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).

I have PMd you OP

That sounds more like it @cupofdecaf - the heat load is what the house demands of the heating system. While a gas boiler is only about 85-90% efficient at best, heat pumps can be anything between 250% and 400% efficient because they draw heat from the air (or ground) and kind of squish it to raise rhe temperature. You can tell they have sucked the heat out of the air because if you stand in front of them you get a refreshing stream of cool air in your face

Oops for carried away, the heat load is what the housedemands of the house, the boiler has to use a bit more energy than that to give you the heat because a bit is lost up the flue, the heat pump uses a lot less paid-for energy because it uses that paid-for electriciy to grab free energy from outside.

This means running costs work out about evens - with our pump and our tariff, we are a bit better off now with the heat pump, than we would have been with the gas boiler in the same house.

@Notthedeadparrotsketch

Don't do it. Expensive, noisy and you'll freeze in winter.

We might as well have given away the 17k ours cost.

It's a lovely idea, saving the planet and all that jazz, but for the average UK home, forget it.

They don't keep your house warm, they just stop it from freezing. You'll still need to wear jumpers indoors, and you'll be amazed how wearing a beanie while watching the TV just becomes normal.

I fell for all the hype, believed I was going to save the planet and be a role model to my neighbours. I was wrong. I've spent the last five months freezing my tits off and wishing I never installed the bloody thing in the first place.

I second this.

Same problems at our house that @Notthedeadparrotsketch mentioned. We paid 25k and also got solar panels which were meant to "reduce our monthly costs further". Biggest con ever. And we have nothing but problems with our Samsung heat pump. The leading specialists in the country have looked at out heat pump and all agree it's shit. Both recommended ripping it out and starting over. The heat pump is 3 years old 😱

@Frazzled2207

oh no sorry to hear! I know that you have to get used to your house not being as toasty warm as you would do from a gas boiler but I didn't expect to be cold.

Believe me OP, it's cold. Some days, the house is freezing. And we have a house that's well insulated as it's only 3 years old and it was deemed an energy efficient house. Absolute crap. Save your money for a decent gas boiler and megaflow.

@658Doyouknowwheremysparkis

We have two and a wood burner but in Nz, mild part of the country.

I don’t think that heat pumps, even in well insulated homes, could cope with British weather. They can also be heavy on electricity ( I am surprised those advocating them are not making this aspect very clear).

Fwiw I was in my twenties when I left the UK so fully remember the British climate. We love ours, but honestly do not see that they would work well enough in a country where it is cold for 8 months out of 12.

I don’t know that installing them would be a total nightmare, half a days’ work here, if that….

They are extremely heavy on electricity which is why we were told to have the solar panels. Makes no difference. Our winter electricity bill per month is over £1,400

We are retrofitting our 1860s victorian house
Watching this with interest as I am completely remodelling my 1850s cottage so will be ripping out walls and floors anyway.
I want underfloor heating as I loathe radiators.

Oh and the biggest problem with air source heat pumps is that NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO FIX THEM WHEN THEY GO WRONG! And they do go wrong. Doesn't matter how well they are installed and whether they are serviced regularly.

And when they go wrong, it will cost ££££ to fix.

Make sure you understand that and have 5k sitting in a bank account for the potential repairs.

And before you have one installed, find someone local who know exactly how to repair faults, because in my experience, most companies will install the heat pumps, but won't come out and do repairs. It's absolutely shocking really.

@mumoftinyterrors

Oh and the biggest problem with air source heat pumps is that NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO FIX THEM WHEN THEY GO WRONG! And they do go wrong. Doesn't matter how well they are installed and whether they are serviced regularly.

And when they go wrong, it will cost ££££ to fix.

Make sure you understand that and have 5k sitting in a bank account for the potential repairs.

And before you have one installed, find someone local who know exactly how to repair faults, because in my experience, most companies will install the heat pumps, but won't come out and do repairs. It's absolutely shocking really.

We had our ASHP when our 7 year old oil boiler catastrophically failed. A replacement boiler would have been £3k +vat plus fitting. So not much different to the potential heat pump scenerio you give.

If you are replacing oil for heat pump, most of the issues and negativity do not apply (assuming you insulate). I think that is why these threads often end up massively divided. As you get rural people describing positive experiences relative to old oil or solid fuel systems, and then people on mains gas with no experience of heat pumps comparing it to their current gas system with gas prices pre Russian invasion of Ukraine, and deciding that heat pumps are terrible all round.

What I don't understand is what happens if no-one is in the house all day. I don't want to spend money heating the house for the 9 hours we're not in.

And then at night we can't sleep if the house is too hot (always struggle whenever we go anywhere) so it goes off.

Our current system is excellent at heating the house up quickly from just before we get up and from just before we get in. Feels like a way of not wasting energy.

