Posted by: @gunboatdiplomat

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I got a quote via the Heat Geek upgrades scheme, the guarantee was a factor in doing that vs just contacting an installer off the heat geek map. 

Was it eye-watering? 🫣 

I emailed a 'local independent installer' this morning but even if they have capacity I'm fairly sure I won't be able to afford them. But I feel feeble limiting myself to BG & Octopus. 

@editor, @lucia my proposal was approx £7300 after the BUS including a 7kW Vaillant heat pump, 180L slimline cylinder, 8 radiator changes and some adjustments to the pipework.

The desktop price was £7700ish and came down after the survey as I needed fewer rad changes. 

For comparison octopus were £5800 (6 rad changes, 50C flow temp) and two other quotes were £7200 (ideal heat pump, no rad changes, 50C flow temp) and "about £6000 excl radiators" (ecodan, didn't get a full survey done as they were adamant they'd need a LLH).

So via heat geek where more expensive but not 10k more expensive than comparable quotes. Of all the quotes I was most happy with the heat geek - had a lot more confidence they knew what they were doing.

I do feel all the quotes were overpriced for the work, especially as it's all without VAT and is a big factor in not going ahead at this time. 

@gunboatdiplomat thank you for this. It really helps to see what other people are quoted. 

My Octopus quote (which is supposed to be fixed) is £3,036 that was issued before the survey. 

So far I'm really impressed with the installation team but I think the 'suggested' 4kw Daikin is both too small and is not very efficient when it comes to modulation.

They've offered 2 tiny rad changes to K2s and want to leave my 2 big and very old type 11s and a small Type 21 and another type 11 in the kitchen that hasn't worked for years ("oh it's probably only a valve...") I don't need any pipe adjustments - I'm a super easy install. 

I have to supply my own 2 panel designer radiator for the bathroom (I don't mind - I don't want some bog standard white clunky K2). 

But..... that's only a verbal, they haven't had the design meeting yet and thus I haven't had a written heat loss report and spec. I'm hoping they take on board my comments and at least up the pump to the 6kw & preferably improve on the rads. 

The mad thing is I have a big collection of thermal images that show how useless my (very old) cavity wall insulation is in places and the heat loss survey ignored them. It's very tick box. 

So £7500 grant plus £3k so £10.5k for a £2000 heat pump, bits of pipe and insulation, a £1000 cylinder, and couple of £100 radiators and installation, sounds a bargain. Not.

This topic has recently hit the news

https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2024/08/27/sse-claims-constraint-payments-consumers/#:~:text=SSE%20claims%20£2m%20in,Shetland%20News

the local MP wants the islanders in fuel poverty to benefit rather than the turbines stop generating 

https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2024/09/04/prime-minister-says-constraint-payments/  

are there many examples of the claimed “gaming of the system”?

I am aware of previous mis-claims for constraint payments being exposed but can’t refind them.

REF a charity are quoted and they are new to me. I’m looking at their website but haven’t found their biases yet https://www.ref.org.uk/about-ref Are they well known to others here?

An interview with Gregg Jackson, well worth the 70 minutes; a number of topics discussed in this forum are raised.

Regards, Toodles.

In a move that potentially promises to benefit homeowners across the UK, NIBE has announced a partnership with British Gas. The collaboration aims to strengthen the service and maintenance network for NIBE heat pumps, ensuring faster response times, broader coverage and improved support for customers.

With over 40,000 NIBE heat pumps already installed in the UK, demand for reliable servicing and maintenance is growing rapidly. This partnership will see British Gas become an approved NIBE service partner, providing homeowners with access to a larger network of trained engineers.

What This Means for Homeowners

For homeowners with NIBE heat pumps, this partnership brings several key benefits:

• Faster Response Times: With British Gas engineers joining the NIBE service network, callouts and servicing requests will be handled more quickly.
• Broader Coverage: The collaboration expands the geographical reach of NIBE’s service network, ensuring more homeowners can access support when needed.
• Improved Spare Parts Availability: Installers and homeowners will benefit from better access to spare parts, reducing downtime for repairs.

NIBE’s existing team of field service engineers will continue to operate as usual, maintaining the high standards of service customers expect.

