r/ukheatpumps

From May flats (and houses) which ditch gas boilers will get a £2500 for air-con. Combined with the incoming plugin solar there's an ideal situation for flats:

• Hottest days use plugin solar to cool homes
• Coldest days not rely on gas for heating -- so more stable prices.

A consideration is that air-to-air heat-pumps need a separate means to get hot-water for baths/showers/washing-up.

In need of a new heat source in a house I’ve just bought. Have been considering a viessman 200 boiler but am tempted by a heat pump from octopus. It’ll be £4-5k after the grant. Since they offer finance this would be very cheap if dragged out over 10 years, so I’m considering spending the cash on a battery to make use of cheap overnight power to run the HP.

Any downsides to this plan?

Government blurb:

>The crisis in the Middle East has impacted those on heating oil and LPG the hardest. The government is today announcing an increase to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant for properties heated by oil and LPG, taking the total grant to £9,000. This will help those households and small businesses in England and Wales most impacted by rising energy prices, particularly in rural areas, to electrify their heating and provide greater certainty over energy bills.

This is a huge announcement which will make heat-pumps affordable for those currently using heating oil. These houses typically require more retrofitting. Their grant has been increased from £7500 to a whopping £9000.

This would enable everyone currently stuck on the rollercoaster of heating-oil, with its osculating prices, an ability to stabilise their lives especially with the changes to how electricity is priced.

What's more there are tons of ways to get cheap credit such as Green Loans with nationwide offering 0% -- supported by the government -- so it should be immediately bills reducing for most households.

We have a modern house, heat loss calcs via heatpunk and also by the installer show heat losses of 2.9kw.

My options are Grant Aerona 4kw or Vaillant Arotherm 5kw. I'd prefer to go for the Vaillant based on reviews but I'm worried it may be oversized with its max output actually closer to 7kw. On the overhand the Grant could be undersized once defrost cycles and DHW are taken into account.

The Vaillant can modulate down to 2.1kw, the Grant down to 1.25kw.

Anybody have a similar heat loss and either of these heat pumps?

We are in the process of looking to maybe get a heat pump for our large house, it’s about 25 rooms. We like our house hot often having the heating at around sort of 24c. I am interested in how the heating pumps would handle this if it would be okay. I’m guessing we would definitely need new radiators ?

3 story detached 12 year old house with gas boiler for heating.

Top floor of house (two rooms and a landing) is in the roof (ie there’s no loft) so gets hot in the summer.

Gas boiler is close to end of life.

1. Can I do the £7.5k grant to replace the gas boiler for my whole house heating and then the £2.5k grant to install air conditioning just for the top floor?

2. Would my proposed set up even work (ignoring any grant considerations)?

Thanks for any advice.

So, there's not just one solution that fits all for all homes and all personal lifestyles.

You type in heatpumps and all the major companies and energy companies are quick to quote you a £7000+ wet system.

My neighbour looked into it and was saying things like I don't want all my radiators changed and a massive hot water tank. I had to explain other systems were available and cheaper to install.

Air to air is often considerable cheaper even without a grant, it's also very fast to install and generally has slightly better efficiencies. You can get away with 1-3 wall units downstairs and a single ducted system serving all rooms upstairs. The complexity of air to air is much less to a wet system too decreasing the amount of space required.

The other benefits of air circulation, dehumidification and cooling brings it into play for air quality in our increasingly air tight insulated homes.

If you exclude heating, many homes don't need hundreds of litres of hot water either.

Obviously, big families or larger homes will need a larger supply of hot water.

I'm just wondering if we are pushing wet systems as the go to solution when it's not required in all settings.

In my situation, I'm served by a single wall mounted air to air unit downstairs and a ducted system upstairs. We only need approx 60 litres of hot water a day time is mixed down to 45c, that's 30 mins of showering and 10 mins of further hot water for washing up etc. it would be madness to heat a 200-300 litre tank just to have a 15 min shower.

After experiencing both systems, air to air is substantially faster to respond and you don't need to keep it on all day to store heat in your home.

Other people have instant hot water taps, electric showers etc so they have little to no hot water requirement from a heat pump.

I just don't get why wet systems are pushed so much when alternatives can actually work better for certain homes and lifestyles.

There are alternatives for low hot water usage like electric boilers ( under the sink, immersion hot water tanks, continuous flow electric boilers, solar water heaters etc).

In all, with a bit of self DIY to fit the ducting myself, my home heat pump setup was less than £4000. £1300 for the single wall mounted unit downstairs and £2000 for the attic with extra copper runs and trunking from the attic to the patio.

Recently got a quote for an ASHP. The installer wants to make all the downstairs rads bigger. TBH, I already thought they looked a bit undersized for the house anyway.

My partner is anxious that all the extra pipework for the larger radiators we need is going to look messy. Does anyone have any information about this or links to pictures of installs?

They are also quite anxious about the process being messy, so I'm looking for whatever resources can help to reassure them.

