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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You can set the thermostat to whatever you want so you don't have to have it that warm if you don't want to.

Does that affect the temperature of the water? I’d like to have hot water like we have now but only heat the house in winter when things get very cold.
One definite criticism I have of this whole thing is that nobody has explained anything about how it works, just said it would reduce our bills.
I have had to fight to get them to agree not to put a radiator in our narrow hallway that would have stopped me getting my wheelchair down there.

As it is they have insisted we have a radiator installed behind our TV and another under a worktop in the kitchen where we keep all our recycling bins. It’s madness but they said it wasn’t optional and we wouldn’t get the system if we didn’t agree.

@WingsofRain

Did you get more than one plan and costing for this work? It sounds as if you could have an installer who is more interested in pocketing the government’s BUS grant (£7,500) than making sure you have a system that works for you. Just as companies jumped on the bandwagon with solar panels and cavity wall insulation.

What is the EPC rating of your house?

I would delay while you get a second opinion, and contact Citizens Advice if the installer makes a fuss about it.

We don’t get a choice, it’s administered directly by the government in Scotland and we aren’t getting a grant, it’s just a full installation. There is only one company doing the work.

I’ve already been on the waiting list for two years so I don’t want to mess things up the week before they are booked to arrive.

Our house was an E before all this started, that’s a requirement of the scheme. They have already installed huge amounts of insulation, modified our doors, put in vents to the roof and of course the horrible fan.

Well if you never had any heating before you can just switch the thing off and you will be in exactly the same state.

I guess the main issue will be the hot water. Hopefully your new hot water cylinder will have some sort of immersion heater option, that way you can just heat it up like you did with your old immersion tank and bypass the pump.

If you manage to get on some sort of heat pump tariff maybe the whole thing will end up cheaper for hot water as you can heat up at night and then use during the day.

All sounds a bit crazy though installing that much plant just to get hot water via pretty much the identical mechanism you get at the moment. Tax money well spent.

We do need heating in the winter - it’s regularly below zero here. I just don’t want to have it as hot as 18C, a happy medium somewhere between -5 and that would do me fine.

I’m a bit surprised you don’t think spending money helping disabled people on low incomes with no access to gas to get a bit of warmth in the winter is a good thing, but I’m starting to expect that on MN, which is depressing.

Think of it as a way to reduce the bill to the NHS and you might feel a bit better about it.

It's up to you what temperature you set the thermostat to though. 18 or 20 is just a fairly normal temperature to set it to. If you prefer it at 10degrees set it to 10 and obviously the lower you set it the cheaper it will be.
They will have insisted on a certain amount of radiators as you wouldn't be able to raise temperature adequately otherwise and they will only get the funding if they can change your Epc sufficiently.

You said, and I quote :

"However we don’t have any heating in the house at the moment and never have had."

So if you don't have any heating and have never had any heating how is replacing your heating system with a very expensive capital cost alternative a good use of public money ?

Just because money is spent on disabled people does not automatically mean it is good value. In fact in this case it is probably simply a prop for the heating system installers as it goes straight through you and into their pockets.

It is possible to want money to be spent on disabled people and at the same time want that money to be spent in an efficient way where it benefits most recipients and doesn't end up in the pockets of heating system installers.

@GASPANIC I don't follow what heating do you think should be put in their house? Or do you not think they should have a grant at all?

Well at the moment their electricity bills are £3 a day.

Assuming 5kwh of that is non heating and 1 kwh is about 25p, they use 12 kWh a day in total of which 7 kWh is heating. If you install a heat pump and get a COP of 3 then the 7 kWh reduces to about 2kWh producing a saving of about £1.25 a day or £450 a year. Of course there is no guarantee the saving will be that much as standard electric heating is more flexible than heat pumps as you can turn it off in individual rooms and flick it on and off as and when you need it.

If you assume that the total installation is about £10K then it will barely cover the base interest you would get on that £10K. And that is without stuff like maintenance as well. Even if the thing lasted long enough (unlikely as heat pumps have powerful fans which as moving parts are prone to replacement) it would take 20 years to recover the basic install cost, which no commercial enterprise would even consider as an investment return.

It doesn't sound like the OP is that unhappy at the moment with their existing system (whatever it is), they don't have huge bills and there is not that much carbon to be saved, plus the install of such a system is risky, disruptive and probably takes up a fair bit of extra space in their house, so probably just stick with that instead.

What you wrote before makes it sound like you haven't chosen the system and don't need or want it. So I can understand why the poster thinks it's not a good use of funds. I don't think it's anything to do with being disabled.

