Heat pumps - would you recommend?

[VolcanoPedalo]

We're dithering about whether to go ahead with getting an air source heat pump, and I'd love to hear from people who have one - would you recommend it?

We've been approved for one of the government grants, and Octopus have been to do a full survey to design the system. We'd be getting new radiators throughout the house too. Would cost us about £2.5K for everything.

I like the idea of getting rid of the huge hot water tank in my daughter's bedroom, which I guess could also be achieved by getting a combi boiler instead of a heat pump.

Our current heating/hot water set up is a bit weird, we don't have hot water on demand (which I appreciate we wouldn't with a heat pump either) and the controls seem to have a mind of their own. I like the prospect of tearing it all out and having a new set-up. The house is cold at the moment. The living room is around 16 degrees. We don't have cavity walls.

Any advice or experience very welcome.

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Updated by MNHQ
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@VolcanoPedalo There is quite a lot of poor info on this thread.

We have had 2 air source heat pumps for 13 years. We have a large house (4000sq ft). We are fully insulated and have double glazing. These are important factors. You will get slightly “cooler” hot water at around 65 degrees. We have 4 bathrooms but would not expect to use them all at the same time without boosting heating. We have partial underfloor heating and partly radiators. These must be more than adequate for the space. It’s important to have the “right” house for optimum use and pay close attention to tariffs.

We also have 24 solar panels on the roof. We also have 4 storage batteries. You don’t need direct sunlight to generate power but you need good light. We store our power and bills are negligible in the summer and running an electric car is negligible cost too. Obviously this set up has cost money and it’s for the long term. It works well but you need all the installation done properly and be aware that just heat pumps alone don’t create huge savings. We don’t have gas here so ours replaced oil. The negative people usually have poor installation and the “wrong” houses.

Hmm bit of a mixed bag. We're not planning on getting solar / batteries to store energy etc.
The hot water cylinder would go in the attic. The survey seemed very thorough and Octopus would give us new larger radiators throughout the house to meet the specs needed for our specific house to be warm. These specs are without any additional insulation (external or internal). I do trust Octopus, have always found their customer service to be excellent and they have a very reasonable annual service plan.
DH isn't too keen on the idea of the big outside unit - but thinking it's liveable-with.
Our e eggy bills in winter are around £350.

echoing a lot of what @TizerorFizz is saying. Getting the heat pump has been part of a process, which started with putting solar panels on the roof and getting batteries installed. So as it stands we either use electricity from the solar panels (not so much just now, although it doesn't need to be mega sunny to generate) or from the batteries.
The batteries are either charged up for free by the solar, or at cheap rate overnight, as we have an EV tariff.
Now we've got the heat pump we can no longer store about a days worth of electricity though, so we'll add another battery unit.
But our house has never been warmer than with the heat pump - our bedroom and back room in particular always used to be cold, but they're not anymore - and it's not costing us any more
we spend about £150 a month on power - which includes charging 2 EVs. Prior to that we'd have spent about that much on petrol a month

@DeathStarCanteenGal Yes. I think the whole “package” approach works best. As our house is quite large, we have made a huge investment in batteries. They won’t pay for themselves immediately but our usage of electricity means it’s not too long. Plus the ev is cheaper to run than petrol but isn’t cheap buy.

My experience is from a different country where all new houses have to have heat pumps by law. We live in a new house and have an exhaust air heat pump. It’s brilliant and I cannot imagine how we would be without one, where I live we have the highest energy prices in Europe and our heat pump saved us significant amounts of money. The house is however fully insulated and built for the heat pump - it’s an integral part of the ventilation system. The pump is quiet and ours is connected to the internet and gets live updates from the energy stock market local to us so it automatically follows the price trends.

Friends in older houses have ground source heat pumps which work much better retrofitted into the existing ventilation system.

A heat pump on average takes 7kws of electricity a day it can get very expensive.

Sounds like the engineer needs to sort it out!

That house needs solar panels and batteries. Heat pumps are just part of a solution.

