Did anyone hear the guy who installs heat pumps being allowed to make a sales pitch on BBC News today? Apparently his “bills came down” and the house was “more comfortable at a lower temperature”, because they didn’t need to “throw the windows open to cool it down any more” after replacing a gas boiler.

It’s at least four times more expensive to run a heat pump than a gas boiler, and that discrepancy is only going to increase in the short term. It might be slightly less if you have solar panels, but that’s an enormous upfront cost and you have almost zero generation in the winter. It might actually make the energy situation worse as you’ll get people running them as air conditioners in the summer months.

If you have an electric shower, good luck running that at the same time as your heating. They’re ugly, noisy, things and there’s no way local councils will allow them in AONB or listed buildings. I’m guessing a member of the cabinet owns a company that installs or supplies heat pumps.

I think you’ve got a flap-on.

Only going to help those that have a fair wedge of cash in the bank too, I believe?

So what’s the alternative?

(he says from his oil-burning, old, draughty, stone cottage)

Only going to help those that have a fair wedge of cash in the bank too, I believe?

for a smaller property with the right pipework already in place (ie not the thin stuff) I think this takes the cost of ASHP to similar to a replacement boiler.

there’s only enough for 90,000 of them, so I expect they’ll go to weathly old people who were going to do it anyway

It feels like they are the only alternatives at the moment though?

I GUESS IF we could get to a stage where electric generation becomes so cheap to be not worth metering (remember that being said before?) then we could afford to run more traditional technologies at higher temperatures without worrying.

I think you’ve got a flap-on.

Is your life really that empty that all you can do is post vacuous personal insults?

A decent proportion of the country can barely afford their heating costs as it is. Why don’t you try allocating yourself two pounds a day to run your heating for a month in December and then come back with another sarcastic comment in January?

If energy prices continue to increase then for that two quid you can run your heating for ten minutes. A day. Oh yeah, no hot water either.

The rant was also born out of frustration at BBC News for failing to run stories like this past anyone with even GCSE physics who could tell them that they’re being manipulated.

So what’s the alternative?

(he says from his oil-burning, old, draughty, stone cottage)

I don’t know – especially since I too live in an old, draughty stone cottage. But funding insulation and window upgrades for people on low incomes will not only reduce their bills, it’ll reduce their CO2 emissions.

@flaperon – an ASHP doesn’t appear to cost significantly different amount to heat a home than a gas boiler. EDF recon 4.6p/hour vs 4.7p/hour

https://www.edfenergy.com/heating/advice/air-source-heat-pump-guide

A modern four-bedroom house might need about 19,000kWh of heat per year[12]. This would cost around £874 in gas[13]. Using an air source heat pump and electricity priced at 16p per kWh the cost would be almost identical[14]. However, even if you did only half of your heating overnight – using the cheapest cheap-rate electricity – you could save 25%[15]: about £215.

The savings increase when you consider hot water. On average, a four-person household uses about 160 litres a day[16]. This requires about another 2,800kWh per year[17]. Using a 90% efficient gas boiler that’s another £129. But if you got all your hot water from an air source heat pump powered by cheap-rate electricity, you might only pay £65[18].

Is your life really that empty that all you can do is post vacuous personal insults?

A decent proportion of the country can barely afford their heating costs as it is. Why don’t you try allocating yourself two pounds a day to run your heating for a month in December and then come back with another sarcastic comment in January?

I reckon The Bricks comment was just a light hearted quip based on your user name, rather than a vacous personal insult….

he says from his oil-burning, old, draughty, stone cottage

One of the government proposals is to make it increasingly more difficult to get a mortgage for a property like the one you live to try to force the housing stock to modernize, mind you it doesn’t suggest how we help folk like you who’ll end up with a house that’s un-sellable.

an ASHP doesn’t appear to cost significantly different amount to heat a home than a gas boiler. EDF recon 4.6p/hour vs 4.7p/hour

Doesn’t provide any information on temperature differential/ air temp assumptions in those pages that I can see.

Locals I know with them (supplied by the house builders) find them cripplingly expensive to run when the temperature is prolonged below 0 ….sometimes -5/-10.

Holiday home I was in last week with them had nothing good to say about the running costs (in the warmer west coast) other than that the gov covered a significant portion of original install costs 10 years ago…. But the 12k replacement she just had to install was galling.

YMMV my old man’s just had one fitted at his place in the middle of France where these temperatures rarely if ever actually happen never mind for days/weeks at a time.

Sounds like the OP has got a rubbish install – under-specified for their house? I’ve got an air source heat pump – our fuel bills are cheaper than they were in our old house despite being on the West Coast of Scotland. The difference is insulation and air-tightness – the house is not quite passivehouse standard, but stays pretty well a constant 20 degrees. Not all heat pumps can be run as air con either.
The problem in the UK is the low quality of much of the housing stock and the poor management of most of the ‘green energy’ schemes – primarily to make developers and installers richer. As soon as a new round of grant funding comes out, prices go up by the value of the grant.
The problem with this initiative is it’s too little – it only covers about 2% of the UK housing stock and unless it covers both effective insulation, new windows and doors then it’ll just result in huge bills for owners.