You don’t have to heat it to 18 degrees at all, just set the thermostats to whatever temperature you do want. 10 degrees?

The water is heated by the ASHP so just select the cheapest rate electricity time of day to heat the water. It’ll be cheaper than using an immersion heater.

We have found with ours that we’ve been a lot healthier since having continuous heating throughout the winter. Two people
with lung conditions in the house. We were a shielding household during Covid.

No, the water temperature is separately controlled by the system so that won't be affected.

You can then set the thermostat for your rooms and that will control how much the radiators are on.

We don't have any heating in the house when it's warm but we still have hot water.

Those locations of radiators do sound like a pain!

I’m thinking of getting one we have Octopus coming over in a few weeks for a survey. Our boiler works but quite old ( not sure how old it was here when we moved in 8 years ago) .

Our house is from 2000 so modern ish and detached. We have a combi boiler. So don’t have an airing cupboard for a water tank.

Ive heard so many mixed reviews? Do I stick with a gas boiler until we know more about or see what Octopus say ?

What do you have to lose by listening to what they say ?

If you have a combi boiler currently then you will need additional space for a water tank inside I think if you are swapping to a heat pump. But they will let you know on that.

Maybe if you feel the combi boiler is old then worthwhile getting a quote on replacing that so you can compare and contrast the two options ?

I don’t want a heat pump. I have a combi boiler with hot water on demand. . It’s neat and doesn’t take up much room. There would be no room for a water tank. I don’t want bigger radiators either. Heat pumps don’t sound suitable for the average sized house, and the process of installing them sounds expensive even with a grant, and inconvenient. When my boiler fails I shall get another gas boiler.

Our bills are now lower with ashp than they were with gas. And the house is always warm.

A reasonable hp install in a house with some insulation (as per a recent new build) should be somewhere between a bit less and a bit more than gas. If someone is getting much higher bills than gas in a house with at least a normal amount of insulation, there is something wrong with the setup. Common problems include:

1. Set to run at too high a temp so it is expensive to run (heat pumps are a lot happier supplying warm not hot water) and going on and off - this can usually be adjusted in the controls by someone who knows what to do, no spanners required.
2. some of the radiators are too small so it has to run hot to get the house warm. Best remedy is usually to replace one ot two radiators, usually in the living area, with bigger (eg triple panel) ones
3. hot water controls set up wrong so hw is being done on immersion (expensive) rather than by heat pump (less than half the cost of immersion)

So what I'm saying is that if someone has eye watering bills quite often there is a straightforward remedy - it's not actually a heat pump problem, it's an under-skilled installer problem.

But asking to see the bills seems sensible!

Yes, the heating will go off, the pump will still be needed a few hours a day to do hot water (unless you have pvs that generate enough direct to the immersion) but you can set the timing so it runs at night - when electricity can be cheaper anyway on some tarrifs

If you haven’t got room for a hot water tank,how can it be suitable for you?

Because I think it can go in a garage or loft.

Yes. It still comes on to heat hot water though

Sounds like a massive inconvenience. I live in a 10 year old house. There’s no room for a tank. The loft isn’t useable and the garage not an integral one. Heat pumps don’t sound suitable for an ordinary house. It’s so easy getting hot water on demand with a combi boiler. I often get emails about getting heat pumps, but even with a grant they’re expensive, inconvenient to install, often need alterations to the house with all the mess that involves, and don’t sound as efficient as gas. The only time I would have one is if I had the money to have my house built to my own specifications.

We love ours- had it two years
house nice and warm
bills a bit cheaper than previously
no noise (unless you are literally stood right next to it in the garden)

the only time there would be a lag in getting the house warm would be if the temperature dropped a lot very suddenly (happened to us once). If you went on holiday in winter you’d switch it off but programme it to come back on 24 hours before you came back.

House is warm all the time in winter, we have it set to cooler midnight to 7am. However we work from home so we need heat all day, not everyone does

however they are tricky to get installed right. My dh sourced a great installer and spent months looking with him at spreadsheets doing heat loss calculations etc so that we got the right sort of radiators installed (yes they are quire big but now in place I don’t notice)

A lot depends on how well it was installed. You need to quiz them on who did it, are they available for fixing niggles with it and how much it costs to run.

I’ve had one in 3 houses, the current one is in an ancient thatched cottage.

It’s far more economical than oil was, and it’s a lovely heat. It’s hard to say what it costs as we also run electric cars and can’t have solar panels - the optimum set up is panels and batteries plus EV and heat pump but our bill is under £200 pm including all car charging. We don’t have gas to the house.