@roamingbull, interesting. And what if a property you really liked had a heat pump - would you still consider it?

Hi @goody I did go back to a gas boiler. No regrets over my decision: I get to decide how I heat the house and when and, because I don't heat it very much, my bills are way reduced. I'm definitely regretful that it didn't work out, as like you I wanted the more sustainable option, but I’d have liked more honesty in the various agendas selling it to me.

Heat pumps seem to be ideal for some people, in some places and some circumstances, which is brilliant (I wish that included me) – but they don’t work for all of us. I would like this acknowledged by green organisations and government policy so that people for whom it isn’t suitable don’t get duped and so that it’s recognised that further research is needed to find additional solutions.

@goody I can only assume you had a terrible install? My heat pump is much cheaper to run than the gas combi I had previously and my house isnt very well insulated. That sounds like a very high temperature to run under floor heating at BTW.

Can I suggest you get an expert in to look at what can be done before scrapping it? There is a good youtube video on how heat geeks fixed a bad install you could have a look at.

@bontwoody It's not always down to a bad install. For mine, the house was insulated to the max and I paid an independent expert to come in and check over the install. However, because of low income, I heat the house extremely sparingly, and a heat pump running 24/7 costs substantially more. There are circumstances where it's not the solution, which is fine, but we need (1) to acknowledge that, and (2) to develop additional sustainable energy solutions to address this.

@zoomuno You dont have to run it 24/7. I dont. However if you really only use the heating very sparingly then I think perhaps and air to air heat pump (AC) would have been a better fit for you. I have one in my kitchen. It heats (and cools) the room very quickly and is again cheaper than a gas combi to run (and install).

I dont think that reverting to gas/oil is really an option given the weather events we are seeing.

Thanks. I reverted to gas a little over a year ago and it's coping well with the cold weather (I'm still only using it when it's freezing). I previously tried intermittent use of the heat pump, but that bumped costs even higher unfortunately. I'm truly glad heat pumps are a good solution for many people on this forum, and also for people's generosity in trying to help me solve it when the heat pump was still intalled, but I think we also need to acknowledge that one size doesn't fit all. That doesn't have to change the drive to sustainability, but it could make us (society) prepare better.

@bontwoody our heat pump just can’t cope I’m afraid. It is currently 27C on the temp guage before it enters the underfloor heating mixing valve . At the time I was mistakenly told the heat pump would easily be able to cope with the existing heating system.

I was too trusting and naive especially as I used to install gas boilers etc 

We had looking at having a ground source heat pump for about 15 years 

We had Octopus around recently and he did a quick heat loss calculation and he was at 13.5kw but he didn’t include the  insulated walls and floors. Another engineer also said it was massively undersized , which I already knew anyway

Anyway , anybody want a secondhand heat pump etc ?😝😂

Posted by: @Anonymous

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I heat the house extremely sparingly, and a heat pump running 24/7 costs substantially more.

This is a common problem that gets nowhere near enough attention. The problem is two linked requirements: (1) to get a grant, you have to have an MCS certified installation and (2) an MCS certified installation has to have a heat pump that is capable of providing enough heat to heat the house to MCE room temps when it is minus something (it varies from place to place) outside. Having a heat pump leads to a third consequence, effectively a requirement, because that's how they work, you have to run the heat pump most if not all of the time. This means in many cases going from timed  fossil fuel heating where the cost per kWh of heat is a fraction of the equivalent electricity cost to an always on system using an energy source (electricity) that costs much more than the equivalent fossil fuel cost. I know this can happen, because it is exactly what happened to me, and it has happened to many others. A heat pump will cost more to run, full stop, for some people.

I don't know what the solution is, because the real problem is built into heat pumps, they can only really achieve adequate heating by running most if not all of the time. This is a simple consequence of their design, they cannot provide a fast and furious boost in the way that a fossil fuel boiler can, and as a result they have to run most of the time. What you can't do is let the building cool down when you don't need it to be warm, and then boost it back up to temperature when you need it, because current heat pumps can't do that. They take many hours if not days to recover from a significant setback. I said current heat pumps because maybe future ones will be able to run more like timed fossil fuel systems.

Until technology improves, we are where we are. We can start moving things on a bit by ditching ludicrous heat pump installation targets that will never be met, but have the unfortunate effect of making people for whom a heat pump isn't the answer feel they ought have one (or put another way, accept a heat pump isn't always the right solution) while at the same time ditching the dystopian quasi-CCP rhetoric used by too many - Model individuals who fit heat pumps in their homes will be commended in accordance with regulations, and extensive publicity will be conducted through the news media to create a trustworthy and glorious public opinion atmosphere - and adopt instead a more tolerant there isn't a one size that fits all approach that accepts that for some people, a fossil fuel system is the right solution, until such time as heat pumps can be made to run in more flexible and still affordable ways. Achieving that, more adaptable heat pumps, is what we need, not forcing unsuitable rigid requirement heat pumps onto people who can't afford them.   

Posted by: @Anonymous

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Posted by: @zoomuno

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I heat the house extremely sparingly, and a heat pump running 24/7 costs substantially more.

 

 

This is a common problem that gets nowhere near enough attention.

I 100% agree that this  needs tackling and understanding.  I have seen very little analysis of the economics of part time heating with either fossil fuels or renewables, only (sometimes wild) claims from the control gear manufacturers.

The savings through part-time or partial heating, with a reasonably well designed central heating system based on gas or oil, are nothing like as much as the control-gear merchants would have us believe (**), but there are savings and these are certainly are not as easy to realise/may not be possible with an ASHP.  

It would be interesting to run some comparisons on real world scenarios to tease this one out.  @zoomuno have you got any figures for heating/usage patterns/cost/type of house.  

** the statement is based on the thermodynamic principle of conservation of energy, but as an anecdotal (n=1) real world example, my consumption of gas decreased by 10% when I adjusted my boiler so that it heated most of the house all of the time at relatively low flow temperature rather than about half of the house part time (basically off at night and most of the day, on morning and evening) at high flow temperature - ie I ran it like I would an ASHP.  Previous to this I was following the 'received  wisdom' of only heating the parts of the house I was living in whilst I was living in them.  That sai

@cathoderay Exactly this. Thank you for saying it 'out loud' 🙂

Posted by: @editor

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@roamingbull, interesting. And what if a property you really liked had a heat pump - would you still consider it?

Think the odds of me finding a property without Ashp is far greater. 
I have thought about a new build so would have the choice again. 

Electricity needs to be cheaper. 

@goody Its unusual for a heat pump to be undersized under the MCS protocols, its usually vastly the opposite. Cant you just swap it out for a bigger one? Seems a shame as you have everything else ready. You should be able to sell the old one.