Heat pumps - what if you don’t have room for one/your house is not suitable?

[Notcontent]

I very much support the phasing out of fossil fuels but I am starting to worry that people who can’t have a heat pump are going to be left in the lurch. What I mean is that government policies will be designed to incentivise people to get heat pumps, with more levies on gas. Which is great if your house is suitable for a heat pump…

My house is quite a typical London terrace. There are probably thousands like it. It’s small and has a very small back yard. I could maybe just about squeeze a heat pump there, but it would take up a lot of room and if all my neighbours, including neighbours at the back had them, the noise would be pretty horrendous. Also, even though I have new windows and some insulation, it’s not possible to insulate it further and no room for a hot water tank.

Does anyone else worry about this?

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Updated by MNHQ
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for a typical london terrace, doing good insulation is going to get you far more benefit than a heat pump.

apparently in the netherlands they do external insulation + new roof + new windows on whole rows of terraced houses at the same time. it changes the look of the street but gives much more efficient insulation and people don't have to move our of their house while the work is done or have smaller rooms afterwards.

you are right that there needs to be a comprehensive plan for upgrading housing stock in the UK and that means not just edicts about heat pumps but a more general strategy that can actually work.

You don't actually need a lot of insulation to run a heat pump effectively. If you don't (or can't) insulate, you can get good performance by swapping your radiators for large ones.

I agree though that at the moment practice is lagging behind theory here, especially for the less well off.

However if the law changes to ban gas in new homes as promised, I am hopeful that there will be more competition to improve choices and design eg quieter, ones you can install indoors more like a gas boiler, etc.

Green hydrogen may be an answer in future , ie. produced from water using renewable electricity. It’s the same problem for heavy industry (where I work). Heat pumps have huge limitations. There’s a massive push to use them to heat hospitals, but many are a mish mash of very old and new buildings.

A relative has recently bought a house with a heat pump - the pump itself didn’t take up much room in the garden but the internal system was huge - took up pretty much an entire kitchen cupboard where I would have expected a fridge freezer to be. Is that common with heat pump set ups? If so it seems to me internal space is likely to be as big a problem as external especially versus a combi boiler.

Yes my friend has just moved into a new build with one and the system in the house takes up a whole double door cupboard in the lounge. I have no storage as it is in my house so I wouldn't have space for one unless it went in the loft (if that's possible?)

Are they actually green though and has the tech reached an acceptable level ?

I don't know how small homes are going to fit them in. I have a combi boiler and no other space for a heat pump. Even the exterior part will mean the small patio is partly out of action.

I don't see gas boilers as being made unaffordable anytime soon.

The government is struggling to implement the infrastructure to allow greater use of electricity in our homes (EVs, heat pumps). So trying to force more people onto electricity only use is stupid if they cannot even keep up with implementing infrastructure for new developments.

The government apparently is "poised to scrap" fines for gas boiler makers if they do not sell enough heat pumps :

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/04/uk-scraps-boiler-tax-after-makers-raise-prices-to-cover-any-fines

Gas boilers will go eventually but they are going to be around for some time yet. I would guesstimate at least 20 years.

I think heat pumps got off to a bad start with a lot of cowboy installations, but the installations and understanding the issues posed by exchanging gas boilers for heat pumps are now becoming much better understood, leading to more installations where end users are happy with the outcome.

Nope and nope. It’s mainly bullshit from a retrofit perspective.

We have three. Two for house and one for pool. Had them for 13 years. No issues at all. We have solar panels and batteries for storing our generated electricity, if you renovate a house, it's worth doing. Retro fitting is difficult. A heat pump for a small house is smaller than a fridge and not as deep. Yes, there are pipes but not inside the house other than in the airing cupboard. Each set up is different.

