Air Source Heating

[05Channellady]

We're semi rural without Gas, our current heating system is off a back boiler or storage heaters... We would like to be carbon efficient and keep our bills to a minimum.. Air source heating seems to be a great option for us... Does anyone have it?? is it as good as it sounds?? TIA

I haven't got it

It may suit you better if you have wet UFH, which can run "warm" rather than "hot"

If you have no gas, the lower running costs may in time compensate for the high installation cost.

Which part of the country do you live in? I'm told that in prolonged cold weather they can frost up and stop working. This will be more of a problem if you live in Perth, than if you live in Penzance.

We had it fitted in July after our oil boiler broke. So this is the first cold weather with it. So far it is really good, but will know more after the winter when we can properly evaluate the electricity bill. We tend to keep our heating at 16c daytime, 18C evening and 15 overnight. It works really efficiently for this set up.

The keys to a successfully system seem to be
Really good insulation
New bigger radiators
Sensible temperature on the thermostats and no suddenly pushing it up by a large amount (this is how you really waste electricity).

Other points
It is no noisier than the oil boiler which was in more or less the same location outside.
The water temperature is a nice temperature for using the taps (unlike with our old oil boiler where we risked 2nd degree burns even at the lowest setting!!)
You can have the water cylinder outside the house if necessary, you would just need to build a small lean to around it.

We had our entire installation completed in one long day, they sent a massive team out to do it.

hmm. I replaced a very old oil boiler with a new one 8 years back. It is very quiet and hot water temperature is perfectly controllable. Hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard which reduces drier use in winter.

This is an old property which is a bugger to insulate.

Interested to know the installation costs, but with electricity so expensive (and going to get more so) the maths is unlikely to stack up

Piglet John, thank you were in Worcestershire, West Midlands, England.. I have also heard many options online and from people who have heard... Nothing like getting opinions from People whom already actually have it .

RIPWater thank you, we used to keep our house at 20' daytime and the same 15' at night ..

Murbblurb... sorry I'm a bit lost.. Did you replace your boiler with air source heating??

How well insulated is your home? You would be best to start with that and anything that can be done to improve it and then look at whether ASHP makes sense

I am - hopefully although it is going so slowly it feels like it might not happen - buying a small place and would like to look at low carbon heating for it but the first steps are going to be a lot of insulation, double glazing and replacing of ancient radiators with ufh.

Get a company with a thermal camera to come out and take a scan of the outside of your home and see where the heat is escaping from.

If you are rural and have land, you could also consider ground source heating? More expensive to install but supposed to be even more effective so good for larger homes or ones where insulating them really well is hard (listed etc). With both there are a variety of grants and subsidies available so the list price is not necessarily what you pay

We have brought a old house so will be completely overhauling and extending including installing triple glazed windows, internal walls new thermal plasterboard plus looking at external thermal cladding or similar.. anything to make our carbon footprint as low as possible

Be careful OP that you don't overinsulate your old house - they were built to breathe, not be hermetically sealed. You could create problems.

Friends of mine have it - but installed after they knocked their old house down and built new so fully insulated, new windows etc. It was so hot they needed to add additional vents.

If your completing a renovation put in underfloor heating, this ideal to combine with a AHS, I do know people who use them on a conventional radiator system with no problem but for maximum saving go for underfloor upstairs and down as the water runs at a lower temperature, I did this in my house however I had gas which was more cost effective at the time 5 Years ago, the AHS was 10k so it made no sense however with the move to electric for all new boilers away from gas it makes sense, especially if you also have solar to offset the running costs