Must the BBC label these people “geeks”? I would have called them “enthusiasts” instead.
*Although installing a heat pump is expensive, the device is likely to pay for itself within its lifetime.*
Not exactly selling it to me.
Heat pumps are cool and all but the first step should always be insulation. Just incase anyone sees this and jumps quickly into research
I’m looking forward to joining them.
I’ve put in underfloor heating with 24 separate loops each with their own electronic valve and 8 thermostats. Every room in the house will have a separate temperature/humidity sensor logging to a central location.
Next part is to finish the house and get PV put in
Seems fascinating, however:
1. UK homes (besides new builds) have notoriously bad insulation.
2. Heat pumps are Expensive.
Is why it isn’t popular. You are paying 10s of thousands in a badly insulated home to get this sort of set up Im guessing. Without more significant grants, forget it.
The house I live in is 120 years old, it’s not suited to a heat pump at all
These articles are so very frustrating, as they always yap on about the water heating ASHP systems which are very expensive. They never, ever talk about the very common, cheap and cheerful split AC systems, which the majority of the time are cooling and heating units.
I installed split AC in our kitchen, typical indoor unit is WiFi connected, smart, on timers etc. Has a COP of about 3.5 and does a very very good job of keeping kitchen warm for very little energy, which is actually supplied by our solar and battery system.
Right now it’s heating our house and costing nothing. I’m going with a few more units around the house for next winter.
Cost- £469 for something that easily heats a 6x6m space as well as permiates the rest of the house taking the edge off the cold.
Will come in handy too when it hits 40c this year again probably!
Split AC might not be pretty, but it is Hella cheap!!! Never see anything written about them as it’s always about replacement for boiler systems!
*The UK government has set a target of 600,000 heat pump installations per year by 2028. But currently, fewer than 50,000 are fitted in British homes annually and the UK is bottom of the heat pump installation league table in Europe.*
The UK government failing on their targets and causing the country to fall behind the rest of Europe as a result? I’m shocked
Obsessing in the cold if my mate is anything to go by
I think it was around £20k and just hasn’t worked in the really cold weather
as far as I understand, not every home can effectively utilise heat pumps (especially those with low EPC rating), and the upfront cost can be a lot higher than the system itself, which is not cheap anyway. And even under the best scenario, it would be similarly cost effective as traditional gas boilers.
With all these limits and cost, just let us use gas boilers for god sake. Don’t make the ordinary suffer to fill the riches’ self ego on so called “environmentalism”
Can confirm, I check my solar panel and battery levels several times a day.
Couple of our neighbours have them. They are noisy.
Plus neither of our neighbours is saying what their electric bill is like.
Wait till they discover thermals, they’ll have a stroke
My current house has oil fired heating. It would take me 20+ years to pay off a heat pump and that doesn’t include the monthly electricity bills that will come with that system. That and I’m in an older stone house so installing things like a new heating system isn’t that simple. If only there was a scheme to help me.
WTF is this article title. Come on BBC, this is coming like some daily mail clickbait title
I have an air-to water heat pump system. In general it’s great…..reasonable cheap to run, silent, unobtrusive.
But……..I live at 59 north, Orkney, when the air temp is below 3C and there’s a wind blowing, bringing it down another several degrees, it’s pretty useless.
Plenty of hot enough water, but the operation of the system means the radiators struggle to get any real warmth into the house. This is because the efficiency drops as the possible temperature differential reduces. A bit useless when it’s -10c and your REALLY want the heat!
Living in a slate walled traditional croft doesn’t help, but ther’s no real heat to be retained by good insulation at really low temperatures.
We actively manage our system. Heat the water and the house for a couple of hours, then turn it all off. the storage tank is insulated enugh to give us hot water for the rest of the day. If we need heat, we’ll turn it on…..it responds really quickly.
However…..if you DO NOT have a well insulated dwelling, leaving it ON all day ( especially if you’ve got the water reheat at factory setting) WILL cost you.
We got ours through a Warmerhomes Scotland scheme and I would recommend it. But you MUST learn how to use it efficiently.
The rise of the geek. It seems like, everywhere in the world, we have reached peak geek. They’re (of course) at the forefront of new tech, they will make themselves immune to energy charges before long. We’ve even seen them wrestling guns from mass-shooters. It is truly the era of the nerd.
“people who have enough money can afford better technology and equipment to more efficiently heat their homes”
I actually just bought a portable heat pump for my flat (all electric – wet system). Im able to comfortably heat my flat to 17 degrees for 10 hours at the cost of £3.
It was costing me like £7-8 for a few hours before hand! Itll pay for itself in like 2 months.
I bought a house with heat pumps last year and they’re god awful. Anytime the temp drops to 5 degrees or below they become less efficient than gas boilers and often need a gas boiler to buffer them in super cold temperatures.
