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On the basis of my recent experience trying, and failing, to get one installed I’m in the ‘never say never but will wait until I can find an installer I can trust’ camp at the moment. What is clear from the research group is that the Government/industry is going to set up a web based independent and trusted single source of information about all things heat pump, comprising finance, installers, the journey (and what’s involved in the actual installation), actual running costs using a database of real households, real life stories and so on. We were shown the prototype web site. It still needs a lot of work but it seems a very positive step to demystifying the process and allowing householders to make evidence based decisions on whether heat pumps are right for their circumstances. 

 

Hi @davesoa

Difficult installers? It’s  all about the Low Hanging Fruit! You’re not the only one who has had difficulty getting an honourable provider.

I have a theory about the cowardly behaviour of the previous and current HP installer scheme situation:

lf a customer asks “too many” questions they are quickly dropped as a prospect And get migrated into the “problem client folder”.

I went through 5 quotation processes before finally getting an installer who appreciated the groundwork I had already done and the lengths I had gone to to make their installation trouble free. 

The stories of others experience on this forum seem to hold true to this behaviour of the installers only chasing the easy fit outs. Judging what people like yourself and  @jamespa have experienced it seems to be a pervasive attitude.

so the idea of a web site reporting customer complaints might well backfire. I would need to see how the government will clamp down on the prejudicial cherry picking industry they have created.

was it not “octopus energy” who even quoted low hanging fruit when it launched its HP Installation programme?

Copied across from the Hello thread

Also copied from Hello topic:

Posted by: @davesoa

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I did ask Octopus for a quote last year and they spent the best part of the day doing the calculations. Sadly they then declined to quote saying they could only handle ‘standard’ installations. My house is a hybrid of different construction periods and didn’t fit their model…then. They would be the only installer I’d trust at the moment. 

Posted by: @davesoa

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I am going to have a heat pump ready unvented hot water tank installed in any event. 

Why are you taking the route of getting a major, national Energy Supplier to quote for a heat-pump?

The quality of their installations will vary according to which team (or sub-contractor) they choose for your site.

Have you any objection to using a local company?
Aren't they more likely to value their reputation in the area, and thus put in the effort to get it right?

2: Do you mean that you're intending to have a new cylinder put in before the heat pump?

Did you read what @jamespa wrote earlier in the Hello topic about the MCS rules requiring a heat-pump installer to remove a perfectly good cylinder in order to replace it with one which matches the MCS design specification?

Do you think that sort of detail is likely to be offered on a 'single-source website' compiled by the government with the support of the energy industry?

@sunandair I would concur with that, I contacted 20 or more installers; the majority didn’t even have the decency to reply! Octopus were very thorough but mine was a ‘non-standard’ install that they could not cope with. MCS does seem to wag the tail - to the extent that the BUS grant MUST go through one their accredited installers or you don’t get the grant at all. Whether being MCS accredited guarantees a good installation is still open for debate I feel. I contacted companies with a list of wehat I required and where it should be installed - as suggested earlier, that seems to put many a lazy company off anyway. I would like to have gone with Octopus but just not feasible I’m afraid. Regards, Toodles. 

@transparent Some great questions. 

A brand is a short cut to a buying decision. I am impressed by Brand 'Octopus' and have been a customer for many years. I can talk to humans, not bots, they have sorted out any problems I have quickly and, when I had the heat demand calculations done they further impressed me with their comprehensive, personal approach. A national brand cares for its reputation, and therefore has a reputational risk if all goes wrong and they fail to fix it. Octopus are unlikely to go into receivership soon. Every major supplier sub contracts - Ford, Apple, Microsoft, Virgin. They have processes in place to maintain a 'standard' and policies to deal with the outcomes when the standard fails. Which it does from time to time. I would have no issue using a local supplier, just that no such local 'brand' exists where I live.

Yes I did read what @jamespa wrote and good points they were as well. However I don't actually need a heat pump, my gas boiler functions perfectly well. I'd rather not pump the 3 tonnes of CO2 it produces into the atmosphere annually. However, rationally, if I took the £10k that a heat pump will cost me and put it in long term savings that £10k will be worth £13.5k approx in 10 years (assuming all sorts of things about compound interest and opportunity costs). That's a lot of gas. A heat pump is unlikely to save me much in running costs unless the ratio of gas/electricity changes. It's a lifestyle decision that I don't have to take (but would like to).

