To absolutely hate heat pumps?!

[Rosesandstars]

We moved into a house with a heat pump already set up. It is awful- it takes ages for the heating to get to any reasonable temperature and the hot water runs out after a 15 minute shower, it then takes over an hour to heat up again. Does anyone else find the same or AIBU?

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Updated by MNHQ
Landed on this page in search of heat pump advice? Find our guide to installing a heat pump in your UK home here. HTH!

Oh dear had one installed this week - took advantage of the grant to get rid of ancient oil boiler. The water tank of huge so I'm hoping we won't have a problem... underfloor heating seems toasty so far although radiators took a while to heat up but then the house has been empty and freezing for a long time.

This sounds like an air-to-air heat pump that also does aircon - and a badly set up one into the bargain. Most domestic heat pumps work on wet systems ie radiators and/or underfloor, and hardly any of them do cooling as well, though we may be getting to the stage where cooling might be useful, especially in cities, so it could come.

plenty of us on here who love them. Fingers crossed you had a good installer who knew what (s)he was doing, don't hesitate to get them back if it's not working as promised. Ours came back to tweak lots of times! If you have UFH then you should be off to the races!

With a huge water tank you should be fine on the water front too. The only issue we have is because of its precise positioning it takes a while for water upstairs to heat up (one you open the tap/shower I mean). But once warm is plentiful.

I second (or third?) the recommendation to look at heat geek.

Re the house heat-up time, how warm do your radiators feel? It may be that your system is setup for an ultra -low flow temperature. This can be extremely efficient but works best if you are keeping a constant temperature. If you were able to turn up (or get an engineer to turn up) the flow temperature your bills might rise slightly, but your system would be more responsive. This might be the simplest way to get a few hours at 21 when you want it. You could also experiment with setting the system to say 19.5 all the time (using your current flow temperature), and see if that's actually just as comfortable .

To keep the high efficiency but get a more responsive sytem, there are two bigger changes you could also consider (they would be additive so could try either or both)

These would be:
Better insulation and draughtproofing. That way the same amount of heat warms your house up faster.

Bigger radiators in the rooms you want warm - a bigger radiator gives out more heat even at the same flow temperature, again, warming the room faster. Heat pumps do work much better with larger radiators ie double or even triple thickness ones, of a good size.

This should all have been checked by the installer of course, but I realise you weren't there.

Re the hot water, again if the system isn't giving you what you need you could get a bigger tank (this is assuming the tank you have has the correct coil -again hard to know if you weren't there but there may be some info somewhere?)

Otherwise again, how hot is your unmixed hot water? Heat pumps vary in the top temperature they can reach but you may be able to turn it up, which means a tankful will go further. Once again it does cost more to heat to a higher temperature but you may feel the convenience is worth it. And it will still be cheaper than using an immersion heater.

Bloody hell - always one...

Thanks! We currently have a combi boiler so there’s no tank.

I do and sometimes longer. If I'm washing my very long hair!

To the Canadians thinking electric heating would be better..oh my god no. It would cost an absolute fortune in the UK.

Electricity is so much more expensive than gas. Most UK home are inefficient and poorly insulated.

I know people are saying they are finding heat pumps cheaper than gas, but I have two family members, who had to install solar to fund the heat pumps. These are big houses and electrical costs for the heat pumps were ££££. No one is quoting the actual costs.

Unfortunately I live in a huge ancient house (well over 3000 sq M) and heating it all with gas, electric or heat pumps is not viable. So the Canadian ideal that it's autumn and we just turn the heat on and leave it on. That would be $150 -$170 Canadian dollars a day to heat my house to 19 degrees.

Not sure what your humidity is like but UK winter, the temp might not be terribly cold it is very damp...that's why we struggle with mould and damp. It's 95% humidity outside today.

I currently live in a couple of rooms, roll on spring.

And the Canadian commenting on installing air to air instead of water. The trouble is, the vast vast majority of U.K. housing has some kind of air to water installed usually a gas or oil powered boiler with radiators. To change that over to air to air would be an enormous undertaking and not feasible in many homes.

I lived in a shared house with air vent heating like this for a while and it wasn't great - increased dust, housemate with asthma struggled with it and it depends on the house being constructed so large air vents can reach every room.

Some British houses have electrical heating using storage heaters which depend on storing heat overnight at a cheaper rate of electricity, then releasing it over the course of the next day. It's often these or oil powered boilers that heat pumps are being brought in to replace.

But electricity is more expensive here so most people aren't going to be keen on a solely electrical solution.

@CanadaNotAMum I agree with you the mini split is is a very good solution but most (nearly all) UK houses already have water radiator systems. It would actually be more complicated to add split systems or baseboard heating into our homes.

I’m off to read more about heating systems in other countries as I’m a nerd.

Electricity cost here varies a lot depending on province. In Quebec, electricity is quite cheap. I’m in a 750 sq/ft flat, and with the heat pump, my total cost is about CAD 1000 per year. About GBP 600? That’s deceptively cheap due to a shady hydroelectric deal that Quebec made back in the 70s.

But the same sized flat in my home province of Newfoundland could cost 3 or 4 times that because electricity is more expensive there. So a house your size would be expensive to heat.

At the end of the day though, Canadians don’t have a choice re electricity. There is not much natural gas available, and oil is horrible and only exists in a few far flung places. So we have to use electric, and most places only have one provider, so we can’t shop around. I’m lucky that it’s cheap in Quebec, but that’s a weird case.

In terms of dampness and humidity, it depends where in Canada. Newfoundland is extremely damp always…something like 120 days a year of fog and drizzle!

I got rid of the fucking hot water tank that was installed in my current house because I got very tired very quickly of water running out halfway through a shower or running a bath or trying to wash up etc etc etc. I installed a combi as I had in my previous house because then you always know you have hot water when you need it. I sincerely hope the technology improves before they phase out gas boilers as I do NOT want to go back to a bloody tank. But if not I'll get a new one just before they are phased out and hang on to it as long as possible.

WTF? 15 minutes in the shower? Seriously?

I don’t think heat pumps are common in the US … maybe in areas that don’t get cold as a rule. I’ve lived in the Midwest/upper Midwest all of my life and heat is forced air electric or gas or radiator/oil for the most part. It is in the land where you turn it on at a certain point of the year and leave it on until spring.

Hot water heaters are almost always separate, and are either gas or electric. Mine is 80 gallons and is electric whereas my furnace is natural gas.

Air conditioning is also separate but uses the same vents as the the heat.

Have you had an engineer out to look at it? We have geothermal heat coils under the garden and the (very very old house) felt cold when we moved in. However the geo heat engineer/plumber came and looked at the system and diagnosed that the wrong actual pump had been installed in the cellar unit and wasn't strong enough to pump water around the radiators and the hot water system in really cold weather. So he replaced the pump and no problems since then.

It's currently minus 26C outside and +18-20 inside.