When you get a cold snap like we’ve had, the usage is exponential. At -5, in one day my heat pumps used almost 5x their normal usage to keep my house not quite freezing. They’re not fit for our climate (with the way our homes are constructed). Sweden etc do it properly, were trying to tack on a new technology where it is not viable.
I live in a tiny terraced house, housing association, with a heat pump. I hate it. I’ve had no hot water since I moved here 3 years ago because you have to heat a tank the size of a lake so I just can’t afford it. Also, you have to have the damn thing on at a constant temperature, all the time, or it costs more. My thermostat is set to 14 degrees, which means if it’s not quite cold enough to click on, then the house feels cold and damp. When it is cold enough outside, the damn thing is on all the time, day and night. It costs a bloody fortune, just to be luke warm/ cold all the time.
Air source heat pumps are for people that can afford to heat their house amyway, but just to do it in a more eco friendly way. They are not poor person friendly.
They aren’t practical for 95% of homes. You need insanely good insulation for it to work and most of the homes that have this don’t need a pump as much as others, anyway.
I moved into a house with a ground source heat pump.
It was very badly installed and configured so it was kicking in the back-up electric heating element. 9 Killowatts – thats four kettles worth running for hours and hours guzzling electric.
The control system (REGO 1000) is probably the most unintuitive pile of crap I’ve ever seen. Basically it has a mind of its own, but is supposed to be weather compensating. Problem is it’s not self learning, so I have to manually configure the heat curves, which is how hot the heating water temperature is heated to according to outdoor temperature and deviation of the set room temperature which varies when it’s windy outside. Problem is the house’s heat loss isn’t linear nor even across all rooms, so I won’t know if it’s configured right until the weather is cold enough to test the curve settings.
Lost yet?
Took me a while to work it out, the ‘engineer’ I had round just reset it to default which made it guzzle more electric. So I re-plumbed it all and got hold of all the installer manuals…which reads like Swedish that’s been translated into German before finally being translated to English. It’s now dialled in just about right (until I replace the windows, so will probably need more tweaking afterwards).
So yeah, I’m a heat pump geek. But only because nobody else has a clue how to correctly configure it!
Heat pumps are stupid and not the solution. I work in AC and install them and maintain them. They are expensive to install, expensive to maintain and won’t last long due to refrigerant leaking.
The solution is cheap nuclear energy and electrical heating.
24 comments
Must the BBC label these people “geeks”? I would have called them “enthusiasts” instead.
*Although installing a heat pump is expensive, the device is likely to pay for itself within its lifetime.*
Not exactly selling it to me.
Heat pumps are cool and all but the first step should always be insulation. Just incase anyone sees this and jumps quickly into research
I’m looking forward to joining them.
I’ve put in underfloor heating with 24 separate loops each with their own electronic valve and 8 thermostats. Every room in the house will have a separate temperature/humidity sensor logging to a central location.
The electrician has put in an [additional meter just for the heat pump](https://www.shelly.cloud/en/products/shop/shelly-3-em-1) which also lets me log the data centrally
Next part is to finish the house and get PV put in
Seems fascinating, however:
1. UK homes (besides new builds) have notoriously bad insulation.
2. Heat pumps are Expensive.
Is why it isn’t popular. You are paying 10s of thousands in a badly insulated home to get this sort of set up Im guessing. Without more significant grants, forget it.
The house I live in is 120 years old, it’s not suited to a heat pump at all
These articles are so very frustrating, as they always yap on about the water heating ASHP systems which are very expensive. They never, ever talk about the very common, cheap and cheerful split AC systems, which the majority of the time are cooling and heating units.
I installed split AC in our kitchen, typical indoor unit is WiFi connected, smart, on timers etc. Has a COP of about 3.5 and does a very very good job of keeping kitchen warm for very little energy, which is actually supplied by our solar and battery system.
Right now it’s heating our house and costing nothing. I’m going with a few more units around the house for next winter.
Cost- £469 for something that easily heats a 6x6m space as well as permiates the rest of the house taking the edge off the cold.
Will come in handy too when it hits 40c this year again probably!
Split AC might not be pretty, but it is Hella cheap!!! Never see anything written about them as it’s always about replacement for boiler systems!
*The UK government has set a target of 600,000 heat pump installations per year by 2028. But currently, fewer than 50,000 are fitted in British homes annually and the UK is bottom of the heat pump installation league table in Europe.*
The UK government failing on their targets and causing the country to fall behind the rest of Europe as a result? I’m shocked
Obsessing in the cold if my mate is anything to go by
I think it was around £20k and just hasn’t worked in the really cold weather
as far as I understand, not every home can effectively utilise heat pumps (especially those with low EPC rating), and the upfront cost can be a lot higher than the system itself, which is not cheap anyway. And even under the best scenario, it would be similarly cost effective as traditional gas boilers.
