Post-Traumatic Heat Pump Stress Disorder

This was never supposed to be like this.

Heat pumps were sold to homeowners as a safe, sensible step forward… cleaner heating, lower running costs and proper consumer protection if something went wrong. Trust the process. Trust the accreditation. Trust the logos. Trust MCS.

And yet, over the years, hundreds of households have been thrown under the bus.

At Renewable Heating Hub, we don’t just see statistics… we see the human fallout. We receive emails and DMs from homeowners who are cold, exhausted and emotionally broken by systems that don’t work as promised. People who did everything right and still ended up trapped in homes that never warm up, staring at electricity bills that trigger dread rather than comfort.

We’ve heard from couples pushed to the brink of divorce. From parents ashamed their children wear hoodies indoors. From people in social housing who feel utterly powerless, stuck with systems they didn’t choose, can’t fix and can’t escape. Some of those messages have bordered on suicidal despair. And that is not something anyone should ever associate with… heating.

My wife and I are not therapists. We’re not equipped to counsel people in deep emotional distress. All we’re trying to do is help people be warm, feel safe in their own homes and stop haemorrhaging money. Yet time and again, homeowners come to us because the system that promised protection has vanished when they needed it most. We do what we can, but time and time again the system fails them.

This is why I’ve coined the term Post-Traumatic Heat Pump Stress Disorder (PTHPSD). Not to trivialise PTSD, but to name a real, repeated pattern of trauma caused by prolonged cold, financial fear and institutional abandonment. For the people living through it, this isn’t theoretical. It’s daily life.

And here’s the thing, this isn’t just about bad installers. It’s about what happens after things go wrong.

Homeowners are told to contact their installer. Then the MCS. Then the consumer code. Then the certification body.

And what actually happens?

They’re bounced. Passed. Deflected. Exhausted.

MCS positions itself as the body that “sets the standards” and “ensures installations are of the highest quality.” But when hundreds of households are living with cold, unstable, expensive systems that are clearly not fit for purpose, those words start to sound hollow.

Because standards that aren’t enforced aren’t standards… they’re marketing.

We’ve repeatedly asked MCS to define what a high-quality heat pump installation actually means in practice. What performance should homeowners expect? What minimum outcomes must be met? Where is the line that says this is acceptable and this is not?

There is no clear answer. No benchmark. No usable definition homeowners can point to and say: this fails the standard.

And that’s the real betrayal.

Without clear, enforceable standards, homeowners can’t argue, they can only complain. And complaints disappear into a maze designed to protect the system, not the people living in cold homes.

Thousands of installs are excellent. Many installers do outstanding work. Heat pumps absolutely can (and do) work brilliantly.

But we cannot keep abandoning the people who were failed.

This issue goes far beyond individual cases. It raises serious questions about installer oversight, consumer protection, regulatory accountability and the government’s responsibility to address the harm already done, especially when public money has funded so many of these systems.

That’s why this video exists.

Not to attack heat pumps.

Not to undermine decarbonisation.

But to say, clearly and unapologetically: you don’t get to sell reassurance and then disappear when lives start falling apart.

If you’ve lived this, the cold nights, the arguments, the anxiety, the feeling that no one is responsible, you’re not alone. And you’re not imagining it.

Watch the video. Share it. And help force a conversation that should have happened years ago.