I am entirely agnostic about the proposed web site, might be good, might be bad. I don't have enough evidence to form a strong opinion. I actually don't know who is behind the idea, we weren't told. I use Trustpilot/TripAdvisor/Amazon/Which reviews and so on to guide me when choosing products and services. Nothing works in a political vacuum so I take any endorsement with a degree of healthy scepticism.

Posted by: @transparent

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If not, what needs to change?

I still think the biggest obstacle is price, both installation and running costs. Even with the BUS grant, a heat pump is going to cost a lot more than a gas boiler, and for most people heating is a utility, something unglamorous that just needs to be sorted at minimum cost. People also know that electricity is expensive, and even if they look into and get the COP thing, I think many will still assume electric heating must be expensive. And let's not forget, there is a wages and cost of living crisis going on right now. Why would anyone spend more than they need on a utility?

My own experience (based on my historical and current data) is that my heat pump uses about the same amount of energy (kWh) per year as my oil boiler used to, but because oil kWhs are cheaper than electric kWhs, my heating is more expensive to run using a heat pump. This has nothing to do with being an old leaky building, I am just comparing usage and costs for the same building for each energy source. The 'where has my COP gone' question still remains (the one about why is the energy in roughly the same for both heat sources, when the energy out should differ by a factor of 3 of more, yet the house is not three times warmer than it was).  

I appreciate it is unfashionable in some circles, but I think the only way heat pumps will become mass market is by throwing money at householders in the way of substantial grants. Consider for a moment some of the figures (round UK figures):

Around 60,000 installs in 2022 (40,000 in 2021, so some growth - but for how long?)

Around 30 million households

Very roughly, if 1 million heat pumps were installed annually (one of Climate Change Committee's Dec 2020 Sixth Carbon Budget comedy targets for 2030), then it would take 30 years to get in effect all households on heat pumps. At 100,000 installations per year (perhaps where things will max out given current trends, who knows? I don't - this is just a rhetorical point) it will take 300 years. Get some frozen peas from the freezer, and count out 300 of them, and spread them on the kitchen table. That's how many years it's going to take...

Or think back 300 years, to 1723. George I was on the throne, Walpole was prime minister, Adam Smith was born and Sir Christopher Wren died. Waterloo was almost a century in the future... From 1723 to now is the same time frame as now to getting all UK households on heat pumps. 

"If not, what needs to change?" - funding. On a huge scale.    

Posted by: @transparent

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2: Do you mean that you're intending to have a new cylinder put in before the heat pump?

Did you read what @jamespa wrote earlier in the Hello topic about the MCS rules requiring a heat-pump installer to remove a perfectly good cylinder in order to replace it with one which matches the MCS design specification?

Hopefully I didn't say quite that (and if I did, I apologise)!.  I base my more nuanced comments on 

1. reading the MCS rules

2. getting 10 quotes for ASHP retrofit to my house none of which make much sense to me as an engineer/physicist, although I can understand the human motivation for them

3. listening to what others have to say on this forum and on buildhub

The MCS rules require that, unless its not reasonably practical, the HP must provide 100% of the space and water heating.  So that gives them a power base from the start

Most existing DHW cylinders have a coil which is 'too small' for ASHP, so the default is to replace them (there are at least two work-arounds, but none of the quotes I received considered either).

If you pre-fit a cylinder with a 3sq m coil that particular argument goes away, so long as they are 'happy' with it.  They still may want to upgrade the HW feed pipes from 22 to 28mm and the CW feed from 15 to 22mm, neither of which is necessary in many (probably most) cases, but they may want to do it anyway and of course if they do will tell you its 'necessary'.

And then of course there is always the possibility to argue over the protective arrangements (basically the arrangements to ensure that if it overheats it doesn't explode, specified in building regs).  The requirements are clear, but there could be different interpretations of these (particularly if it suited the installer having regard to the above).

However: Many quotes are based on using the HP manufacturers 'pre-plumbed cylinder', which basically means that the installer can employ a rookie plumber and they cant get it wrong because its only about 4 pipes to connect up.  These guys may want to replace the cylinder with the HP manufacturers pre-plumbed one even though the existing one has a sufficiently large coil.  They wont tell you thats the reason, they will use one of the 'reasons' above (or, if they think you are gullible, something else completely spurious).

