You can pick one of those boilers up for around £1200. Add another £100-ish for a magnetic filter and a couple of £hundred for materials. If you think £1⁷00 is worthwhile labour then go ahead.
FWIW, when I was fitting boilers (7 years ago) I charged materials + £300/day for labour. A straight swap was easily done in one day. The prices mentioned in this thread are making me think about getting my GasSafe renewed...
ASHP work best with underfllor heating. Very high levels of insulation and the understanding that they run cold. Its not unusual for the rads to be below body temp and be 'on '. Getting your head around the unit running 24hrs a day and using things like external air temp compensation curves is a different way of heating.
You tend to need larger rads as the output temps from the ashp are much lower so the delta T and BTU are calculated at 30c , giivig much lower numbers.
stop repeating the myth that ASHP work best with high levels of insulation. ANY heating works best with high levels of insulation.
They don’t run cold, they are weather compensated, they match the flow to the requirements, as should all heating, new heating systems MUST be designed with low flow temperatures.
They work with underfloor heating, radiators, fan convectors (great if you want to add cooling) trench heaters, they can even work on 1 pipe heating systems.
I achieve SCOP of about 5.5 according to the data, even if it is out a bit and I’m achieving 4.5, then my system in a Victorian flat with no insulation and high ceilings using radiators firmly debunks all those mis held beliefs.
Furthermore we are averaging about 19p/kw for electricity by using tariffs wisely.
Loads of people in our street have those Octopus heat pump things. I could ask around and see how they're getting on with them.
There's a bit in the Guy Martin prog about heat pumps.
Their effectiveness relies heavily on the rads and pipework. It can take hours to set a system up and that's if it's plumbed well.
By all means go for it, but get everything assessed first
I saw that program, the engineer seemed to be balancing the system which is something you can do with any radiator system, but it's and odd thing to do when smart valves exist and you can direct the flow to the rooms you want.
stop repeating the myth that ASHP work best with high levels of insulation. ANY heating works best with high levels of insulation.
But is it not the case that you need a certain amount of insulation in order to it to be viable?
E.g. I am currently sat next to a fairly large double panel/double convector rad, which has got 85 degree water coming into it (it's an oil boiler) - I would have thought (but I don't really know what I'm talking about!) that it's not going to be physically possible to accommodate a sufficiently large enough radiator to handle a 30 degree flow temp (or whatever a heat pump outputs).
Jamz first thing, is that radiator correctly sized in the first place, my guess is it will be oversized.
You can get very big rads now even triple panel, or sometimes you have to add an extra one.
Modern heat pumps produce higher temps quite easily, especially those that use R290 for refrigerant, yes the lower the flow temperature the more efficient it will be, but 50 deg. for a rad system isn’t unreasonable. Remember though that 50 deg. temperature will only be needed when it is at -3 externally.
So you would probably be able to use a heat pump with radiator upgrades most likely. Sometimes those upgrades make it not economically sensible to change, but it could be done. However if you upgrade your insulation then your current heating system will be more efficient.
Worth considering though with better insulation, your radiators maybe oversized then your boiler may cycle on and off a lot more which isn’t a good idea for both efficiency and longevity of the boiler.
