Has anybody got any real world experience of ASHP? Particularly interested in experience with the Octopus offering.
I’ve had a quote but the cost of the system spread over a decent timeframe pretty much matches my average gas bill and the system increases electricity consumption so I’m struggling to see the benefits.
Benefits? No local CO2 emissions; no highly combustible gas pumped to the house; some insulation from gas price rises.
This chap has a deal to say about ASHPs. https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/heat-pump-articles/
Assume ASHP is Air Source Heat Pump?
If so I'll be watching with interest.
On your cost point I think part of the consideration is getting off gas and not having to worry about the venting and emissions of a gas boiler. The layout of our house gives this a certain extra appeal for us as locating the boiler away from openable windows etc gives us very limited options.
We had it in our previous property and only got it because there were some significant grants for it in Scotland at one point and also when we moved into the house it had night storage heaters which were rubbish.
ASHP worked ok and was good in the house but would I spend full price on an install then definitely not give me gas any day.
Yeah - can't comment on Octopus, but I have ASHP. Bought a Georgian house, gutted and renovated the entire thing, and put in ASHP as the main/ only heating source (so with the right size pipes etc).
The calculations, for the size of condenser/ boiler we needed, and the amount of radiators, were quite critical. Downstairs we ended up going with a concrete slab and underfloor heating as the wall space we'd need for radiators was prohibitive. Upstairs we got radiators - each room has 2 radiators (usually 1 underwindow and 1 large vertical).
Downstairs is usually warm enough, and sometimes toasty. Upstairs is on the slightly cooler side; we can't get it above 19C no matter what we do (measured on Heatmiser standalone air sensor things), but that's fine. Electricity bill last year was €5k, and I think the maths of how many megawatts we used is a bit staggering. But that's everything (heating, hot water, all other electrical needs); and given the cost of gas I don't know how much more that is than what we'd otherwise be spending.
For a more normal-sized house the electricity bill would be significantly less, I'm sure
As some have mentioned above, we didn't change to a heat pump to save money. We were on oil, so a pain to manage (and now expensive). We're in a large 4 bed house, and for the first 3 months of this year, we've consumed about 1600kWh which has delivered about 4300kWh of heat/hot water.
I've had a heat pump for 2 years now. Early 2000s timber frame house. Combined with solar panels and a battery, I'm saving about 200 a month averaged over the year in utility bills. I got the whole thing on the Scottish loan and grant deal with the loan costing about 115 a month, so instant payback. My one piece of advice ... Go for a propane based heat pump. I average a CoP of over 4.5 across the year and still get over 3 in winter. This is very different to people I know with "standard" refrigerant in their heat pump. Plus, propane based pumps can deliver much higher temperature water than standard pumps.
Yikes! My current bill is sub £1200 for gas and electric.
I think thats where the economics are tricky - smaller, well insulated houses are going to be pretty economical to heat anyway. We've just doubled the thickness of our insualation - replacing the cavity insuation with a better material and getting external insulation in addition - and thats knocked about 20% off our utilities bill, which was already pretty low. (prior to that I insulated under the floors which gives a sizeable benefit to but not one we can measure as we did it immediacy after we bought the house). But that has also complicated the economics if we were to switch to something like ASHP
So given our outgoings are low - same as you, sub £1200 for gas and electric combined- the payback for any new installation, if theres any saving at all on out use case, is going to be pretty long.
Our use-case is a bit of problem for ASHP in that we don't seek to have heating on throughout the day. Its on for an hour at most in evening during the winter in all but the coldest weather and our pattern of occupancy doesn't require the house to be warmed through the day and we don't ever have the heating on at night (if fact we have the bedroom window open at night pretty much all year). We wouldn't actually be comfortable with the way ASHP heats houses on a more continuous basis - particularly at night.
So of us theres not really sense, financially, in switching from gas to ASHP as we have a reliable boiler thats economical to run and maintain. But if the boiler kicked the bucket so there was a cost of replacement to spend anyway then suddenly a ASHP install would effectively be thousands cheaper as the cost equivalent to a gas boiler would be effectively discounted from the install. So our payback calculation would be against the extra cost of ASHP rather than the whole cost.
So at the moment I'm happy to wait - given that its still something of an emerging technology - I don't need to install something now and by the time I do it might well be that the options available are cheaper/cleverer/better in some way.
I’ve had a quote but the cost of the system spread over a decent timeframe pretty much matches my average gas bill and the system increases electricity consumption so I’m struggling to see the benefits.
There was a good essay / press release from Dale Vince basically saying just that. They aren't going to be better for most people while electricity prices are higher than gas. And that's a UK problem, the rest of the world doesn't seem to have the same magnitude of a margin between the two. So for the moment, it's a case of "doing the right thing" if it's something you can afford to do.
In the future (and hopefully within the lifetime of a new heat-pump or boiler) that will change. People with solar panels will probably already be well past that tipping point even if there's a it of a fudge between energy supply and demands in price and timing throughout the year. They might even be financially better off having gas for December and January, it's just offset by £££ in generation over the summer.
His argument (and even with his industrial bias I think he's probably correct) is that the government shouldn't be subsidizing Octopus to fit heat pumps to those middle-classes that can afford to run them. It should be ploughing that money into decarbonizing the grid. The end goal is then to make the idea of spending £8k on a heat pump system seem attractive because the running costs are so low. Same logic applies to electric cars. Giving someone who can afford a £30k car, £3750 discount is the wrong way around, give the person who can't afford a £30k car, £3750 worth of solar panels and they might take out a loan for a heat pump because it's zero cost to them.
Guy Martins bill free house had a good idiots guide to heat pumps. Really emphasised that set up is crucial.
Our new house will be solar panelled to the max and we will try and go gas free.
Daily standing charges really **** me off ,so one less would be great.
I have one. It's worked out about 30% cheaper than oil for a house that's noticeably warmer in the winter. SCOP of 3.9, which isn't ideal but it's in its first year and I'm still tweaking the heat curve.
If you don't have access to either battery storage or cheap tariffs, it'll likely cost considerably more than gas or oil. Solar helps from late Feb through to mid-Nov.
Tariffs are all important, currently averaging 19p/kW for the last year, and according to the app SCOP of 5.19.
Victorian high ceilinged flat with radiators and minimal insulation, certainly nothing to the cavity walls, nothing to the floors, a bit where I have lowered some ceilings for noise purposes, but it is double glazed as the windows are big.
