By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions. We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
Bought a house with solar panels in the summer and thought the next step would be to get a heat pump, read a lot on line, nearly all positive but you never know if they are from normal people…are you lot normal, maybe that’s for another time. But anyway, any experiences you want to share would be useful. For context, it will cost about 2.4k and can be spread out over 3/5/10/15.
We bought a house last year and we're getting solar in 4 weeks, we looked into a heat pump but our boiler is only 5 years old so we are going to wait on that. It's a very logical step to get a heat pump if you already have solar. With the price of gas only continuing to rise after these pointless wars it seems like a good investment.
Heat pumps are OK. Pricey to install but not expensive to run if you keep a constant temperature. Bringing it up to temp is the big cost.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky
I know a little bit about them, from my own research and because my aunt has had one for some time. I presume you are talking about an air source heat pump 😀.
They heat properties differently to gas central heating, they tend to be on for longer but keep your radiators at a lower temperature than they would be with gas, I.e. the rads won't be red hot to the touch.
They make most sense in well insulated homes.
It used to be the case that radiators needed to be upgraded but that isn't always necessary now.
Refrigerants have come on a lot, to the benefit of efficiency and output, and heat pumps which use R290 refrigerant tend to be very efficient.
The Energy Saving Trust should be a good source of info.
I'd love to have one and plan to do so, they're good for the planet and reduce our reliance on imports .
"Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1."
Moved into a barn conversion 10 years ago fitted with a new heat pump system, so probably technology has moved on since then. We have underfloor heating and the main difference from gas is that heating is slow to warm up. You can’t just come in and turn the heating up and get warm quickly. The other difference is we keep the heating within 1 or 2 degrees constantly over 24 hours. It works perfectly well but because it runs on electricity rather than gas I don’t think it’s any cheaper to run.
These things are an absolute fallacy in my opinion but there are two very entrenched camps for and against.
My personal experience (from my industry - not from personal use) is that they can be noisy, they can be more costly to run but clearly don't emit the levels of CO2 etc A cast iron fact is that they are miles away from the effeciency needed for use in the UK across our seasons - they simply don't work.
A combi or trad boiler should cost anything from £650 to £2k to fit in a typical UK house. If you fit your heating with the correct number of port valves and zone the house then that route is proven to be more energy effecient than any heat Pump (Ground or Air source).
Look at it this way.... IF it was proven without doubt that these things work the same as conventional methods in the UK, were cheaper to install, cheaper to run, more reliable etc then -- wouldn't EVERYONE be scrambling to get one? Milliband and his clowns instead are looking to force people down this route and it'll be a clown show.
For my I'd go hydrogen if possible but your use of PV means you've taken a good step as that is a provensource of back up / trickle power.
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
We bought a house last year and we're getting solar in 4 weeks, we looked into a heat pump but our boiler is only 5 years old so we are going to wait on that. It's a very logical step to get a heat pump if you already have solar. With the price of gas only continuing to rise after these pointless wars it seems like a good investment.
We’re on heating oil up here in rural Suffolk,and last week the price was around 55-60p a litre.Tonight’s quote is £1.35 a litre.Roll on summer.
Admittedly I was told this by a British Gas engineer as they installed a gas boiler in our house 5 years ago, but he said that because heat pumps can’t heat up to the level of gas boilers, you run a real risk of bacteria like Legionella building up in the pipes with heat pumps.
Something to do with them, at that time, only heating to around 50C compared to gas which heats over 70C. That is critical as once water hits the pipes it slowly decreases in heat and needs to be around 55-60C to avoid bacterial build up. As heat pumps only hit just above 50C at their maximum it means bacterial build up is unavoidable.
Don’t know if things have improved since but if not, it’s not a risk I’d want to take.
Admittedly I was told this by a British Gas engineer as they installed a gas boiler in our house 5 years ago, but he said that because heat pumps can’t heat up to the level of gas boilers, you run a real risk of bacteria like Legionella building up in the pipes with heat pumps.
Something to do with them, at that time, only heating to around 50C compared to gas which heats over 70C. That is critical as once water hits the pipes it slowly decreases in heat and needs to be around 55-60C to avoid bacterial build up. As heat pumps only hit just above 50C at their maximum it means bacterial build up is unavoidable.
Don’t know if things have improved since but if not, it’s not a risk I’d want to take.