I reckon The Bricks comment was just a light hearted quip based on your user name, rather than a vacous personal insult….

I thought that too. Take a chill pill.

our fuel bills are cheaper than they were in our old house despite being on the West Coast of Scotlan

Based on a data set of what -august to October on one of the warmest years for a long time ?

On the east coast our house heating in our 1950s build(albeit with improved insulation) still hasn’t kicked in once.*

* Correction I manually fired it up a couple weeks back to make sure it did still work.

@5lab – cheap rate electricity is no longer available. You can’t get new Economy 7 installs, so let’s pick an average two-year fixed tariff to get our prices, which at the moment are sitting at 34p/kWh for electricity and 10.4p/kWh for gas.

So 19,000 * .34 = £6460/yr for heating alone. You could probably reduce this further with smart TRVs or increased zoning.

For gas this would be 19,000 * .104 = £1976.

Air source works for hot water only if you don’t empty the cylinder. The maximum temperature you can achieve is about 60C, so to reheat the cylinder you’re talking hours. Or using an immersion heater, which will cut the time but shove your costs even further through the roof.

Another incorrect assumption made by EDF is that people will only heat their homes during the Economy 7 period. They’ll also have to reheat the water cylinder following a morning shower or four, and this will take place during the day with maximum grid load.

Sounds like the OP has got a rubbish install

Nope, normal gas boiler but leaky stone building. It’s already insulated as best as can be, but the doors / windows can’t be replaced due to planning restrictions so that’s where most of the heat goes.

It’s at least four times more expensive to run a heat pump than a gas boiler

Where does this come from? Are you thinking that because electricity is 4x the price for a unit of energy compared to gas that this equates to your above statement?

Have you failed to realise that whereas a gas boiler is making the heat by burning gas the heat pump is just moving it from one place to another and is therefore much more efficient than, for example, an electric radiator?

Is your life really that empty that all you can do is post vacuous personal insults?

@flaperon surely the whole point of a heat pump is you don’t need the same number of kwh coming in to generate the same amount of heat. Your figures are (roughly) correct for traditional electric heating but with a heat pump I think you’re looking at approx 300% efficiency (according to the above this might be really variable, I’m no expert) vs 90%ish on a combi boiler – so to add that to your maths

ashp – 19,000 / 3 = 6,333 * .34 = £2153
gas – 19,000 / .9 = 21111 * .104 = £2195

costs are broadly similar.

Are you thinking that because electricity is 4x the price for a unit of energy compared to gas that this equates to your above statement?

Partly. Theoretical efficiency for an ASHP can be up to 250%, but the issue is that it only produces hot water at 60C, while a gas boiler can spit it out at 70-80C but only at 95% efficiency. So you can chuck much more heat into the house for a given kW but it has to run for longer, and tends to lead to a lower average temperature, so people often feel cold and run radiant electric heaters too. Underfloor heating doesn’t work in a carpeted room either.

Probably a good idea to fit it to a new build, but as a retrofit? Struggle to see the advantages.

Definitely done the maffs wrong on that EDF example though, thinking about it.

One of the government proposals is to make it increasingly more difficult to get a mortgage for a property like the one you live to try to force the housing stock to modernize

I know ours is more of an extreme example, but there’s a bloody lot of more ‘normal but still old’ housing stock that would need to be modernised too. Every city and town in the country has streets and streets and streets of 1800s terraces, 1930s/40s semis, housing estates from the 60/70s. Even our previous house, on a housing estate that you’d think of as more ‘modern’, was actually 40 years old and built to nowhere near the environmental spec that’s needed.

I did notice that the BBC started with a happy gshp user in their bulletin last night before moving onto ashp, which isn’t exactly playing it straight is it 😡

Edit: Government need to get directly involved in insulating properties rather than leaving it to the cowboy fly by nights to just hoover money out of the system

saving money on leccy & being eco obviously appeals, but when we did this before wasn’t the conclusion that they were ok for a modern, well-insulated/non draughty house but quite tricky to retro-fit (efficiently) otherwise? And not great compared to ground-source (which is even more expensive)?

The costs of ASHP can be mitigated further, to bring them below that of gas CH. The two other ingredients that are needed are a phase change material thermal store and a smart meter – so you can access a time of use tariff. This way you can use cheap overnight electricity (I currently pay 5.1p per kWh to charge my EV 12:30-4:30) and with the efficiency savings of the ASHP the cost to run should come down considerably. You can use your thermal store during the day and still ratchet up the ASHP if required during peak hours.

I am aware that this will increase the capital outlay somewhat, but it should half the running costs.

Oh, and I saw an advert for heat pumps that said they ‘ran on fresh air’, which is more than a little misleading…

The most trustworthy comparison : https://nottenergy.com/resources/energy-cost-comparison/
puts ASHP 1.5-1.7x the price of gas last month.

Well fitted there’s a place for them. It’s just probably not the top story on the news implying they can be successfully or easily retrofitted across the UK’s housing stock.

