To think low take up of heat pump grants is due to more than just poor advertising.

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There's a BBC story today about low take-up of the £5k grants available for heat pump installation: www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64710225. The criticism focuses on poor marketingnof the scheme and difficulties in funding installers, both of which are true. But I think there's more to it than that. I managed to find a potential local installer and had a telephone conversation with him. He told me about the size of the pump, the restrictions on where it could be installed in relation to neighbouring properties, and the internal infrastructure that would be needed. The picture on the BBC article illustrates it well. I would need to rebuild my kitchen to accommodate it. He also said that for the system to work effectively I would need to install interior or exterior wall insulation on my solid brick house, plus either underfloor heating or bigger radiators in all the rooms. All of thus would cost many £££££. The installer told me that for these reasons he was mostly installing heat pumps in new build homes or complete refurbishments.

Aibu to think these factors are probably a much bigger part of the reason why the scheme has low take-up than "poor advertising"?

We looked at it and decided it wouldn't work for us as we have that terrible wall travelling microbore piping to our radiators so we have gone for the most efficient replacement gas boiler we could get.

In a (good) few years we will be looking again at electric heating but looking at air conditioning units rather than ASHPs. They can currently run at an efficiency of 3 kilowatts of heat for each and every kilowatt of electricity and are improving all the time. We hadn't realised this option until after we had already had the boiler replaced.

We replaced a gas boiler in late 2021. We did consider a heat pump but were concerned by the cost, the noise, and the fact that it is relatively new technology and how easy (and expensive) is it to repair. So lots of reasons. But the main one was not wanting to be lumbered with something that didn't work and was hard to repair.

I will replace my gas hob over my dead body - induction hobs are shit

To be fair your hob is separate to your heating. You could have a heat pump or electric heating and still have a gas hob if you wanted.

Most houses don't have enough room for a utility room let alone all that pipe work and stuff needed for the air pump.
Our house insulation has been updated massively in the last 6 years. Still not good enough probably.

I've read far too many stories of people saying they are expensive and rubbish unfortunately.

I rented a flat once that had electric ceiling heating - it was foils rolled out above a false ceiling and each room could be indivually controlled for temprature and timing.

We really struggled with working it and maintaing a comfotable temperatire. Lookign back I see we never really understood we probably needed to leave it on all the time with the thermostat set to the ideal temperature in each room.

I think there probably needs to be an education programme on how electric heating systems best work as most of us are used to the instant direct heat of solid fuel systems and/or wood burners.

I don't know about heat pumps but surely the grant for this would be better going towards solar panels which can be much more easily fitted. That would have covered just under half the cost of ours recently fitted. It's brought the bills down by half on sunny days.

Is it because too many people could actually make use of that kind of grant and so cost money?!

@EmmaGrundyForPM I know - it's generally the same for all underfloor heating, leave it on at a low level all the time because it takes longer to heat up. Even running flat out, the heat pump couldn't keep the house comfortable.

@OddBoots AIr conditioners are heat pumps, they just run in one direction. They sometimes have electric heating elements built in so they can heat, or can act as true heat pumps, so heating and cooling.

There used to be better subsidies for solar. We were adding solar at a terrific rate around 2015 until they withdrew the subsidies.

Basically if we had continued to add solar at the same rate as we were adding in 2015, then by now we would have added enough solar capacity to be equivalent to another Hinkley Point C (30GW of added solar at 10% capacity factor).

Heat pumps are not really that good in existing houses. I would get a gas boiler and solar. Gas boiler is lower cost and lower risk that it will actually provide the heating you require. Plus it has less unknowns in terms of things like reliability and service costs. I would want an SCOP on a heat pump of at least 4 to offset the price cost of gas (about 3x less). Very few heat pumps achieve this.

The only time I would consider a heat pump is a) in a new build, where the whole house is wired up for them, so they work better and b) if I had no access to mains gas. In b) generally you have a choice of oil, LPG,heat pump or normal electric. The problem is in a house that doesn't have access to mains gas it will be more often than not old build and therefore need substantial insulation upgrading in order to good for a heat pumps.

I think the government should insist on heat pumps in new builds (where they can be made to work well), stop subsidising them in non new builds and put the money towards subsidising solar instead.

Solar panels appear to be breeding around here. The Scottish Govt offers interest free loans for panels and batteries. It didn't cover our full system because we have larger batteries (15kw) and 6kw of panels over two roof faces, but it would cover a more typical install. In our case the loan payment is about half of the reduction in our utility cost so it makes a lot of sense.

British goverment lives in another land, Uk has the oldest housing stock in Europe. My brother in Europe bought a newbuild in Estonia- came with solar panels,heat pump,underfloor heating in the whole house etc- you get none of that in the newbuilds in the UK. Installing this in the old houses.. might as well tear the whole house down and start all over again.