With all these limits and cost, just let us use gas boilers for god sake. Don’t make the ordinary suffer to fill the riches’ self ego on so called “environmentalism”
Can confirm, I check my solar panel and battery levels several times a day.
Couple of our neighbours have them. They are noisy.
Plus neither of our neighbours is saying what their electric bill is like.
Wait till they discover thermals, they’ll have a stroke
My current house has oil fired heating. It would take me 20+ years to pay off a heat pump and that doesn’t include the monthly electricity bills that will come with that system. That and I’m in an older stone house so installing things like a new heating system isn’t that simple. If only there was a scheme to help me.
WTF is this article title. Come on BBC, this is coming like some daily mail clickbait title
I have an air-to water heat pump system. In general it’s great…..reasonable cheap to run, silent, unobtrusive.
But……..I live at 59 north, Orkney, when the air temp is below 3C and there’s a wind blowing, bringing it down another several degrees, it’s pretty useless.
Plenty of hot enough water, but the operation of the system means the radiators struggle to get any real warmth into the house. This is because the efficiency drops as the possible temperature differential reduces. A bit useless when it’s -10c and your REALLY want the heat!
Living in a slate walled traditional croft doesn’t help, but ther’s no real heat to be retained by good insulation at really low temperatures.
We actively manage our system. Heat the water and the house for a couple of hours, then turn it all off. the storage tank is insulated enugh to give us hot water for the rest of the day. If we need heat, we’ll turn it on…..it responds really quickly.
However…..if you DO NOT have a well insulated dwelling, leaving it ON all day ( especially if you’ve got the water reheat at factory setting) WILL cost you.
We got ours through a Warmerhomes Scotland scheme and I would recommend it. But you MUST learn how to use it efficiently.
The rise of the geek. It seems like, everywhere in the world, we have reached peak geek. They’re (of course) at the forefront of new tech, they will make themselves immune to energy charges before long. We’ve even seen them wrestling guns from mass-shooters. It is truly the era of the nerd.
“people who have enough money can afford better technology and equipment to more efficiently heat their homes”
I actually just bought a portable heat pump for my flat (all electric – wet system). Im able to comfortably heat my flat to 17 degrees for 10 hours at the cost of £3.
It was costing me like £7-8 for a few hours before hand! Itll pay for itself in like 2 months.
I bought a house with heat pumps last year and they’re god awful. Anytime the temp drops to 5 degrees or below they become less efficient than gas boilers and often need a gas boiler to buffer them in super cold temperatures.
When you get a cold snap like we’ve had, the usage is exponential. At -5, in one day my heat pumps used almost 5x their normal usage to keep my house not quite freezing. They’re not fit for our climate (with the way our homes are constructed). Sweden etc do it properly, were trying to tack on a new technology where it is not viable.
I live in a tiny terraced house, housing association, with a heat pump. I hate it. I’ve had no hot water since I moved here 3 years ago because you have to heat a tank the size of a lake so I just can’t afford it. Also, you have to have the damn thing on at a constant temperature, all the time, or it costs more. My thermostat is set to 14 degrees, which means if it’s not quite cold enough to click on, then the house feels cold and damp. When it is cold enough outside, the damn thing is on all the time, day and night. It costs a bloody fortune, just to be luke warm/ cold all the time.
Air source heat pumps are for people that can afford to heat their house amyway, but just to do it in a more eco friendly way. They are not poor person friendly.
They aren’t practical for 95% of homes. You need insanely good insulation for it to work and most of the homes that have this don’t need a pump as much as others, anyway.
I moved into a house with a ground source heat pump.
It was very badly installed and configured so it was kicking in the back-up electric heating element. 9 Killowatts – thats four kettles worth running for hours and hours guzzling electric.
The control system (REGO 1000) is probably the most unintuitive pile of crap I’ve ever seen. Basically it has a mind of its own, but is supposed to be weather compensating. Problem is it’s not self learning, so I have to manually configure the heat curves, which is how hot the heating water temperature is heated to according to outdoor temperature and deviation of the set room temperature which varies when it’s windy outside. Problem is the house’s heat loss isn’t linear nor even across all rooms, so I won’t know if it’s configured right until the weather is cold enough to test the curve settings.
Lost yet?
Took me a while to work it out, the ‘engineer’ I had round just reset it to default which made it guzzle more electric. So I re-plumbed it all and got hold of all the installer manuals…which reads like Swedish that’s been translated into German before finally being translated to English. It’s now dialled in just about right (until I replace the windows, so will probably need more tweaking afterwards).
So yeah, I’m a heat pump geek. But only because nobody else has a clue how to correctly configure it!
Heat pumps are stupid and not the solution. I work in AC and install them and maintain them. They are expensive to install, expensive to maintain and won’t last long due to refrigerant leaking.
The solution is cheap nuclear energy and electrical heating.