So the message, based on my personal experience of getting 10 quotes, is that I wouldn't be at all confident that at least some prospective installers wont find a way to argue that you must replace a HP ready DHW cylinder, because it suits them to propose a pre-plumbed solution.

Sadly the demand exceeds the supply currently so the industry can dictate its own terms.  The MCS brigade are doing a great job (for them) of preserving their stranglehold on the market, limiting the supply and preventing it from being opened up to others.

Posted by: @cathoderay

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My own experience (based on my historical and current data) is that my heat pump uses about the same amount of energy (kWh) per year as my oil boiler used to, but because oil kWhs are cheaper than electric kWhs, my heating is more expensive to run using a heat pump. This has nothing to do with being an old leaky building, I am just comparing usage and costs for the same building for each energy source. The 'where has my COP gone' question still remains (the one about why is the energy in roughly the same for both heat sources, when the energy out should differ by a factor of 3 of more, yet the house is not three times warmer than it was).  

If that is the case (which I can, sadly, easily believe) then its very badly set up indeed.  The energy used should be about one third.  Running costs should thus be of the same order.

If you post some details perhaps I and others could make some suggestions: Whats the flow temperature, What emitters do you have (rads/ufh/combination) is weather compensation enabled, have you got any thermostats/TRVs other than the controller for the heat pump.

Posted by: @transparent

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... which raises a number of questions in my mind:

1: Would home-owners considering a heat-pump trust a single-source website about heat pumps if set up by the government and industry?
Or is it more likely that they'd trust this forum as an informative, trusted site?

2: Is the reticence to have a heat-pump due to lack of information from, or trust in, the heat-pump manufacturers, or is it a distrust of the installers?

3: Are heat-pump installs falling short of targets because of the regulations and criteria being imposed by government and/or MCS themselves?
Would a website overcome this issue?
If not, what needs to change?

My answers in short to the questions asked (I can provide more detail on request):

1. No, I would trust this and other forums.  Government/Industry website is just a cheap sticking plaster/marketing.

2. Installers, and more specifically MCS, are the problem not manufacturers (that's easily evidenced, other countries in Europe install many more HPs than we do, the products they have available are the same)

3. Govt regulations are preventing competition (and particularly preventing small businesses entering the market), essentially establishing a monopoly and under-supply in MCS, through the BUS and through the PD rules. 

However there is also the problem that retrofit of a HP requires some better system design than has traditionally been the case in the heating market, and there is a shortage of skills to do this.  Both need to be addressed, addressing one without the other will fail.  A website wont fix this issue. 

What needs to change is

a) Support schemes for training in cost effective yet functional system design/engineering for heat pump retrofits. 

Create a plan to grow these skills to the extent needed to deliver 1.4M retrofits per year from: new entrants, existing (willing and able) plumbers and electricians, engineers from other branches of engineering

b) linked to (a) develop a toolbox of accepted work arounds/engineering solutions for problems commonly encountered (eg how to deal with DHW in various situations, how to right-size as opposed to oversize the wole-house demand (simple really, but we don't do it))

c) Make the following regulatory changes to open up the market to competition and a much wider installer base:

1.        Permitted Development rules in relation to air source heat pumps amended to remove all reference to MCS.  The noise condition only in MCS-020 to be incorporated into the PD rules (without reference to the spreadsheet being completed by an MCS engineer)

This will address the problem that, as things stand today, only systems designed and installed by an MCS contractor are Permitted Development and, as such, import into planning rules engineering considerations which are well outside the scope of planning.

2.              Permitted Development rules in relation to air source heat pumps amended to allow 2(?) ASHPs provided that the combined noise meets the noise condition (and the other PD rules are met in relation to both)

This will allow a combination of A2A and A2W heat pumps, or other two pump installation, without material negative effect on the built environment

3.              Grant support under the BUS or similar to be available wherever a HP is installed to replace a gas boiler (used for domestic heating and the primary source of same) by a contractor accredited under NICIEC, NAPIT, GasSafe (list of organisations to be expanded), without regard to MCS or other complex design rules.  Boiler removal part to be by a GasSafe engineer who signs off that its was previously in service and that he has audited against premises gas bills (to prevent fraud on the BUS).  Support reduced to £1K if A2A installed as a part-replacement (conditions, and whether a later full replacement attracts a grant, to be defined)

This will open up the market further and allow, for example, a separately contracted consultant to design the system to the person who physically installs it, currently forbidden under the MCS rules (much like the architect-builder relationship)