House builders give millions to the Tory party to avoid pesky regulations.

My neighbours have one and it is very difficult to set, expensive to run amd service and have great difficulty getting anyone to come out when there is a problem . Also the grant does not go far so there is still a very large expense to the home owner. Money most people do not have freely available and are not in a position to borrow and invest in another government scheme which will likely be ineffective and poor value in the long run. Its not is the consumer benefitting from this scheme.

There's already requirements around this for new builds in Scotland with more next year. Can't remember the exact phasing, but almost all new builds (I'm surrounded by them) already have solar and by 2024 they're meant to have low carbon heating.

We were phase 1 of our development - site started 2018ish - and we got heat pumps but not solar. Some of the smaller houses (different developer) got solar but not heat pumps

Phase 2 with our developer have pumps and solar, although I think they aren't great solar setups - no batteries and in the case of one I can see, a beautifully fitted but due north facing panel array...

There's a good BBC Sliced Bread podcast on heat pumps. They were split on them.

I have an eco conscious friend who has just renovated their house and they decided against a heat pump as the costs were huge and it didn't look quite effective enough.

We have a ground source heat pump that we put in about 13 years ago (before the grants). Our house is over 500 years old so is mostly not insulated (areas which have been reroofed have been insulated) with single glazing and detached, rural. Even so it does work surprisingly well and our house is kept at 20/21 degrees 24/7.

It was however extremely expensive to fit - it has its own room as it takes up the space of a fridge freezer and then two water tanks of the same size, half the ground floor had underfloor heating fitted and we had to replace the radiators in the rest of the house with larger, cast iron ones. All in all I would say it cost in the region of £80k to fit it. You also need to have access to a reasonable amount of outdoor space to run the pipes to collect the heat underground. It does mean that we use a lot more electricity but still works out cheaper and more convenient than oil.

I don't see how it is a feasible option for most houses - I think the only way that it could work is if you had it as a community type heating supply, so one GSHP supplying five houses.

I work for a company that installs them on new builds. £5K doesn’t touch the sides in terms of costs, even on a well insulated new build let alone retro fitting them

I think it's an environmental disaster to retrofit them when it involves lots of digging, new radiators/pipework, potentially new flooring, redecoration, new kitchens, etc. How much damage does all that unnecessary work do to the environment in terms of pollution (of mining and transport of the raw materials, the manufacturing process, recycling/disposal of items removed, etc)?

I think it's a no brainer for new homes that are built around heat pumps but it can't be good for the environment to have all that pollution and use of scarce resources to retrofit to a system that actually works as it stands.

As for grants, they just encourage the cowboys, as we've seen with solar installations, cavity wall insulation, etc., where you get firms being set up solely to benefit from the grants, and existing firms put up their prices because they know their customers are getting subsidised.

My FIL is an architect and he says they're brilliant - in new builds.

We had a new boiler fitted last year, I looked briefly at this scheme, but the cost just for it to be fitted would have been too expensive even with the grant, plus to actually get anything out of it we'd have had to replace all our double glazing at the very least - which if we could afford to do it, we'd have already done (35+ yr old aluminium frames that you can feel sucking the heat out of the room plus some of the seals have gone and there is condensation in the double glazing).

Just switching to a combi was getting on for £4,000.

I did chat to the gas engineer about it, he said he'd go for solar panels over retro-fitting a heat pump.

We’ve only got an ASHP because we live in a new build. We could never have had one in our old house (1950s ex council house semi)

2 of our neighbours had it installed. Old solid stone buildings. Continuously breaking down and insufficient heat.

I know someone having it done at the moment and the stress has been really hard for them.

It's being done free as they qualify for it somehow but they are at their wit's end with how long it's taking. I think they were told the cost is actually £18,000 if they had to pay for it.

I had a new combi boiler last year so I certainly wouldn't be in the market for one any time soon thank goodness.

We stayed in a holiday flat in St Ives a few times that had ceiling heating, usually in October. Lovely flat, pretty much right on the beach, large windows - got quite cold, especially in the smaller bedroom so we'd have the heating on.

You could be sat down freezing, stand up and literally feel where the heat stopped, your head would be in the warmer layer. I don't know who came up with the idea of ceiling heating, but it is one of the worst ideas ever - perhaps ceiling fans would have helped circulate the warm air? I don't know.

Without also installing solar panels and a battery it simply will increase our bills too much. The 10 years to pay off is too long. An interest free loan system is definitely needed as well as the grants

I recently had a new boiler fitted. I looked into a heat pump, but with all of the extra stuff needed it was way more expensive overall, even accounting for the grant. Plus I'd lose half of my (already small) third bedroom to accommodate a heat pump, while my new gas boiler fits nicely inside the old airing cupboard.