heatpumps anyone?

[Frazzled2207]

My husband is very keen on the heatpump idea, I'm not against it in theory but from my understanding it's a lot of money and disruption and the cost saving is not all that significant. We would be doing it mostly however to reduce our carbon footprint - we would like to get off gas entirely. If it makes any difference our house is 15 years old and fairly well insulated and having just moved here we don't currently intend to move again, ever.

Interested to hear if anyone else has done it. The firms we have approached seem to be keen to put us off unless we're building an entirely new house or doing a major renovation job (i.e. moving out during the process).

Oh and we got the RHI grant, so the whole system will cost around 2k all in.

What I want to know is if your house is ancient and uninsulated and you don’t have 18k to throw at insulation what are we supposed to do when you can’t buy a gas boiler any more? Because I think they’re banning boilers soon. My boiler is 18yo and I’m thinking about replacing it now before they’re banned even though currently it works fine. Hopefully would get 20 years out a new one.

There is a lot of misinformation around. Many older installations were poorly or incorrectly specified.

If you sleep with your windows open expect big energy bills no matter what your heating system is.

There are at least two ASHPs designed specifically for older and existing properties, the Daikin Altherma HT and the Vaillant aroTherm Plus.

We sleep with our window open a bit--I find it hard to sleep with out airflow.
We don't have heating on at night. I don't think it makes much difference to our bills.

My mum got one part funded by the green grant. Her house is colder and it's costing more in electricity then her old set up used in gas. Not sure if it's just her one (probably cheapest option) but she has to heat the whole house tepid, insted of having 1 or 2 rooms comfortably warm and the rest off.

We had solar panels and a Tesla battery fitted 2 years ago, best decision ever. Our panels are built into the roof and replaced the slate tiles, we had them fitted when we had the roof reslated. They don’t look ugly like those are bolted onto existing roofs and you can hardly tell they are there. We can even charge the battery up overnight when our electric is currently 5p per kWh ( on a fix with octopus go which lasts till Aug, between 12.30 and 4am). This is great during the days when the solar isn’t enough to charge the battery much.

To anyone who thinks an ASHP is expensive to run, please don't compare them to gas boilers. Until recently electricity was 5 to 10 times the price of gas, even an ASHP working at 3x efficiency is going to cost more, but times as they say are a changing.

As you can see from this thread, there is an incredibly wide range of competence among installers, alas! And the good ones are very busy but SO well worth the wait. The key is to ensure heat pump size, radiator/ ufh capacity, house heat loss and running temperatures and timings all work together. A good installer will check all this and can design an effective system for pretty much any house (including a poorly insulated one, though obviously as with fossil fuel , this means the system has to be larger and cost more to run)

My OH is a heating engineer so installed our himself having done all the calculations as above. He decided we'd need to add a radiator in one room, and upsize in another (that room was never warm anyway) but otherwise because our radiators were all sized quite generously for our level of insulation, they have stayed. End result - we are as warm as we were before, and because gas has gone up more than electric and because we no longer have a gas standing charge to pay, our bills are actually a bit less.

We had one installed in a stone house in France running along an oil boiler. Thé house was 50s and there was no need to replace any radiators at all. Done in 2007/8 and cost about 9k€. Out only problem was an above ground electricity supply and we were at the end of the network, so our voltage was outside the norm. Our temperature range was -15 to above 40. We also had a 4 oven electric Aga.
The only problem was frequent generator faults, eventually the pump split 1 winter when it was -15, but once we were hooked up to a new substation, the problems were resolved.

I'd warn against them for various reasons but considering the recent rises in energy costs, how do the running costs now compare with gas CH - I assume it has gotten worse for heat pumps.

@candycane222 has it. You need an expert. It's like anything, if you do it badly it will not go well.

We installed one 4 years ago to replace our ancient oil boiler. It's brilliant. The company we used were really thorough and made it clear that we should only go ahead if our (1960s) house was really well insulated, which it was.

