Does anyone here have a heat pump?
Do they actually make your heating bills cheaper?
The initial typical outlay seems to be ~£6k so might be more bother than it's worth but with gas prices rising so much that may be changing.
>>28087 We have them at work - are you planning to have blown air or dump heat into your existing rads?
Blown air might be a pain at home, it's tolerable in offices where it's never silent.
If you're currently burning mains gas, I don't think the costs will be lower, but if you want to be 'green', it may make sense. Not as much sense as insulating the hell out of your house, though?
I've been thinking about shutters again, more for heat rejection than warmth. Reckon there's a market for shutters with solar panels on? Obvious greenbollocks, but if it got more people to install shutters it might be a good thing?
-Can you afford it
-can you afford it after you factor in the installation cost
-can you afford it if it turns out you also need to get your main fusebox replaced at the same time
-would that money be better spent on solar water heating or solar pv if you have a suitable south-facing roof
-do you have space for it
-do you have space for it, including room to run all the extra pipework, suitably sized storage cylinder and associated gubbins.
-do you have space to replace your existing radiators with larger ones, or possibly considered underfloor heating.
-Have you already insulated your house as well as possible, including good cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, high-rated double or triple glazing, completely and utterly draught-proofing every last gap or crack.
-can you also afford and have space for fitting a heat-exchanger so you can ventilate the house without opening any windows and losing heat
Heat pumps are amazing technology but so many other things need to be in place before they make sense, using them as a magic bullet like-for-like replacement for gas is demented.
Also this video is a good watch, and is a good indication of the current state of the heat pump installation market in this country.
tldw;
Major well known heat pump sellers quote a customer for a job, they place the order, then said company takes on a local contractor to do the installation. The subby turns up looks over the plans and can see that the surveyor did a slap-dash job, hasn't measured things right and has designed a system that was impossible, forcing the subby to change the plans to fit some of the equipment in the loft which means much more materials and time is needed.
Once everything is ready the sellers technician comes to set up the system. The subby does his own research and realises that the seller is intentionally instructing all their installers to disable weather compensation so it just runs on max power all the time, this means it costs the household much more to run, but the company has this as a policy because weather compensation is very difficult to set up right and they don't want call backs from customers if its done wrong.
Also just skimming through the video should give you an idea of the massive amount of work, piping and wiring involved in a heat pump install.
