Air Source Hea Pump anyone?

[Justmadesourkraut]

We are wondering whether to bite the bullet, in the light of current events. Would be very happy to hear from anyone who had one, as to the pros and cons.

Lol! Just met the AI suggested titles. which suggests I ask you about vasectomies too! Not needed!

Thank youuuu

I have one.
If you’re on mains gas with a fully working boiler that you’re happy with stick with it.
Electricity prices are extremely volatile atm. The people with the solar and batteries are fairing ok. Many of the cheap tariffs have gone.
It also depends on how you heat your house. Ashps are designed to run almost continuously, and take a few hours to heat a house up. Mine takes 8 hours as it’s underfloor heating. You can not come home think it’s a bit chilly and have half an hour of heating.
The level of insulation in your house, the design (I’ve got loads of external walls) makes a difference to running costs. Mine costs £100 a week to run in winter. We only put it on occasionally. Thankfully the log burner runs a few radiators as well.
Some people love their ashps, generally the system is really well designed, they got solar and batteries and a very well insulated house. There is an equal number of people who find them too expensive and the really unlucky ones too expensive and a cold house.
The newer models are much more energy efficient. Mines 10 years old. They are more expensive than boilers to replace and there’s no funding in England for replacement ashps
Im not anti ashps but you need to do thorough research and have a really well designed system not just a quick fit from an energy company

I've got one. It was installed in my HA newbuild when it was built. It's always been excellent- it's an all electric house and my annual bills hover around the £1000 a year mark.

Really helpful, thanks. @Autumn1990 we are going to have to replace the boiler and upgrade a couple of radiators in the next year or two. Would that change your answer? (We do have a log burner but only a stand alone, no radiators run from it . . . ) Thanks!

I Would probably still stick with gas. For me apart from the cost, the long heat up time is an issue if we get home and it’s a bit chilly I can’t turn it on and be warm in half an hour. The log burner has to be lit and that will warm the radiators in less than an hour. Servicing costs are also more, mine costs £350 to service. Gas engineers Will service any model of boiler you have to find a specific engineer for your heat pump.
Do you have time to react to changing electricity prices and turn it on when it’s very cheap and off when the price goes up or to set the programmer
You would need to upgrade radiators, possibly pipe work and also find somewhere for the hot water cylinder to go.
If you’re not bothered about really high bills in winter and can cope with £400 electric bills in the winter months then go for it but if the budget is tight I would stick with gas and spend money increasing the insulation on your house.
There are some good videos on YouTube by heat geek. I did their full course that plumbers do and in theory ASHP are good but mine isn’t. I wouldn’t be against one in the future. I have very mixed feelings about them.
It’s a system that requires more input and effort than a gas boiler
It might be a good idea to book a holiday cottage with one and see how you find it.

I agree with everything @Autumn1990 has said.

I have one. It’s excellent and cheap to run but you cannot underestimate the importance of having your house up to spec in order for it to work efficiently. Windows, doors, insulation and radiators typically need upgrading in order to maximise efficiency. If you’re doing a big renovation then go for it, but it’s definitely not a good straight switch for a gas boiler.

£100 a week?!?!?! That's insane!

Why are you turning on and off? That's the most expensive way to run it? Is it broken? That sounds like it was installed by a cowboy or massively over sized. If you don't have the insulation it shouldn't have been installed. I'm not surprised you don't like them. Your experience would put me off too.

@OP We have large house (5 bedrooms) and it's no where near that cost. Probably more like £200 most and its on constantly, no battery or solar. My husband loves it as he works from home and he's warm in the day. We did have to have some rads changed over but that was very simple. I would not change until your boiler needs replacing or you think your going to be doing a whole renovation as it's disruptive. Do you have a well insulated house?

I've had two fitted, this house and the last and it was only radiators changed both times. We didn't need to redo pipe work. This house we managed to keep the water cylinder too.

We needed to replace our boiler anyway, so bit the bullet and wen for it. We also have 2 EVs and solar panels, but no batteries.

we have a 1980s semi, originally 3 bed but extended to 4. We had to replace a few radiators downstairs, but not many. We don’t have underfloor heating. I work predominantly from home, and we keep the temp to 18°C during the day.

it works brilliantly. The first winter I was utterly paranoid about how much it was costing. This year I’ve just not thought about.

our bill from mid Feb - mid Jan was £137. No gas standing charge. Everything is electric now. Cars, cooking, heating, hot water. No petrol.

I’m really glad we made the jump. But we wouldn’t have done it unless the boiler needed replacing anyway.

We got one in December. But we had solar and batteries put in first. Without solar your heating will likely cost the same as gas. Over the winter we did still use daytime grid electricity but for the last few weeks we’ve been on solar/cheap overnight rate energy so it’s costing us very little.
The house is always warm (possibly a little too warm in the bedrooms so we’re going to have to fine-tune some settings). You can’t ‘boost’ the heating though, it’s set at a temperature and it maintains it constantly. I feel the cold and this winter has been fine, I haven’t been uncomfortable in the house. The ASHP did have to work hard during the cold snaps but my house was warm.

I would say if you’re not planning on solar (ideally with battery) and don’t have access to the EV/cheap overnight tariffs then it’s not going to save you money. You also need to factor in space for a hot water tank if you don’t already have one.

Edit to add: you shouldn't be turning it off or on at all, they work most efficiently by maintaining a constant temperature. Ours does have an app where we can tell it we have cheap overnight energy so it heats the hot water tank during those hours.