@CortieTat Most houses in the uk don’t have room for ground source heat pumps. You need quite a lot of external space and money. A typical GB small garden isn’t enough space.

Some people have had a new small shed built to house the tank etc, then you gain all the space where the combi boiler was. You can also store stuff in the new shed.

New build 2800 square-foot cost us £300 a month in the winter on all day at 20°. Our house is only electric works great once you get ready around the fact that it needs to be on all day and it's not the sort of system you can flick in and out for a few hours. We also had solar panels fitted in July so hopefully will have a better idea of costing by next Xmas

@Calling I hadn't heard of that! Still not an option for us (tiny garden) but interesting anyway.

You cannot house air source heat pumps in a shed. The word “air” has a meaning here. They need a through-put of air. They send out spent air. We have our batteries in a housing unit with ventilation. Our tank is in the loft. We have a large loft.
@bluebee17 We store the electricity we generate in our batteries. This is more efficient and much greater savings, but you have to pay for the batteries of course!

I wouldn’t they need to improve a lot, before I would get one.

"TizerorFizz"

Yeah we also had a battery the store is 930w
It just made sense to be honest

Like you OP I have no cavity wall so would be very reluctant to get one. External insulation is likely to cost a fortune. I worry about attaching something like that to my house may be a scandal of the future (like the spray insulation people were adding to lofts a while ago).

id also be worried too much insulation would seal the house and not help the damp issue.

I think they work on well insulated houses, we looked at it for our older build house and would have had to upsize all the radiators and pipe work. The council installed it in their properties of the same type, they have had to add extra insulation this year as the buildings weren’t able to stay warm. Each house they did cost around £30k extra with triple glazing added and they had a large number done so should have got a discounted price.. in my current property I am not going near one and would be wary unless a purpose built/ designed newer build

We're on our second winter with one and it's been amazing so far! We got it installed with the £5k grant along with UFH. Ours is an older and extended house with a lot of external walls.

You do need to understand how to work them as it's very different to gas boilers. It works brilliantly for us as there is almost always someone at home so having heating on all the time is great. We heat to 18 degrees at night and 21 in the day for rooms in use. House is always warm and always plenty of hot water.

The water tank did need to be sited near to the heat pump.

A lot depends on having a good installer and getting a proper heat loss survey done as that will ensure you have the right size heat pump for the house and it's insulation levels.

I found the U.K. heat pumps group on FB useful for advice about insulation and installation and how to run it optimally.

We like our ASHP. The alternative for us is oil (no gas), which fluctuates hugely in price. We do have solar panels but they don't make much of a dent in the electricity bills.

Overall I find the heat pump costs are similar to what we were paying before but it heats the house absolutely fine. It's a modern house with cavity walls and double glazing but not ultra well-insulated.

Was curious about this when Octuous gave me a quote earlier , with a government grant the most expensive option was £6700, including new radiators and everything. This with the government grant. Cheaper option was £4,500 without changing the radiators.

BOXT quote was £3600 for everything, including government grant discount of £7500.

If my boiler needs replacing Im not sure to go with a new boiler or heat pump. Heard mixed reviews. My house is a 2000 built , 4 bed detached.

@Paul2023 may as well go heat pump. Your house is new enough. Incredible grants.

Ok , just I heard horror stories about peoples electric bills rocketing and how they don’t heat up as good as a traditional boiler.

I have a drafty 1930s ex council house ( has to be well ventilated or else it gets damp). I do have uPVC triple glazing. I was worried my house wasn't really suitable but got a heat geeks installation and it has been absolutely fine. I am keeping the house soo much warmer and the mildew has gone. Before the house didn't get much above 15 C from November til February. Now it's consistently 18c from 7.30am til 9pm. Paid £620 last winter, £585 this winter for dual fuels and this winter was much colder.

@Paul2023you need to know how to use them properly. They heat in a very different way to boilers, you can’t suddenly crank the heating up and expect it to be up to temperature quickly as with a boiler. Heat pumps heat low and slow. I find it’s better as don’t get the cold period during the day, the heating is constant through the day.