The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps is less than a month away from shipping!

Over 35 experts.

More than 7,500 heat pumps installed or commissioned between them.

A combined 585+ years of renewable heating experience.

That’s the calibre of knowledge packed into this 200-page book.

Our experts don’t just know heat pumps, they’ve pretty much mastered them. They’ve rescued botched installs, cracked heating mysteries, fine-tuned systems and coaxed radiators back to life.

Some chapters feel like a fireside chat, others go deep into the nuts and bolts, but every one shares a single mission: to give homeowners clarity, confidence and systems that actually work.

Pre-order now and be part of the shift: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-heat-pumps-a-comprehensive-resource-for-homeowners

The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps is on Black Friday sale right now.

If anyone’s been thinking about diving deeper into how heat pumps really work, or wants something clear and practical to help make sense of quotes, controls, flow temps, radiators, etc., this could be handy.

Use code COPSHOP25 to get 25% off until 1 December 2025 (midnight).

Also makes a cracking stocking filler for anyone planning a heat pump next year or figuring out their first winter with one.

BUY IT HERE.

@editor How do I recover a draft post that I was writing and saved? I was reviewing the book.

Thanks,

Mike

@mike-patrick that's very kind of you (I hope 😀) and sorry to hear you've lost your draft.

If you saved the draft or there was an autosave, just look below box where you type, and you'll see revisions. They should be there. Please see image below.

Mike just reminded me, we got a great review from @steve81uk on LinkedIn last night.

@mike-patrick and if it's not much trouble can also please post the review on the book page: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-heat-pumps-a-comprehensive-resource-for-homeowners/

@editor 

I've just read this book (sorry not ordered via Amazon but I don't have an account). It is very interesting and full of useful pointers for anyone thinking of commissioning a heat pump and looking to educate themselves about the pitfalls. I had two main takeaways:

i) Even with the extra knowledge, remember that experts still differ in their opinions. One contributor recommended not having multple heating zones, possibly only two. I have multiple heating zones (1 in each room) and believe that I got extra points for this when the EPC assessor visited recently.

ii) I agree that consumers need to educate themselves so that they can ask important questions of their heat pump installers. That this book needed to be written is testament to the lack of sufficient technical knowledge in the industry. Consumers are having to educate themselves to make up for the lack of industry expertise. If I wrote down all the pointers in the book I would have quite a long list of questions to ask. This is indicative of the lack of assurance you can have that an installer knows what they are talking about. Thankfully we don't have to do this with a wide range of complex consumer products. This book and the number of users on the RHH indicate how much the industrty has to do to make heat pumps true consumer products. There are about 37K posts here about heat pumps compared with 17K in total for all other topics. The people posting these are not doing it to swap stories about what fun they had last week with their heat pump compared with that old gas boiler they scrapped recently! 

Keep up the good work.

Mike

@mike-patrick, thank you very much for taking the time to read the book and to leave such a thoughtful review. And no need to apologise at all about Amazon... buying it directly from us is equally appreciated!

You’ve picked up on two really important themes, and you’re absolutely right to highlight them.

On differing expert opinions: that was a deliberate choice. Heat pumps aren’t a single, solved problem, especially in the UK housing stock. Zoning is a great example... it can work well in some homes when it’s limited, designed and commissioned properly, and it can also introduce real problems in others. The aim wasn’t to dictate one 'correct' answer, but to show homeowners where the trade-offs sit so they can have an informed conversation rather than blindly accepting a design.

Your second point goes right to the heart of why the book exists. Homeowners shouldn’t have to educate themselves to this level, but right now, many do. The fact that so many people end up on the RHHn forums, asking detailed technical questions, isn’t because heat pumps are inherently bad or complicated, it’s because consistency, competence, assurance and accountability in the industry still lag behind. As you say, the goal is for heat pumps to become true consumer products. We’re not there yet.

If the book helps people ask better questions (even if that list feels long) then it’s doing its job.

Thanks again for the support, and for articulating the wider issue so clearly.

@editor 

Hi Mars

Just reading the ultimate heatpump guide - which looks to be a good general introduction for home owners to heatpumps.

I apologise but I have not read the other books yet so what I am about to suggest may already have been covered in these books.

It does seem like there is a vast amount of experience and knowledge on this forum- I have been a regular follower over the years and learnt loads - looking at the topics the same issues repeat over and over , there seems to be a pretty good consensus on what makes a good installation , and there is also a lot of brand specific knowledge and quirks.