My son has one in his new build 5 bedroom house. It's a nightmare - they're cold and the bills are horrendous.

The week I had on, it was on constantly. Generally I turn it on for a few days to a week if it’s going to be very cold. I’m aware turning them on and off isn’t ideal but a £100 q week every week isn’t affordable. It isn’t heating the house from cold either as I’ve another heating system. The house is well insulated but the ASHP is over 10 years and it’s not a good installation.

We have an air source heat pump, which we're really pleased with. However, we live in a modern, insulated house with underfloor heating. It's not going to work well otherwise! We're with Octopus on their heat pump rate (luckily fixed at the moment) and the heat pump connects to another smart app with a company called Homely to provide efficient and cost effective heating and water. The house is always warm and we work from home. Last month cost £170 (we have a good sized four bed house). This month is at £129 so far, it's much cheaper than the gas boiler we had.

Mine is 13+ years old and still going strong (Mitsubishi Ecodan). It’s not metered separately so I only know my total usage which includes an EV but I use in total about 50 kWh per day in winter, of which I estimate 20-30 kWh would be the heat pump. I am on an EV tariff with a cheap rate (7.5p/ kWh) ending at 6 am and also have a battery which I charge every night. I heat the hot water starting at midnight with the central heating starting up shortly afterwards but at a low temperature (currently 37 C) so it’s just a gentle heat rather than a blasting hot radiator like you might get with a gas boiler. ASHP are best run low and slow. It takes around 2 hours for the heat from the UFH to get through the thick concrete screed so the night time heating works really well with UFH as it’s lovely and warm (but not hot) by the time I get up in the morning. It’s also really cheap to run as I can run it off the grid before 6 am and then apart from the very coldest days off the battery for most of the rest of the day which has only cost me 7p/ kWh as opposed to the circa 30p price cap. 5 bedroom detached part 1930s with radiators and part modern extension with UFH downstairs / rads upstairs.

it sounds like you didn’t get good advice from your installer! Heat pumps aren’t designed to work like a combi boiler, they should be allowed to run 24/7 using what’s called weather compensation to keep your house at the temperature you prefer. your radiators should never feel hot (Luke warm - warm only) but the house should be warm

it takes a little bit of adjusting to get the AI/weather compensation right but then it should be a set and forget.

Eg our house is around 20 degrees constantly but costing less than when we were trying to use it like a normal boiler.

also I would shop around for a service engineer, it’s around £150 here (north Derbyshire/South Yorkshire border)

We have one. However we also have electric cars, house batteries and solar power. We charge the house batteries and cars up overnight at 7p per Kwh and export our solar power to the grid at 14p per Kwh. On some days in the summer we run at a profit. So yes, we re very happy with our setup.

We had ours installed in Jan last year and love it. We were likely to need a new boiler in the next few years anyway and so with the grants available at that point it was a no brainer. We do have solar and batteries (have had them a while) which does mean we can take best advantage of the tariffs available.
Turning it off and on is the least efficient way to run it, we have it on constant and maintain the house at around 19 degrees. We use solar to heat hot water so although we use a fair amount of electricity in the winter (charging the batteries off peak keeps the price down) we barely use anything from the grid in spring /summer and have definitely found it a cheaper option than gas in the year and a bit we’ve had it so far. You do need to put the time in to really optimise the settings (which a decent installer should help with), if not they can be expensive and inefficient which is where a lot of the bad rap they get comes from.

We have one. It is brilliant and has over halved our heating bills. But, we have. very well insulated house (we did the heat pump as part if a massive renovation and the heating system was designed to go in as the build went along). We have external insulation (then render over this), underfloor insulation and roof is stuffed full of insulation. We have a Woodburner, but apart from to send letters to santa, and for the cosy feeling over christmas break we have not used it once this winter for heat. Of the people I know who have them, those whose houses are well insulated and the system fully integrated love them and make savings. Those who don't have installation, or who had then badly retrofitted have found they cost lots and cold.

I have an air source heat pump and haven't had any of the problems that autumn99 has had.
I don't have solar panels or under floor heating.

I live in a three bedroom new build and it really doesn't take long to heat up at all. It's lowest setting is 16 degrees and it's just left on that constantly and I turn it up if it gets chilly and the house gets really warm quickly.

My electricity dd is £95 a month.
My house was designed for the heat pump though so has really long radiators and a lot of insulation. It might be different if it's installed in an older house.

We refurbished our 1930s semi and made it suitable for a heat pump. We have solar panels, a battery, masses of insulation and underfloor heating. The house is so cosy. We're very happy with how the system runs. We spent a fortune upgrading the house but our bills are now low. Not sure of exact annual cost as we haven't had the solar panels a full year yet, but most expensive winter month was about £175, for a toasty 4-bed house. August was under £30 (including the standing charge).

I didn’t have it installed it unfortunately came with the house. I am aware you can’t run them like a combi boiler but if that’s the type of heating you prefer it’s different to the long heat up or long cool down of under floor heating. I have done a heat pump installation course and I know what I would have on a new system but one of the main issues with ashps is if you have a bad installation the cost of putting it right is huge. Im near the Yorkshire coast and the only engineer I could get to service mine had to travel from leeds.
I think they’re great when they work and don’t cost a fortune but running mine constantly does cost £100 a week so it only goes on if the weather is going to be really cold for a few days.