@RIPWalter. I think that's absolutely the case. I am so glad we switched from oil to ASHP. But I'm not sure we'd have taken the same decision if we were on gas

@yomellamoHelly we use tado & Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs) to control temperatures across the house. You do have to rethink your gas boiler mentality of 'the heating is on twice a day' - it goes on little and often as needed, in relation to the outside temperature, and according to what you want the temperature to be in each room. It's never too hot and I don't notice it ever get too cold as we've adjusted the temperature in each room according to how we use it. It was too hot at night initially but we adjusted the settings and it's all good now. We don't think about it at all now, it's just a comfortable temperature. It would be more of a waste of energy to use it still in the 'twice a day' mentality as at the beginning of each period of heating it would have more to do to heat it up from colder.

What I don't understand is what happens if no-one is in the house all day. I don't want to spend money heating the house for the 9 hours we're not in.

You need to completely rethink what you thought you knew about heating with heat pumps. They are designed to provide a steady low flow of heat over a long time. The key being that for every watt you put in (and therefore pay for) you get 2 to 4 watts back.

If your house insulation is up to it, that should see you spending less overall on heating. And much more importantly use less gas which has enormous implications for the future of the UK (and worlds) energy needs.

Obviously no on is taking it too seriously now. But in a decade or so it could be a big thing.

@raindropsarefallingonmyhead - we have a Midea R32

Thanks Bramshott, I'll take a look.

Vaillant aroTherm Plus and Daikin Altherma HT are both suitable for retrofit.

@yomellamoHelly

What I don't understand is what happens if no-one is in the house all day. I don't want to spend money heating the house for the 9 hours we're not in.

And then at night we can't sleep if the house is too hot (always struggle whenever we go anywhere) so it goes off.

Our current system is excellent at heating the house up quickly from just before we get up and from just before we get in. Feels like a way of not wasting energy.

The right heat pump for your property will use far less energy heating house to a near constant temp 24/7 than would heating your house for two short periods a day. Heating a cold house from cold to warm of an evening is one of the most energy intensive things you can do with a house!

@mumoftinyterrors if you are paying £1400 pm for electricity at pre 2022 prices that's going to be around 7000kWh per month, that's insane, our annual use is 10500kWh. There is something very wrong with your heating system.

@Frazzled2207 heating a cold house to 20C is massively less energy intensive than maintaining the same house at a constant 20C.

@Daftasabroom as we have said a few times now, you need to rethink how houses are heated. www.cse.org.uk/advice/renewable-energy/making-the-most-of-your-air-source-heat-pump this article explains this in more detail.

[quote Daftasabroom]@Frazzled2207 heating a cold house to 20C is massively less energy intensive than maintaining the same house at a constant 20C.[/quote]
It really isn't. You need to understand how to use a heatpump. It's a constant temperature rather than twice a day, but that doesn't mean the ASHP is running constantly.

We have a Mitsubishi pump. Fitted by Ohm Energy in east Sussex. They were brilliant.

Agree with others on here - it's a totally different way of heating the house.

I’m in a rural very well insulated property and currently spending £4 a day for hot water and a room temp of 8 degrees. It would £12 a day for a more comfortable 17 degrees. The heat pump isn’t even working that hard as out door temps are only just dropping to freezing over night.
If I had oil at least I would be comfortably warm twice a day.
There is a really good blog about a farm that has an ashp and they kept their old oil boiler to boost the temperature in the very cold weather and that is cheaper than the ashp booster mode. I am hoping to put a stove in with a back boiler to act as the booster.
The material out there is very much all about the benefits but very few mentions of the true running costs if you actually want to be warm.
I’m not saying don’t get one, but mine (in house when moved in) is not a miracle heat source.
It’s interesting to see second hand ashp fetch very little but pellet boilers hold their price really well. Clearly they work better

@tothemoonandbackbuses

I’m in a rural very well insulated property and currently spending £4 a day for hot water and a room temp of 8 degrees. It would £12 a day for a more comfortable 17 degrees. The heat pump isn’t even working that hard as out door temps are only just dropping to freezing over night. If I had oil at least I would be comfortably warm twice a day. There is a really good blog about a farm that has an ashp and they kept their old oil boiler to boost the temperature in the very cold weather and that is cheaper than the ashp booster mode. I am hoping to put a stove in with a back boiler to act as the booster. The material out there is very much all about the benefits but very few mentions of the true running costs if you actually want to be warm. I’m not saying don’t get one, but mine (in house when moved in) is not a miracle heat source. It’s interesting to see second hand ashp fetch very little but pellet boilers hold their price really well. Clearly they work better

Your house can't be as well insulated as you think/ have been told.

We can turn the heating off for a couple of days and not drop below 12C in winter in our 170 year old stone cottage over 300m up the side of a Welsh mountain.

I’ve had it checked professionally and it’s really well insulated. I witnessed the checks
I am not a Tory telegraph reader. I’m a left wing guardian reader and the ashp just doesn’t do the job on its own we need it to. It’s definitely not environmentally friendly to be using the amount of electricity we could use if the ashp was doing all the heating to cost temperature.
In very old houses with very thick walls the walls will act as storage heaters and give out heat after the heating is turned off.