You might want to grab a cold drink from the fridge for this one; it’s going to be emotional. Some might ask, “How did that beer get cold, and where did the heat go?”
In Mental Land, where you find publications like the Daily Mail, Telegraph, and other rags, there is a common message: Heat pumps don’t work. Today, I want to explore this idea.
Let’s imagine, for a minute, that this message is true. Heat pumps, which we are all supposed to be installing to replace our boilers, don’t work. What would the world look like if this were true?
Between 2009 and 2021, I worked with heat pumps, selling these devices to plumbers who installed them in people’s houses. I’m not an installer; I’m a system designer (or was). At last count, we sold 12,000 units, approximately 1,000 per year on average.
I can think of only one example where a customer wanted it removed (it had a fault and was super noisy—it sounded horrible, and I would have removed it too), and there were no instances where we were sued for mis-selling. If heat pumps don’t work, I would be the luckiest guy alive.
Think about this: I found 12,000 people who were willing to invest in a technology that supposedly doesn’t work, and yet they didn’t complain about being left cold in their houses. The odds are that at least one of those 12,000 people must have known a lawyer. Surely, if the technology I had sold them didn’t work, the lawyers would have been called in. Dominic Littlewood and his Watchdog team didn’t pay a visit either.
I’m not the only lucky one here. Some of the world’s largest companies manufacture heat pumps—giants like Samsung, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, and more. They must all be part of the scam, too.
The idea that heat pumps don’t work is complete nonsense. Even more ludicrous is the message that they don’t work in cold weather. Are you enjoying that cold drink? How do you think it got cold? The heat was extracted from it using refrigerant, which the fridge then pumped out of the back to heat your kitchen. It’s a heat pump!
Your cold drinks reside in a place where the weather is consistently cold, and it always works. Your freezer is no different, except that the weather inside is even colder and always dark. If heat pumps don’t work, neither do fridges or freezers. A fridge is essentially a heat pump; it employs the same technology but in a more attractive box, and it doesn’t even run in reverse. Put your hand down the back of the fridge, and you’ll feel the warmth—that’s the part we use to heat the house.
All great, but you need “approved” installers to design and install the system correctly, 10 years after bore holes drilled, and the installation of the GSHP still waiting to have what was promised, a heating system that works and heats all the home. Napit inspector agreed poor design and installation, RECC, MCS not interested, heading into another winter without a fully functioning system.