Air source Heat Pump

[Flimingo]

“Air source heat pump”—any good.?issues? Benefits?any personal experience to share please?

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Updated by MNHQ
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That’s quite impressive.
Do you have solar!

We've never spent anywhere near £10-15 a day, more like £5 in winter and we're charging a car as well as running the heat pump. 4 bed mid terraced house. We keep the house somewhere in between 18-21 all the time. I do switch the heating off in summer as I don't want it to kick in if the house drops below 18 overnight or when I've got all the windows open, would rather close the windows first obviously.

If you want to see realistic running costs, here’s a electricity cost comparison for my house between March 2024 and March 2025 with the ASHP. It’s a 3 bedroom end of terrace, Victorian with 1960s extension.

(I also got a £20 credit in April to reflect the OVO heat pump tariff rebate.)

We do have solar which probably made a difference in March but it would be pretty negligible outside of that.
I guess everyone's set up is different as some people are talking about turning it off for the summer while I change the thermostat to about 10 degrees so it won't ever kick in but still heats the water as and when.
I adjusted my thermostat programming depending on the weather as the colder it is the longer it takes to heat up.
The person who stayed in a holiday home house sounds like it might have been faulty or something. It doesn't sound like my experience at all.

Is it true that new radiators will be needed, plus a back up immersion heater? Even with grants it looks unaffordable.Why are there so many negative experiences if they’re so great?

We have had one for 5 years, 1998 house reasonable insulation although we replaced all of the windows for higher specifications. All our neighbours have done this too as the windows were not brilliant.
We replaced an oil burner and is definitely cheaper, and as you leave it on all the time the temperature is more stable, we run it at 20 during the day in the winter and 16 at night. The bedroom can seem a bit cooler at night in winter but we just turn it up. It’s is far easier to turn the heat setting down for the summer rather than try to switch it off- ours goes down to 14 I think. It needs to be on unless you want to heat the water using an immersion heater.
It is not noisy, I can hear the neighbours oil burner above the heat pump sometimes when I’m in the garden. Anyone who says they are noisy has a poorly installed ASHP.
i love mine.

Looked at my bills, we are wholly electric, including an electric car. I have solar as well but did not get much in the way of payments in the winter. My bills were
Nov £121, Dec £165, Jan £245, Feb £165, March £81.
4 bed detached, built in 1998. East Anglia-very windy!
Much less than £10-15 per day, and that includes charging the car.

Yes I got new bigger radiators. No immersion heater.
I do wonder if the big expenses are for people who like a 22ish degree house I'd have to keep it on all day and all night to get to 22 in January probably. We like it around 19 or 20 which it manages fine.

If you’ve got an old house with no/poor insulation and single glazed windows, the running cost will break you.

That would apply to any heating system…and no reputable, experienced heating engineer would install an ASHP - unless you were daft enough to insist.

So far what I understand is with ASHP the electricity bill during winter is still not very high even if you don’t have solar???

Large, predominantly single storey house with reasonable insulation - costs an absolute fortune in winter. Never, ever again

I've had a good experience but there do seem to be a lot of installers out there who don't understand heat pump systems very well. Heat geeks installed a 5kw heat pump for me and massive radiators. Most of the other quotes I got recommended an 8 or even 12kw heat pump and smaller radiators- if I went with them the system would have likely cost me more to run.

Our’s will b standard double story 4. Bed detached well insulate house..hope bills will b ok

Our friends had them fitted. Chocolate tea pot comes to mind. Absolutely freezing in winter. Never would I have them.

Listening to a discussion on the radio this morning, no one had a good word to say about heat pumps!

I feel like some weirdo with a vested interest now but when we were considering this I was really unsure due to all the bad press however we have had a really good experience with ours. It is cheaper by far than our oil central heating was and we'd have a nice constant warm house rather than putting the heating on until it was too hot turning it off and it getting cold over time and repeat. The water tank was taller than our boiler so we lost some storage space but other than that I can't think of any negatives.

We put one in our annexe as it was too far from the house and we didn't want to overload our boiler. It's brilliant, it also works in reverse as an AC unit. The kids love it on a hot day when they get home from school and can sit in a nice cool room.

Yes - south UK. This was the first time it was so low after a very sunny April. Looks like May will be good too!

They need to get that fixed. I only notice them when I’m about 2 or 3m away. My neighbourhood has quite a few in the front gardens.
Most people where I am go for GSHP though. They are very large, but old houses, poorly insulated with no double glazing, but with secondary glazing. Conservation area.

I genuinely don’t understand the hate they get.
we paid £600 with octopus for ours, it included the pump, new hot water tank and 4 new radiators. Our bills have dropped, the house is now warm all winter. The only issue I can see is if they are fitted in older houses that aren’t well insulated, but that isn’t the fault of the pump!

This thread is really worrying me!
We are having a full system installed next week under the government scheme and everyone I’ve spoken to in person has raved about theirs.

However we don’t have any heating in the house at the moment and never have had. At the moment our electricity bills (for everything, we aren’t near a gas main) are about £3 a day and that seems a lot to me. Our hot water is on an immersion heater.

The idea that we might end up with a house that is 18C all the time, plus increase our bills to £5+ a day is terrifying - we simply don’t have that sort of money and I’m not used to that kind of heat.

As an aside, part of the deal was that we have had to have a fan fitted in our kitchen that runs constantly and makes an excruciating high pitched whining sound. We have had to pull the fuse on it because it was driving me up the wall. If the heat pump itself makes a constant noise I’m not going to be able to cope!

We were told the system would reduce our bills and be easy to operate, plus raise temperatures in the house above freezing in the winter. If we end up with our bills going up we are going to be in severe financial difficulties.

Had ours for two years, house always at constant temperature, reacts to weather changes quickly, bills are lower - there is a lot to like.

You need to visit when it’s on to gauge noise levels definitely. Ours is very quiet you wouldn’t hear it unless you were stood in the garden right next to it. It’s rather large and sole would say it’s an eyesore; ours it tucked round the side of the house (no neighbours on that side) so it doesn’t bother anyone

they clearly had a bad install.
My heat pumped house has been toasty warm all winter. You need to get them installed by people who actually understand heat loss calculations (I dont but thankfully our installer does)

It takes a little adjustment to get used to how they work but it’s great when you get used to it (in a well-insulated house at least). We have an app for ours so you can watch the usage and understand how to optimise it. It’s been cheaper for us.