Usually you’d get round that by dosing the system but where you have the need to run water out of taps for showers / baths / hand washing/crockery washing then you have a problem
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
We’re on heating oil up here in rural Suffolk,and last week the price was around 55-60p a litre.Tonight’s quote is £1.35 a litre.Roll on summer.
We had an outside oil boiler when we lived in a village In West Berkshire, expensive to Install and expensive to run. We bought a large new detached house about Five Years ago with a gas boiler obviously already installed, It's silent when running and so Is the central heating. The new house annual running cost set against our old house running cost are wide apart and of course I'm delighted. I've heard mixed reviews about heat pump systems most of them not good, I still find It hard to believe the difference between heating costs across the Industry.
If your seriously looking at heat pumps there used to be different grant schemes???
My Father had a profound influence on me, he was a lunatic.
These things are an absolute fallacy in my opinion but there are two very entrenched camps for and against.
My personal experience (from my industry - not from personal use) is that they can be noisy, they can be more costly to run but clearly don't emit the levels of CO2 etc A cast iron fact is that they are miles away from the effeciency needed for use in the UK across our seasons - they simply don't work.
A combi or trad boiler should cost anything from £650 to £2k to fit in a typical UK house. If you fit your heating with the correct number of port valves and zone the house then that route is proven to be more energy effecient than any heat Pump (Ground or Air source).
Look at it this way.... IF it was proven without doubt that these things work the same as conventional methods in the UK, were cheaper to install, cheaper to run, more reliable etc then -- wouldn't EVERYONE be scrambling to get one? Milliband and his clowns instead are looking to force people down this route and it'll be a clown show.
For my I'd go hydrogen if possible but your use of PV means you've taken a good step as that is a provensource of back up / trickle power.
Taken from Socialist Worker, er, I mean Which?
Are air source heat pumps good in winter?
All heating systems have to work harder to keep your home warm in freezing weather. The colder the outside air, the more quickly heat is lost from your home through the walls, windows and roof, so the boiler has more work to do to continually replace that lost heat.
Air source heat pumps are designed to work at low temperatures – down to minus 10C, which is sufficient for most parts of the UK – but they use more electricity to extract sufficient heat from the air. In very cold weather, efficiency may drop from around 300-400% to perhaps 200%; however, they are still more efficient than a gas boiler.
Heat pumps are surprisingly popular in cold countries. The top four European nations with the most heat pumps per household – Norway, Finland and Sweden – experience much colder winters than the UK. It's common to see heat pump units covered in a thick layer of snow that are still working perfectly well.
Heat pumps have an automatic defrost mode that should kick in to prevent the system from icing up. However, a broken sensor, low levels of refrigerant or blocked vents can lead to a frozen system, so it's important to keep up with the maintenance schedule.
If you live in one of the colder parts of the country, you can get a heat pump that's designed to work down to minus 25 degrees. Alternatively, consider a ground source heat pump; they are more efficient in winter because the ground temperature stays reliably warmer than the air temperature.
On the subject of legionella, here is what Ideal Heating Commercial says:
The new breed of natural refrigerant heat pumps, especially those that use R290 or R744 natural refrigerant, can achieve flow temperatures up to 75°C and 70°C respectively. When the water is kept at these constant temperatures Legionella bacteria will swiftly die.
It also says legionella bacteria cannot survive above 60 degrees C.
"Things had started becoming increasingly desperate at Loftus Road but QPR have been handed a massive lifeline and the place has absolutely erupted. it's carnage. It's bedlam. It's 1-1."
One of the things about being a building contractor is, you often have lots of quirky things in the house. When it comes to warmth, I've got gas, oil, heat pumps and additional electric rads set in the walls, about the only thing I don't have is a nuclear power station in the backyard. So, I've run everything. The winner in a North American winter / blizzard, is gas.
These things are an absolute fallacy in my opinion but there are two very entrenched camps for and against.
My personal experience (from my industry - not from personal use) is that they can be noisy, they can be more costly to run but clearly don't emit the levels of CO2 etc A cast iron fact is that they are miles away from the effeciency needed for use in the UK across our seasons - they simply don't work.
A combi or trad boiler should cost anything from £650 to £2k to fit in a typical UK house. If you fit your heating with the correct number of port valves and zone the house then that route is proven to be more energy effecient than any heat Pump (Ground or Air source).
Look at it this way.... IF it was proven without doubt that these things work the same as conventional methods in the UK, were cheaper to install, cheaper to run, more reliable etc then -- wouldn't EVERYONE be scrambling to get one? Milliband and his clowns instead are looking to force people down this route and it'll be a clown show.