Speaking as someone who has both an air source and a ground source heat pump I think that a lot of the talk about this initiative is disingenuous. It sounds as though it is a straight replacement of a gas boiler by a heat pump. There is no mention of the fact that the heat pump really needs an underfloor heat distribution to work best. It can use radiators but they would need to be 50% larger. It also really needs a well-insulated house as it operates at a lower temperature.

We installed the ground source pump as part of a complete renovation of an old cottage – fully insulated and underfloor heating system, in 2007. The air source was added in 2014 in a newbuild extension. We are in a rural location so the alternative was either oil or LPG, so different economics.

I reckon The Bricks comment was just a light hearted quip based on your user name, rather than a vacous personal insult….

It was. Your op was a rant (which are allowed and valid) and you user name is very close to flap on. Which to be fai you just have.

My personal opinion on the heat pump saga is that there is a massive under estimate on the cost up grading housing to make heat pump viable. There is of course the well talked about insulation, radiator sizing and pipe work sizing but with a significant increase in thermal efficiency there will be a requirement for improved ventilation. This doesn’t need to mhrv level but it is still significant extra work and expenses on top of already significant work and expenses.

Mass hydrogen generation is need for both transport (to compliment ev), plant and indeed heating.

As for grant donly going to those who can afford it, no surprise.

‘Thermal envelope’ is super important for any heatpump. One can’t just bash them in in place of a boiler for the reasons Flappy-One sites.

The entire concept is different.

They provide low grade heat continuously. They need big emitters to transfer heat because they work at lower temperatures and the thermal gradient is smaller. Because the heat is lower grade, the buildings heat demand needs to be as small as possible with decent insulation, since they can just ‘raw output’ like a boiler would

CoPs can be as high as 400% (but rarely are) but are massively affected by weather and demand, which is why correct design and implementation is super important.

ASHP in particular have got a bad rep the last 15 years because installers have treated them like boilers, and users (perhaps saddled with a poor install/design) have also treated them like boilers. They behave differently and have more limitations than a boiler.

Our old house had a ducted ASHP setup and it was amazing until it got cold and then it was awful. I’m scarred by it.

It was. Your op was a rant (which are allowed and valid) and you user name is very close to flap on. Which to be fai you just have.

Yeah, sorry. I’ve not really slept for two days and always end up a bit touchy when I’m tired. I apologise.

The difference is insulation and air-tightness –

Both difficult to do in a 1860’s end terrace with a massive gable end wall, stone floors, high ceilings, uninsulated attic room.

But you are welcome to come round and give your recommendations, I’ll invest in anything with a <5 year payback and a guarantee they won’t cause damp..

Mass hydrogen generation is need for both transport (to compliment ev), plant and indeed heating.

Hydrogen boat has pretty much sailed for domestic heat and transport. The efficiency losses and infrastructure required to distribute it will be too prohibitive

It’s at least four times more expensive to run a heat pump than a gas boiler

That’s completely untrue. They have similar running costs to an efficient gas boiler, but with some important caveats. They are efficient at lower flow temperatures which means well insulated homes with appropriately sized emitters. If your existing boiler displays its flow temperature then you can see how low it can go and keep your house comfortable during a cold spell. In my case it’s 55 deg C.

Anyone have any recommendations for water source heat pump? I have a sustained stream with riparian rights seems to me ideal, but no sign of a technology when I Google

cheap rate electricity is no longer availabl

I think it is, I switched to one with 5p/kWh for four hours overnight only a few months ago.

Edit: Government need to get directly involved in insulating properties rather than leaving it to the cowboy fly by nights to just hoover money out of the system

They are doing.

This year my next door neighbour was unemployed for a while, on UC, and so qualified for an insulation upgrade to his owner occupied home. He has loft rooms and they Kingspanned and plasterboarded the lot, basically a loft conversion except the bare rooms were already there, all free of charge to him.

I have a disabled adult daughter living with me, on PIP benefits. When our old boiler died we got a new one free of charge and at the same time insulated between our cellar the living rooms above, again, free to me.

Anyone know what size heat pump we might need? 7 bedroom leaky Victorian place with solid walls and high ceilings, in a conservation area which limits external changes.

I think it is, I switched to one with 5p/kWh for four hours overnight only a few months ago.

Wonder what could have happened in the last few weeks since your few months ago that would mean that it’s not widely availible if at all now …outside of the Tesla tarrif that I can see (for which you need a power wall and iirc solar)

my brother replaced an oil boiler with ashp a decade ago, and he likes it. i wouldnt get one instead of mains gas boiler yet. i think the money from goverment is to start driving uptake, and then drive cost down. we need to be spending on other stuff though too. if i could get external wall insulation done for a price that would give a quick payback then i’d do that fo a start.

The biggest thing the government could do is to address the disparity between gas and electricity prices. Most of your electricity bill is made up of non-commodity costs some or all of which could transfer to gas.

Mass hydrogen generation is need for both transport

Hydrogen is one of the least energy dense options for transport.

Once you add in the weight of a suitable storage tank, it makes batteries look light.