Training and Expertise

A key part of the partnership involves training British Gas engineers to service and maintain NIBE heat pumps. This initiative not only enhances the skills of one of the UK’s largest energy service providers but also ensures that homeowners receive expert care for their heating systems.

Paul Smith, Managing Director of NIBE UK, commented: “Ensuring robust service and support is crucial as we transition to sustainable heating. This partnership allows us to scale up our service capabilities while maintaining the high standards we are known for.”

Supporting the UK’s Net Zero Goals

The collaboration aligns with the UK government’s push towards low-carbon heating solutions and the Warm Homes Promise. By improving the availability and quality of heat pump servicing, NIBE and British Gas are helping to make sustainable heating more accessible and reliable for homeowners.

Mark Berryman, Managing Director at British Gas Services, added: “This partnership will allow us to provide even more homeowners with the reassurance of expert servicing and maintenance. As the UK moves towards net zero, collaborations like this are essential for delivering a greener future.”

I noticed this Telegraph article on my news feed yesterday:

QUOTE

Peter and Anne Watts made headlines when they became one of around four British households to have an air-source heat pump fitted in 2008.

That Mr and Mrs Watts, 88 and 82 respectively, had installed a heat pump a decade before the likes of Boris Johnson seized upon them as the future of home heating was highly unusual.

“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts. “In the days afterwards, we got a call from the BBC – I thought it was a prank call from the neighbours.”

Yet 17 years on, the pump is nearing the end of its lifespan – and the price tag for a replacement is £17,000, around £10,000 more than they paid for their original.

UNQUOTE

£17k sounds a lot for new ASHP.  It was on the Money pages, so possibly not written by anyone with relevant experience or knowledge.

Interesting @downfield

I suspect the Telegraph has published that story a couple of days early.

I would expect to read about Mr & Mrs Watts' heat-pump in an article dated 1st April.

@transparent Ha!  well spotted

I wasn’t surprised to read that the Telegraph believes that renewable energy was the problem for yesterday’s Iberian power cuts. Clearly it won’t have helped since it has no inherent inertia, (a technical term for traditional generators having large flywheels that run at nearly a constant frequency).

As usual the FT may have got closer to root cause in their report of power lines subject to overheating and carrying too much power in suddenly very warm air. That caused the frequency to change.

I look forward to finding out eventually to what was really the problem! Our colleague @transparent is usually better informed than the rest of us.

No surprise the Telegraph has jumped to their predictable hasty conclusion. The subject of grid supply and demand balancing and grid resilience is a complex one. I have no expert knowledge, but grid infrastructure ages and can fail - for example, the substation transformer failure and fire at Heathrow. Didn't take long for the UK media to hold a 'Spanish Inquisition' on that incident - fingers of blame pointing in all directions.

But just think how many thousands of miles of HV transmission lines make up most country's grid systems. One failure should not cause a cascade effect eventually bringing an entire grid down - but sometimes systems don't respond quickly enough or in the manner they are intended to, or the failure mode was not foreseen and mitigation and adequate contingency measures were not in place. Simple human error can play a part too. Time will tell with the Iberia grid failure, but that won't stop the naysayers & politicians wading in first.

Considering how little investment there has been in the UK National Grid HV and LV systems for so many decades, it is remarkably resilient - that's probably testament to the good engineering that went into the original design and creation, and some good luck, rather than good management and adequate investment today by privatised corporations and DNOs. As the UK increasingly electrifies the grid's resilience will get tested from time to time, and we should all plan for that day when the power suddenly goes off. It happens to us in the winter storms, usually due to overhead line or underground aluminium cable failure in the part of the grid owned by our local DNO Northern Powergrid.

Quite a few smaller scale solar farm and wind farms have experienced premature equipment failures where they convert the generated power to the local grid specification requirement. Some of these projects are hurriedly designed, often by contractors with relatively little subject matter experience, poorly specified - sometimes using cheaper and inferior material specifications (example: aluminium instead of copper), and purchased at the lowest cost. Short-cuts are made on best practise equipment protection and isolation schemes. The result? Some are failing prematurely as a consequence. 'You get what you pay for'

[EDIT] - and even while typing this, meanwhile in London.... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2wvz4pjryo