If you ask five installers what a good heat pump installation looks like, you’ll get five different answers. Ask ten, and you will get twelve. That was laid bare in our recent Homeowners’ Q&A Podcast, where a panel of Simon Wardle, Barry Sharp, Ian Trott and Mark Hall tackled one of the most important yet murky questions in renewable heating that consumers regularly ask us: what constitutes a truly “quality” installation?
What emerged was less a unified definition and more a spectrum of views, often conflicting, always passionate and occasionally contradictory. And that’s the heart of the problem for homeowners. If the industry itself can’t agree on the fundamentals, what hope does a homeowner have when they’re trying to judge whether their own system has been designed and fitted properly?
The Absence of a Blueprint
One of the first sticking points was whether manufacturers provide any kind of universal schematic or “blueprint” for installers to follow. Ian Trott from Baxi admitted that, while guidance exists, there is no standardised, gold-plated template that guarantees every installation will meet a benchmark of quality. Mark Hall argued that design is the true foundation: without an accurate, property-specific heat loss calculation and a clear design strategy, no amount of neat pipework or glossy equipment will make up for fundamental flaws.
Simon Wardle added another dimension, pointing out that many installations are carried out using rules of thumb or generic templates. In his view, a heat pump is not a plug-and-play boiler replacement; it’s part of a whole-house system that has to be tailored to the unique fabric, emitters and occupants of each property. Barry Sharp meanwhile emphasised that homeowners often measure quality in running costs or headline efficiency numbers, but those are downstream results, not proof of good practice.
The lack of alignment among the panel was striking. For homeowners, it means there’s no single standard they can point to, no clear yardstick against which to judge the system being sold to them.
Buffer Tanks: A Divisive Symbol
Nothing exposed the divide more starkly than the discussion of buffer tanks. To some, they are a red flag that the system hasn’t been designed correctly. “If you need a buffer tank,” Mark Hall suggested, “it usually means something else isn’t quite right.” Others, like Barry Sharp, countered that in specific scenarios they are a useful tool that can stabilise flow, reduce cycling and protect the compressor.
The back-and-forth perfectly illustrates why homeowners are left bewildered. One engineer will tell them that buffers are an unnecessary crutch that destroy efficiency. Another will argue they’re a sensible safeguard. Which leaves the homeowner, once again, stuck in the middle of a professional tug of war.
Beyond the Panel: Industry Leaders Speak Out
To test whether this divergence of opinion was limited to our panel, we reached out to respected installers across the UK and posed a hypothetical challenge: if you had a clean slate and no legacy system constraints, what would your “perfect” heat pump install look like? The answers, while illuminating, only deepened the sense of fragmentation.
Gregory Schmidt envisioned a meticulously engineered system starting with a full heat loss calculation, potentially using multiple heat pumps in cascade, underfloor heating spaced at 100mm, low flow temperatures of 35C and pipe sizing derived not from instinct but from thermodynamic equations. For him, the science must lead, with every detail modelled and calculated.
Damon Blakemore painted an entirely different picture: a Viessmann Vitocal double fan unit paired with MVHR, home batteries, radiant cooling and an OSO cylinder. His “perfect install” wasn’t just a heating system, it was a whole-house ecosystem, smart-grid enabled and future-ready.
Sean Hogan, by contrast, championed simplicity. His ideal system? A Panasonic heat pump, no buffer, no antifreeze valves, one zone, full weather compensation. “As simple as possible,” he stressed.
Mark Hall also leaned toward Viessmann, specifying their Vitocal twin fan unit, copper pipework and a high-performance cylinder, with solar PV and batteries bolted on if budgets stretched.
Graham Hendra, ever the straight-talker, suggested stripping things right back. For him, the “perfect” install would use a standalone heat pump hot water cylinder, no buffer, no glycol, no antifreeze valves, just properly sized pipework and either TRVs or smart valves in every room. “Just like a boiler,” he quipped… easy to wire, easy to set up, no gimmicks.
Darren Jones echoed that sentiment, putting Panasonic and Grant R290 units at the top of his list, again stressing simplicity, correct pipework and proper weather compensation.
Some installers see quality in precision engineering and whole-home integration. Others see it in elegant simplicity, stripping away unnecessary extras.
What Does This Mean for Homeowners?
This lack of consensus is more than an academic debate, it has real-world consequences. When a homeowner invites three installers to quote for a system and each one proposes a different design, with different kit, different controls and different philosophies, who are they supposed to trust?
It’s no wonder that so many homeowners end up relying on sales patter or gut instinct, only to find themselves saddled with high running costs or underperforming systems later. Without a unified definition of quality, the responsibility falls heavily on the homeowner to interrogate every design decision.
That means asking awkward questions:
- Has a proper heat loss calculation been carried out?
- Why is a buffer tank being included?
- How has the pipe sizing been determined?
- How will my be delivered consistently and evenly?
- What evidence can you show me from previous installs?
But how many homeowners are equipped to ask, let alone interpret, those questions?
Knowledge as the Only Defence
The uncomfortable truth is that the industry, even at its highest levels, cannot agree on what a “perfect” installation looks like. Some engineers pursue complex, integrated systems with every modern efficiency tool. Others insist that quality means keeping it as simple as possible.
That doesn’t mean heat pumps can’t work brilliantly, they absolutely can. It means that the definition of “quality” is still fluid and homeowners are often left carrying the risk of an installer’s chosen philosophy.
So what hope do homeowners have? Right now, knowledge is their only defence. Understanding the basics of design, knowing the right questions to ask and insisting on evidence (whether that’s a heat loss calculation, historical performance data or photos of previous installs) is the closest thing homeowners have to a safeguard.
Until the industry agrees on a gold standard, the burden will remain on consumers to sift through conflicting advice and make sense of it all.
And that, perhaps, is the most sobering takeaway of all: when even the experts can’t agree on what “good” looks like, homeowners are forced to become experts themselves.