Glad I found this thread. I was assuming a pump could go in our slopped storage space upstairs when it comes to it, but I doubt it'll fit due to height restrictions. Ideal place would then be our downstairs toilet, but not willing to lose that as we're thinking this is now a home for life and that'll be very helpful in old age. As another poster said upstairs, sounds like many of us are going to have them in our living spaces. If it has to be done, it has to be done, but has got me thinking it's not going to be easy for many of us.

@Toomuch44

A heat pump goes outside!!! They need air around them. They also emit cold air. You don't want one in the house. Assuming you are talking about a heat pump!

I, too, was thinking that this is never going to happen. If you live in a block of flats, where exactly would the heat pump go? I have heard they are the size of a washing machine - I don’t think that could be attached to an exterior wall of a flat!

How much do they actually cost to run? Electricity is expensive. I think our unit cost is 28p

Not much if you have solar panels and batteries.

They go in the grounds of flats. Or could. Ours are the size of 2 washing machines each but not as deep. They sit side by side on a concrete plinth at the rear of the garage.

There is a machine outside and also a machine the size of a fridge freezer inside (I have one, installed within the last 12 months)

What machine inside? What does it do? We don’t have this. Two heat pumps outside and a big water cylinder. The 4 batteries are outside in their own little lean to.

There tend to be different systems for flats than for houses - flats might have one big heat pump in the car park or somewhere that sucks heat out of the air then pipes hot water though to all the flats, or a 'ground loop' that sends water round all the flats with each flat then taking heat out of this water circuit with their own mini heat pump - there's all sorts of ways.
In houses its more usual to have a single unit - can be a gound source but only for big houes with huge gardens, more often an air source with an ouside unit that is rather like a slice of a washing machine in size (flatter, though a bit taller) with a fan in, and then a heating pump and hot water cylinder inside, also sometimes an extra cylinder called a buffer vessel that smooths out the stops and starts for the heat pump a bit, to make it more efficient.
The outside bit is needed to extract heat from the outside air, unless you bring the outside in through the house, either through big air ducts in and out (only makes sense for tiny super efficient flats and yes, you would then need to insulate the ducts as you are blowing cold air though them) or through a ground loop water pipe in and out (which is more practical because water holds so much more heat than air, so the pipe can be a lot smaller than an air duct)
That's enough physics for tonight 😅

But a heat pump is 3 to 4 times more efficient than a boiler, so it evens out.

We just got a heat pump six months ago - and so far it's been cheaper to run than the old gas boiler - reckon we've saved £40 in the first month
but that is in part because we've got solar panels (though they don't generate much at the moment) and batteries, which we charge up overnight in the cheap rate (EV tariff)
but we pay less than £150 a month for all our electricity, for heating a four bedroom house - which is warmer than it ever was before - and running 2 EVs
Prior to that we would have been spending £150. month on petrol/diesel alone

We've just replaced our gas boiler with new one and new radiators. We looked into heat oumo but wasnt suitable for us as our stone cottage couldn't take a heat pump without lifting the floors to redo pipes and then it would've taken up too much garden space too. The new boiler is gas and so much more efficient we don't use it half as much. Media seemed to suggest that gas boilers would be harsh to get hold of but that's not true on older properties apparently.

So when something goes wrong with it more households are affected Something else to add to my list next time someone wonders why the British dont like living in flats

Hmm. We are on oil since we are are too rural for mains gas. We have solar panels and a battery but from October to march we dont generate very much at all - literally a couple of kWhs max. we charge up overnight since we have an EV and cheap electricity between 12 and 5am but I'd still be really worried about the cost of running it.

If flats are privately owned, you couldn’t have a shared system though. You would be very hard pressed to get everyone to agree to pay out. And the heat pump would be huge, wouldn’t it? And in communal grounds - open to vandalism perhaps?
I don’t live in a flat myself, but I posted on this thread simply because I was wondering how on earth the government was going to push through this no more gas boilers legislation. Even though there are grants, surely not everyone would be able to afford it, or want their property altered to accommodate, if currently unsuitable.