Hi there,

My elderly mother in law lives in a detached home (built circa 1950s) with a coal fire.

The fire doesn’t seem large enough to me to the point where my wife and I have both commented that she’s burning more coal than seems necessary. The house also rarely feels warm.

There are rads that supposedly work from the heat generated by the fire but I’m not entirely sure how it works.

She looked at getting a boiler years ago but as she lives a few hundred meters from the nearest supply she was quoted thousands.

Anyway… what help is available for her? If any? I understand she’s not eligible for a BUS grant as she has no gas but am I better off looking at a wood burner or is a heat pump still viable?

Hi there, I’m moving into a new build as a first-time buyer in the next few months. The property will have an ASHP, which is completely new to me, I’ve always dealt with boilers.

We’ll be having a walk-through with the site manager and I’d like to make the most of it. My biggest area of interest is the ASHP, what should I be asking to better understand the system being installed? Are there any red flags around installation quality, or things I should keep an eye on?

As I say compete novice so any advice welcome.

Hi all,

I’m getting quotes at the moment for a heat pump to replace my old boiler.

What rules of thumb / guidance is out there to size the cylinder needed?

Installers have told me a range of differing sizes that I would need - between 150l and 250l. We’re two adults and one child, in a moderately sized four bed house.

Probably a bit of a unique situation.

We have a fairly large Bungalow in the Highlands. Attached to our Bungalow is an Annexe that we rent out as a short term let / Airbnb.

We primarily market ourselves as Dog Friendly and have been very successful at building a regular client base. But we aren't generally open in the winter, our season is April to November.

So, for five months of the year we don't heat that part of the house. Currently we're using oil but I'd like to move away from that longer term.

The annexe side of things was a new addition in 2012 and is very well insulated the rest of the house is a 1995/2000 build and is of resonsable but not amazing insulation. Annexe bedrooms are part our house but have good insulation in the walls and ceilings.

We have excellent loft space so it would lend us to an air to air central system. From what I've read, it's a bad idea to use an air 2 water hp sized for the property and then turn off 50% of the radiators as it will lead to excessive cycling.

I don't plan to remove the oil boiler for now. It will still be used for hot water until we can afford to replace the hot water tank, which will be in four or five years. There can be upto eight people needing a shower in the morning.

Goal is to get this in before Winter to reduce oil deliveries.

So, my questions.

1 - Am I barking up the wrong tree with a2a if I only want to heat 60% of the house?

2 - Ducted or Minis? The loft is completely open

3 - How noisy are the central units?

4 - If I had a professional install a central, how easy is it to install the ducts? Most rooms are plaster board straight in with the exception of our main, office and kitchen.

5 - for bathrooms. What's recommended for them in an a2a?

Thanks for any replies.

Hi all,

I’m moving next month to a detached new build with ASHP, it’s a Daikin unit.

I live in a semi detached with gas central heating.

I intend to get battery fitted in the near future followed by solar, but let’s say for 6-12 months I won’t have a battery.

I’m looking for info/advice on best electric tariff WITHOUT battery/solar so that when I move next month I can switch.

I have an EV and do charge regularly for work. I’m currently with EON Next Drive 5.2, free to exit until 2nd Nov.

Peak (6am - 12am) - 23.4p/kWh

Off peak (12am - 6am) - 2.99p/kWh

Standing charge 60p

Thanks!

I've been getting contradictory info on if it'd be possible to have an unvented cylinder in our cellar.

Currently, we have a gas boiler heating a small-ish hot water cylinder in the airing cupboard (in our 1st floor bathroom). If we upgrade to a bigger cylinder (as we'd need for a heat pump), this'd mean losing the whole cupboard, which isn't ideal. Alternatively, it could go in our attic. However, I'd rather avoid this as it's more of a nuisance for maintenance, would need us to hack open a far bigger attic hatch to get it in, and/or may be too far anyway (we have high ceilings and a 2nd floor above ground too).

So I was really hoping we could put it in our cellar, which is pretty large and would be a great place for it. But we've been told this can't be done, as unvented cylinders need discharge pipes that must go out above ground to drain off; one can't rely on a pump to get the (potentially 100⁰) water out quick enough. However, online I've seen a small number of suggestions saying it's possible.

So, my question is if having a pressurised cylinder in the cellar is allowed and, if so, what special accommodations one needs to make for it. Also, on the discharge pipe, how high up do they exit from the cylinder? Perhaps if we raised the cylinder, it could be high enough to reach the exit pipes? We currently have a sink and washing machines down there, which pump water up and out to this pipe.

Looking at surveys and quotes from both installers, both quoted for heat loss/radiator output requirements in dt50. Is this appropriate? HG still quotes a 400% efficiency , though I was under the impression we should be looking at dt30?

Also, does it sound right that HG can achieve higher efficiency by only changing the hot water tank capacity, from 210l to 300l? For 4 occupants 300l sounds a bit too big?

Thanks!