We don't have UFH, and we did replace our Hot Water Cylinder and a couple of radiators. The system works well, it's not too noisy, and even in winter we sleep with our bedroom window open and a lightweight "summer" duvet.

It does use a lot of electricity, but oil would cost a fortune as well. We were so pleased with ours that we recommended it to two sets of neighbours, who have also had them.installed and are pleased.

some really good responses here thank you. And yes we will definitely pick a firm that knows what its doing, if it has a long waiting list we will take that as a good sign.

If anyone has any recommendations of installers in or around Greater Manchester would be very grateful for them.

www.projectheatingsolutions.co.uk/

Did the full installation in a day by using a huge team of different engineers/tradesmen. Very professional.

I can recommend TheHeatCo who did ours. They are based in Edinburgh but cover England,we are in Leicestershire.

@BumbleNova that is really interesting to hear that you were able to get your 1860s house to a high enough insulation level.

We are listed so can't change certain things (like single glazed windows) but am really interested in other ways to improve efficiency.

If you don't mind me asking, what kinds of things did you do to get your insulation up to spec?

@OohRahhMaki123 we are insulating the external walls, under the floors and putting underfloor heating in. We have insulated the loft.

Can you do secondary glazing?

We have one and love it, worked out cheaper for us than oil heating. Until recent electric increase it cost us about £800 a year to heat our 3 bed house. Heat was on constant (triggered by thermostat) and normally at 22c.

Results vary as it really depends on how good the firm is at designing and fitting it. We had an ASHP installed in the depths of winter and it took no time at all to get to a lovely constant temperature. It's not noisy at all. We had good insulation but every house needs to be well insulated anyway! We don't have ufh but intend to install it when we renovate. Don't be put off by the naysayers, you have no idea how poorly their systems were installed or the poor advice they had. It is expensive but we are glad we have future proofed the house as we'd like to stay here some time. Oh and don't read the telegraph or listen to anyone who reads it as they are weirdly against ashps and publish lies about them!

I'm in Britain and my house has an air source heat pump system and I love it. Can't praise it enough. We are always warm and it's low cost compared to alternatives. My house is a smallish, well insulated new build.

@BumbleNova - what does insulating the external walls look like/ involve? Our house is of a similar age and I really don't find it too cold. We have secondary glazing which I think helps a lot. I've heard with insulation you can cause damp problems as the house can't breathe

@Reindeer897 if you pick the wrong type of insulation it absolutely will. Old houses need breathable insulation - we are going for wood fibre externally on 2 walls. I can't remember how thick we have gone for but we will render over the top. Because of detailing at the front, we will insulate internally. You remove the lathe and plaster and add insulation instead. It's a big undertaking but the whole house needed a refurb/ rewire etc so just going to do it in one go. It means we will end up A + rated on the EPC.

So we've just done some sums and we won't be getting a heat pump.
Estimate use for a heat pump is 35,113kw (that's just the heat pump not lights and tv etc).
The current price cap is 0.28p per kw. That would cost us £9,832.64 a year to run!
Currently our combined gas and electric (everything - lights, computers, tv heating etc) is expected to be just under £4000 per year. That everything and we've not paid for a heat pump. Those costs are based on the new price cap.

Does anyone think I've done the sums wrong? If not it's bonkers for the government to be encouraging these things.

I think they've improved a lot recently - I was worried about the noise, having been to a holiday cottage previously which had a very noisy one.

We had one fitted last summer to replace an oil fired boiler and I love it! Much cheaper to run than oil with prices the way they are right now and keeps the house at a constant 20 degrees (lower overnight). Our house is Victorian, with double glazing and improved insulation we put in (loft and cavity wall).

It took them about 3 days to fit the ASHP including changing some of our radiators for larger ones. We already had a large (and pressurized?) hot water tank in the loft so that didn't need changing.

The noise of the radiators whilst it's on did take me a few weeks to get used to because it's different from the noise they used to make with the old system (more of a whoosh inside the house whereas before it was a gurgle + the loud noise of the boiler from outside). Now I don't even notice it.

OP - ours was installed by Big Green Beard who cover the Manchester area.