4.              No Vat on HP at purchase - regardless who/where/how

This will remove the discrimination against plumbers who fall below the VAT threshold (who currently cannot reclaim the VAT on the purchase) and  against self-installers

I cant see any of this happening until some intelligent consumers and some independent engineers/physicists/people who actually understand this stuff but are not linked to a pressure group are involved in policy making.  There are engineering and consumer as well as commercial and human factors at play here and an independent view of the first two is vital to balance and challenge the vested commercial interests.  I fear that the civil servants involved, bright and dedicated though I am sure they doubtless are, may be too reliant on the industry for the facts and not sufficiently well equipped to challenge them on basic engineering/physics questions (and we know our MPs are not).

(Incidentally, Im really serious about the last point.  Imagine Covid without Whitty and van Tam - we would have been in a right pickle without strong people who actually understand what they are talking about, but are not linked to any particular cause other than the public good, ensuring that the politicians couldn't easily hide behind half-truths or plain lies)

Alternatively (much, much similar, but of course politically unacceptable) just do what the EU is doing https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/05/02/eu-releases-strategy-for-heat-pump-rollout/  

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @cathoderay

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My own experience (based on my historical and current data) is that my heat pump uses about the same amount of energy (kWh) per year as my oil boiler used to, but because oil kWhs are cheaper than electric kWhs, my heating is more expensive to run using a heat pump. This has nothing to do with being an old leaky building, I am just comparing usage and costs for the same building for each energy source. The 'where has my COP gone' question still remains (the one about why is the energy in roughly the same for both heat sources, when the energy out should differ by a factor of 3 of more, yet the house is not three times warmer than it was).  

If that is the case (which I can, sadly, easily believe) then its very badly set up indeed.  The energy used should be about one third.  Running costs should thus be of the same order.

If you post some details perhaps I and others could make some suggestions: Whats the flow temperature, What emitters do you have (rads/ufh/combination) is weather compensation enabled, have you got any thermostats/TRVs other than the controller for the heat pump.

I raised this paradox (the 'disappearing COP') in another thread a while back and didn't really get a satisfactory answer. The best I got was something along the lines of something else must have changed to explain the paradox, but no one really knew what that something was, apart from perhaps changing from timed heating using oil to 24/7 heating using the heat pump. I was left wondering, and still do wonder, whether we have got something fundamentally wrong with our assumptions about heat pumps. I would therefore very much welcome your thoughts.

I should add I think this discussion does fit in this thread, as the potential for the paradox is perhaps something prospective heat pump owners should know about, ie they may not get any savings by switching to a heat pump.

Property: old leaky building, 3 bedrooms. Listed, limited opportunities to improve insulation, draft proofing and secondary glazing being the main options after loft insulation. About one third (the most leaky ones, ones that had a gale of cold air coming through them) of the windows are now secondary glazed. It is very time consuming because nothing in the windows is square or level, so a lot of prep is needed. They key point here is the house is now better insulated than it was when I used oil, so the heat loss and therefore demand should be less. The building itself, old sandstone cottage with solid ground floors, has a high thermal mass, warm up and cool down are both very slow.

Heating system: standard ASHP with plate heat exchanger, a legacy of Freedom Heat Pump's warranty requirements. The 'requirement' has been discussed many times in many threads. PHE's are not 'a requirement' (above and beyond Freedom's fancies) and can be removed, with marginal efficiency gains. I haven't removed mine, as they also have pros as well as cons (eg separating primary and secondary circuits). All rads (no UFH) upgraded to K3s (plus two K2s), as large as could be fitted in the available space, but space is seriously limited (usually by floor to window sill height) so even the largest possible rads still need a high LWT to meet MCS 'requirements'. The system was designed to run with a LWT of 55 degrees when minus 2 outside. After tweaking the weather comp curve, I found 58@-4/35@15 achieves stable design temps in all but the most cold weather. During the cold snap last December the house was about two degrees below design temp, the rest of the time it was fine. All rads are balanced (by lockshield valve) and all have TRVs but these are all 100% open 99% of the time, the balancing controls the room temp. I run the system as a standard weather comp setup ie on 24/7, and let the curve do its thing. On warm sunny days in autumn and spring solar gain is significant, maybe adds two degrees to room temp. I don't bother to micro-manage the weather curve (but may one day automate that, see other threads).

