper to run than the previous one (oil). It needs to be always on as someone was already saying uptread. Maybe you could change the settings to improve efficiency?

You need really really good insulation. Is it feeding under floor heating or radiators?

The idea that you can just swap a boiler for one of these is over simple and incorrect. Its an entirely different type of heating.

Wow, that is insane. We have a heat pump but we run it overnight to heat the floors to a warm temperature, it doesn't need to go on again until the following night. As a result we only ever use cheaper night rate electricity - is this an option for you?

There is something inherently wrong with that setup - I would consider getting an energy consultant to take a look at your home holistically and see what you could do with a low budget to improve this.

We are exactly the same as you! Bought house at the end of August. Our electricity bills were around £370 pm over the winter. It's had me in tears regularly. While the weather has been nice it's been down to £4/5 per day but then it snowed and we're back up to £11

There’s something wrong with the install, ours costs nothing like that to run. On the old rates we use £100-150pcm (obviously it will be higher when our fixed rate ends) for air source heating, hot water and cooking plus running 2 electric cars! This is in a 150sqm house.
Are you on an appropriate tariff?
We heat ours to 19-21 degrees too as we like it warm!

We have one and for heating / hot water it costs us £2.50 a day. We just checked the is evening! This was just for heating / hot water. Our total electricity bill for the month is £150 (well on the old tariff). We don’t have gas.

We live in a 1930s house which we extensively redeveloped to add much better wet UFH, larger radiators, new double glazing, insulation etc.

We have a Mitsubishi one - it’s great. Would suggest getting the manufacturer out to check your one. Doesn’t sound right at all!

The property is 120 square metres
It runs wet underfloor heating, it’s a barn conversion and the ashp and underfloor heating were installed at the point of conversion
Tariff is 36p a unit. It’s on a commercial tariff and I couldn’t get anyone to supply it on a domestic variable tariff. It is fixed for 2 years
I could do the calculations for an economy 7 or 10 rate but I don’t think I’d find anyone to supply me. I spent a lot of today ringing energy companies and they will only take you on as a fixed tariff customer.
It was on a commercial tariff before so that’s what the house has to stay on.

It’s not the heat pump at fault then, your issue is with your tariff, that’s quite some drip feed!

You need to get your meter changed first, then you can get domestic rates. Get it changed to a SMETS 2

You absolutely don’t have to stay on commercial but you need the meter changed to access domestic supply rates.

The current domestic rate is 29p a unit in our area it would still be almost £10 a day
The meter is on the national database as domestic but I couldn’t get a company to supply me on the standard variable domestic tariff. I could get a domestic fix but it was 51p a unit. The flexi rate I was on was 43p a unit and a standing charge of £1.50 a day so I had to change fairly quickly.

I would be happy at £5 a day running costs if we are warm but for that I would either have to find a deal at 15p a unit or it would have to run efficiently on 15kwh a day and keep us warm.