Hi KundK,

The first thing that I would suggest is getting more quotes, and ask for them to be as detailed as possible.

As you are using electric storage heaters at the moment, you will no doubt see both an improvement in comfort along with a reduction in your bill.

Has anyone carried out heat loss calculations, which are not only important for sizing the heat pump, but also required for RHI payments.

Good insulation and draft proofing is always good to have whatever heating system you have, but is particularly beneficial with an ASHP system.

Other important factors is ensuring that the heat emitters (radiators) give the highest heat output, which will help the ASHP to operate in the most efficient manner, along with ensuring that the system is designed to function with active weather compensation.

Posted by: @kundk

We're planning to start our journey to ASHP in Breckland, Norfolk. We have a 3 bed bungalow built in the early '70s.

The EPC rating is E, partially due to the manual control of the electric storage heaters. No gas in the house and we aren't planning to get it in.

So the best route for heating improvement is definitely ASHP.

 

We've got a quote for almost £16K. Does it sound realistic for more seasoned forumers?

Also I hate these type of quotes, but don't think it worth mentioning it. :/

 

I assume the number quoted is for everything.  If so it looks in the right sort of ballpark, maybe at the upper end.  Bear in mind you don't need MMSP, although you will get the £1610 back in extra RHI payments. All it gets you is some extra monitoring; useful if you're interested but not essential. It's also a bit suspicious that MMSP costs exactly the amount you can claim back. My MMSP cost a bit less. 

Like @derek-m said, try and get more quotes.   

We went from storage heaters to ASHP; much, much better all round.

We've got a fresh EPC survey but not heat loss calculation room by room, just an overall energy requirement. The ASHP unit seems to be covering that.

They claim to use more quality equipments (valves, pumps, etc) hence the upper end in price. I'm good with that.

I think someone in another topic wrote that these quotes are generally looks like calculated backward from the RHI, not from the costs. But we can't really mix and match items of quotes and works.

@kundk I posted on the forum a link to doing heat loss. You can just make a copy to do it yourself, room by room. That'll give you an idea.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HAGXEC7WOhjsmXFf8Noh9CUvafc8E-DvoKn96zehmYc/edit?usp=sharing

@batalto Thanks! It's great, I'll try it.

@batalto Quick questions about your spreadsheet.

How do you calculate a mock bay window size? By the whole in the wall or the actual windows size?

I assume the external wall length includes the part where the window is.

@kundk you don't need to be 100% accurate. Just measure the window size, as they have a larger heat loss. Try to remove the window area from the total wall, it'll be more accurate for you

We went with greenscape energy, they do Norfolk as well as Suffolk 

All's Well That Ends Well

But it wasn't well at the beginning.

It started with a call from the installer on Monday evening that they slipped at the previous installation and can't start on Tuesday, just the day after.

At least on Tuesday they've delivered all the equipment, so our garage was full at the end.

But on Wednesday four guys were really here before 9am and jumped on the work.

They've removed the remaining radiators (we've removed some because of redecoration), installed the new ones, ASHP, Cylinder, pipe work, etc.
They've finished by 7pm with all the wet work. The system was filled with water and glycol. Let's wait for the sparky tomorrow.

Unfortunately he has turned up only around 11am alone. He was working on the electricity until 6pm. By that time the radiators started to warm up.
But they stopped and went stone cold again.

I was on the phone with the support first thing Friday morning. By 2pm they concluded that I need another engineer visit. But they can't send anyone until Monday morning.
That time the ambient temperature in the house was 14 degrees. And we were home with a sick five years old.
I've insisted that we need a warm accommodation until Monday. To be fair they agreed instantly and arranged an airbnb in the nearby town.

We've returned to the house Monday morning. By that time, thanks to storm Arwen, it was only 9 degrees.
The two electricians came around 10am and quite quickly fixed the problem. Turned out it was "my fault".
Last time he has installed their own thermostat when I asked him to rather install my existing Nest learning thermostat. He did, but apparently wired it wrongly and the thermostat wasn't switching on the heat pump.

From that point everything was a smooth ride. They have finished installing the MSSP and configured everything.

It took about 24 hours to warm up the whole house to 22 degrees and the hot water was heated by the immersion heater overnight.

@kundk, that's brilliant. We look forward to getting regular updates on the performance and running costs. Sounds like it's working well at the moment though which is great.

@kundk I think it's going to be the standard question around here.

Give us your weather compensation settings please