For my I'd go hydrogen if possible but your use of PV means you've taken a good step as that is a provensource of back up / trickle power.
Here in the Netherlands (basically the same weather as the UK) we have a heat pump for our apartment, and I can't rate it highly enough.
It's really nice how the temperature of our apartment stays constant - regardless of the weather, outside temperature etc., it's 20°C in here. On a freezing cold day there's nothing as satisfying as entering the apartment and it being immediately warm. Electricity use is pretty low too, as we have to pay for the electricity to run it.
Only downside for us is that they force us to rent it from a company who were approved by the building, which means that they take us for a ride on renting the thing. But in terms of heating? Can't rate it highly enough.
PS. While the apartment is decently insulated, I should also note that windows cover every external wall and that the corridor outside our front door is basically open to the elements (I don't know which moron of an architect thought this was a good idea) so even in a non-ideal situation they can work.
Thanks everyone, really good read. Disappointed with the lack of fart jokes. Up your game.
Hadn't the faintest interest or clue about the subject matter. Several posts in: I'm enlightened and while not an expert, then certainly savvy enough to proffer advice on the matter.
When in doubt, ask Loftipedia!
'Always In Motion' by John Honney available on amazon.co.uk
I bought an old stone cottage last September with a heat pump and solar panels already installed. My advice would be don't do it unless your house is either brand new or extremely well insulated. Over the winter the solar panels have contributed a tiny amount and the cost of heating my place has been huge. It's also quite noisy.
I read an article not long ago where Dale Vince - the bloke who started Octopus Energy - said heat pumps are a scam unless they're fitted to new houses. The reason it was fitted here was that there was a grant available to make it very affordable to do, but I wish they'd kept the oil burning boiler.
However, regarding the legionella build up: the boiler does a cycle every few weeks (I think) where it runs super-heated water to kill of any bacteria.
Anything mad Miliband says is good must be bad. So, it’s a no for me.
I’ve had one for a few years and it’s pretty good..but we did need a new boiler and our village doesn’t have gas, so had been oil. I’d give a thumbs up, but depends on individual circumstances of course. I actually found this thread more useful than any other source..which is great testament to the quality of discourse on this admirable site!
Hadn't the faintest interest or clue about the subject matter. Several posts in: I'm enlightened and while not an expert, then certainly savvy enough to proffer advice on the matter.
When in doubt, ask Loftipedia!
They are very popular in France - offer both heating and cooling, but the cooling is usually specific to one room.
My ‘rents had one installed for the house (underfloor heating) and have the cooling set up in the bedroom for the hot summer months. Works really well. Cost effective and easy to maintain because all the local tradesmen know them.
Those possessed by devils, try and keep them under control a bit, can't you ?
Here in the Netherlands (basically the same weather as the UK) we have a heat pump for our apartment, and I can't rate it highly enough.
It's really nice how the temperature of our apartment stays constant - regardless of the weather, outside temperature etc., it's 20°C in here. On a freezing cold day there's nothing as satisfying as entering the apartment and it being immediately warm. Electricity use is pretty low too, as we have to pay for the electricity to run it.
Only downside for us is that they force us to rent it from a company who were approved by the building, which means that they take us for a ride on renting the thing. But in terms of heating? Can't rate it highly enough.
PS. While the apartment is decently insulated, I should also note that windows cover every external wall and that the corridor outside our front door is basically open to the elements (I don't know which moron of an architect thought this was a good idea) so even in a non-ideal situation they can work.
Apartment you say?
Mmmmmmmmm.... central roof plant on the roof I'd imagine? I'm always up for being wrong but I'd wager you have a condensor farm up there along with AHU's which can be more effecoent due to size. I'd also hazard a guess your block might be realtively modern with air tight seals and insulation..... this alone contibutes to heat merely by passive background generation by yourself (average person gives off 2Kw heat an hour at rest), TV's, fridges, ovens etc. It's also a fact that these modern approaches can (I stress can) lead to Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) due to a lack of fresh air, circulation etc which breeds mould, germs etc and in turn cause damp and other defects. SBS really is a catch all term though and most refer to the human illnesses associated with it as they are "the most immediate" but some of us include fabric dilapidations etc.
Anyway.... I'm boring myself now... apologies!!!
In summary -- stick Heat Pumps and anything Milliband throws his bacon sarnie behind right up yer jacksie.
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
. 