Subjectively, the house is about as warm now as it was when I used oil. There is certainly no order of magnitude difference, it feels pretty much the same. It may be a bit warmer overnight, but as I am asleep most of the night, I don't really know. 

Fuel use: I almost always had my oil tank filled once a year in the summer (heating oil was supposed to be cheaper in the summer) and so have very accurate records of annual use. What went in to fill the tank was what I used over the last 12 months. As well as the main incoming meter, I also have a dedicated external heat pump kWh meter, and so I know exactly what the heat pump uses. By applying a curve (derived from recent weekly readings) to the annual oil use, and converting litres to kWh (1L = 10.34kWh), I can estimate my weekly kWh in (used) when I was using oil, and plot that against current kWh in (used). At this stage, no corrections have been made for efficiency etc, this is just the raw kWhs going into the system. The plot looks like this (note this and everything else in this post is in kWhs ie units of energy, not GBP ie units of cost, which obviously depend on past and current prices):

As you can see, usage is broadly similar. I think maybe I used slightly less energy last autumn as it was mild (until the December cold snap) and slightly more this spring as it has been cool, other variations are less easy to explain eg the drop in use in this January (perhaps because it was a mild January?). 

And now for the paradox. The above chart is simply energy consumed with no adjustment for efficiency. If we now estimate energy out, ie that delivered to the house to heat it, by applying estimated efficiencies of 80% for oil (it was an efficient but old boiler) and 300% for the heat pump (which is about what my SCOP is) then we get this: 

And therein lies the paradox. Apparently, the heat pump needs to deliver about three times as many kWhs to achieve roughly the same room temperatures. Or, to put it another way, my COP appears to magically disappear: using just energy in and actual room temps (as opposed to modelled/imagined energy out), my implied COP is give or take 1 (same building, same or slightly less heat loss now than in the past, same-ish energy in now as in the past to achieve broadly the same room temps, ergo overall system efficiencies must be broadly the same). Which begs a whole lot of questions, not least whether there is something horribly wrong with the whole heat pump narrative thing.

Note that the old leaky building thing is irrelevant to the paradox, because the heat loss remains broadly similar because it is the same building. It is in effect a variable that in the case of one house doesn't vary (or if it does, only by a small amount).   

Key take home message for prospective heat pump owners: this is real data, albeit from one house, not some fancy modelling claptrap (apart from the second chart, which models the presumed heat delivered, but makes no sense (well, that's modelling for you) - how can the same house need twice or three times the amount of energy to achieve the same outcome?). What it tells you is that heat pumps may use roughly the same amount of energy as fossil fuel boilers to heat your home, which (depending on relative costs per kWh) means your heat pump may cost considerably more to run than a previous fossil fuel system.

@cathoderay I've seen this question a few times around the Internet.

Your paradox, enigma, question, anomaly, oddity, etc.

Has a simple answer, you did not measure the heat output of a full year oil usage to compare it with the heat pump.

Your paradox is driven by a lot of unknowns that cannot be answered without exact measured data.

You need to forget about the oil, focus on obtaining a SCOP of over 3.5, install a heat and power meter so you can track and tweak so you avoid running with a lower COP because the system might run random rather than calculated.

On heatpumpmonitor I see HP's with COP's of 1.5 or 2 or 2.5 from people that clearly have access to data, so all it takes is to look at what doesn't work, because if the HP itself it's fine technically then the science should be same as for those that show a COP of over 3.5...4

Posted by: @fazel

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Has a simple answer, you did not measure the heat output of a full year oil usage to compare it with the heat pump.

I don't think so. Consider the facts I presented (measured use), and the assumptions I made (efficiencies), and while the latter are only estimates, the paradox is still so large it makes no sense. Exact measurements of the heat output from the oil boiler cannot be calculated because it no longer exists, but the heat output from the heat pump can be measured and is measured (see other posts of mine), that's where I got the SCOP from. But the paradox remains:

Same house, broadly the same heat loss (only now probably a bit less, so current heat demand a bit less than when I had oil)

Broadly the same energy in (use) with both oil and heat pump

If my oil boiler had around 80% efficiency and if my heat pump has a SCOP of around 3 (ie 300% efficiency) then the delivered (energy out) heat with the heat pump is almost 4 times (300 / 80 = 3.75) what it was with oil

Yet the house has roughly the same warmth as it did before. Surely if almost four times as much energy was being delivered, it should be substantially warmer. But it isn't. That's the paradox.