Will there be more analysis/comparisons of results?

@tim441 I wasn’t planning on any additional analysis at this stage. The purpose of the awards was to identify the top heat pump brands in the UK, based purely on homeowner feedback, and we’ve extrapolated the top 10 brands from the voting, and while the level of participation was significant, the polling was designed to answer one clear question "What is the best heat pump brand in the UK?" which we have done.

@editor OK! 
Inevitably most homeowners will only have experience of one installation so I'm not sure how much balance there was? Or is it more "most popular heat pump brand"? 
Might be interesting to try and run a further exercise where there is some "rating" and "weighting"?

Chairman Mars - you know I think you do a truly excellent job with this forum and other related activities, but I have to say this 'unique accolade' is profoundly misleading, because you don't know the denominators. What if there were ten Ecodans installed for every say Baxi heat pump, with levels of satisfaction and inclination to vote by owners being identical across both groups? Ecodans would get ten times more votes, despite being no more satisfactory than Baxi heat pumps. By all means report the results, but it is important to be clear about the methodology, and its potential biases.    

@cathoderay, you’re absolutely right that the number of installations can have an influence on the results - brands with more systems in homes will naturally have a larger potential voting base. However, it’s equally important to note that people won’t vote for a heat pump brand if they’re unhappy with its performance. For example, I personally didn’t vote for my own heat pump because my experience hasn’t been positive.

The award is ultimately about recognising the best heat pump brand based on real-world experiences. If Mitsubishi Electric has installed significantly more units and homeowners are still voting for them in high numbers, that says a lot about their overall satisfaction - be it performance, comfort, reliability or customer support. The same logic applies to any other brand: votes reflect positive sentiment, and a high volume of satisfied users deserves to be acknowledged.

This was our first year running the awards, and we deliberately kept the methodology straightforward to focus on a single question: What is the best heat pump brand in the UK? While I acknowledge there are limitations to any voting-based methodology, our goal was to celebrate brands that resonate with homeowners. This first round has provided valuable insights, and I’m confident we can refine and build on the process for future awards.

@tim441 you’re right that most homeowners will only have experience with their own installation, and this inevitably shapes their voting choices. However, the goal of this award was to capture genuine homeowner sentiment and recognise the best heat pump brand based on real-world satisfaction.

While popularity does play a role, I don’t believe it diminishes the results. People won’t vote for their heat pump brand if it hasn’t met their expectations. Satisfaction with performance, comfort, efficiency and customer support are all key drivers of a homeowner’s decision to vote. In essence, the results reflect the brands that have done the best job at delivering what matters most to homeowners.

@editor - as I said, by all means run the poll, and publish the results, but the methodology (and thereby its strengths and limitations) does need to be explicit. Not everyone is very numerate. A naive punter coming to this thread and reading only the first post might come away with a 'finding' that cannot be sustained on the results of the poll. This poll doesn't even get to the 'eight out of ten cat owners who expressed a preference' level of meaning. 

I wonder if there is any market research showing market share for the various heat pump brands? That would at least provide some context. 

Posted by: @cathoderay

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I wonder if there is any market research showing market share for the various heat pump brands?

To answer my own question, having done a rapid google search: probably not, at least in the public domain. A bit naive of me to think such commercially sensitive info would be readily available. Maybe Which? (which I happen to know is not everyone's cup of tea) will do a survey one day. To date, they have been rather low profile on heat pumps.

For next year (assuming you're intending for this to be a regular thing, @editor), could I perhaps suggest a poll with two questions in it?

My thought would be that anyone responding could say what brand they have installed and whether or not they are happy with it. At that point, although we can't get market share information, it'd be possible to divide the numbers of pluses and minuses for each brand by the number of owners of each brand to get a very crude satisfaction score per brand that was comparable across all brands. Obviously one would need to take with a BIG pinch of salt stats for any brands where only one or two installations were reported but that's the case even now.

@majordennisbloodnok thanks for the feedback. Yes, we intend to do this again next year, and we'll expand the criteria to gather more information and data, because the response was very good. 

To be honest, market share isn't something I'm overly interested in... I want to see the brands homeowners are consistently happy with, and I believe that the results of this poll provide a good insight into this.

We also have a baseline to work from now. I was surprised to see Samsung end up in the top 10, and that will be reflected in the number of installs, but as other brands get entrenched in the market (like Ideal, which is getting rave reviews from installers), I think we'll see a shift in poll numbers by this time next year.

@editor personally would like to see an in depth poll that has ratings  (say 1 -10) for each.... across a range of questions. Perhaps 10 or so questions? 
I'm sure members will be happy to help formulate...
All questions can have an option of don't know/no response