There seems to be a gap in the market for some sort of heat pump doctor service - not everyone has the time or inclination to trawl through forums or read books just to be able to have a working heating system. My impression is that installers are more interested in installing heat pumps as more profitable and don’t always know how to optimise systems.

There are fantastic tools available such as open energy monitor  MelPump , etc for monitoring and diagnosing what it going on - sadly most heat pump brands have pretty basic monitoring so you have to be a bit of a tech head to access these tools.

There seems to be a lack of standard operating procedures in heatpump pump world - yet as above there is a consensus amongst this forum and elsewhere how to do it.

Sorry I’m rambling now what am I suggesting

1. Is there a valid business model for heatpump doctors who focus on service and optimisation rather than installation- with a basket of diagnostic tools and procedures that will quickly get to the bottom of all of the issues that seem to come up again and again on this forum.

2. Is there a market for a kind of Haynes manual for heatpumps - I could see this being a bit like the On site guide that we have for electrical installations - it just focuses on how to do the standard installation that will work well for 95% of scenarios - very prescriptive in nature and leaving little room to go off piste. I think your average tradey would appreciate this, they don’t set out to do a bad job probably but the manuals that come with heatpumps are often written in Ancient Greek and cover every possible option, leaving lots of room for make it up on the go and head scratching.

There could be a Main section which is brand agnostic covering heat loss ,  hydronic calcs. standard plumbing layouts etc  - and a number of brand specific appendixes which prescribe how to set up each brand for a basic open loop system that would cover 95% of situations.

1. Not sure what heatpump suppliers/installers would think about it - might threaten them a bit??

Probably heat geek cover a lot of this in their training as well - you have done it?

There could also be a home owner section on how to actually work the damn thing.

We have a few heatpumps in our village - most seem happy enough though probably have no idea if they are working efficiently or not - there is one installation where the owners hate the thing and if they could have afforded it would have ripped it out - egged on by the local oil boiler man. I managed to spend some time with them and bring them round - nothing more than too much zoning and undersized emitters - done by an MCS certified installer.

I spent my career in Industrial Automation and R&D - the keys to succeed are KISS (keep it simple stupid) and standard operating procedures that mere mortals can follow.

@travellingwave, thanks for the post and kind words about The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps.

On the “heat pump doctor” concept, yes, I believe there is a valid business model in optimisation-focused support rather than installation. I know a couple of "installers" that are no longer installing and are just fixing bodged installs and are very busy. Most of the problems we see aren’t catastrophic technical failures... they’re usually poor commissioning, control strategy issues, hydraulic compromises, zoning excesses or emitter mismatches. Those are diagnosable and, in many cases, correctable without ripping systems out. There are, however, many systems that need extensive gutting, and I think those are never considered.

You’re also absolutely right about monitoring. Tools like OpenEnergyMonitor have transformed what’s possible in diagnosis, but they sit outside most manufacturers’ native ecosystems. 

On the Haynes manual idea... that’s interesting. A prescriptive, brand-agnostic core covering heat loss methodology, hydronic fundamentals, pipework layouts, flow rates, emitter sizing, commissioning sequences, etc. followed by brand-specific appendices would address the KISS principle you mentioned.

The homeowner section you mention is important too. Many “performance complaints” are simply control misunderstandings. Weather compensation curves, flow temperatures, setback logic, etc... 

@travellingwave

Just to add to what @mars has said, judging by the questions we get here there definitely is a market for the things you mention, although whether they make money is another matter indeed.  A couple of times I (and doubtless others) have been asked to provide personal advice on this forum, for a fee.  I have declined because I'm not in the business, but the fact people ask shows that there is a demand.

Unlike @mars I haven't done any courses, but my feeling about the 'Haynes manual' is that there is certainly a middle ground between doing all the calculations and discovery that one should ideally do, and the 'slap it in and see/put a buffer in anyway/replace all the pipework even though its not necessary' approach.  This middle ground is what good, experienced people do.  Such people also have a feel for which cases are in the 5% to which the general assumptions may not apply, and doubtless strategies for dealing with these cases.  Similarly there are tricks in commissioning, some of which are model specific, that short-circuit some of the otherwise laborious stuff.  Good, experienced installers, who have worked with a variety of houses and a variety of heat pumps, will have worked these out.  The emergence of Heat Geek's 'zero disrupt' offering, whilst primarily marketing, is I think an example of this, and if you trawl the forums here you can also see examples where one member makes some shrewd assumptions about the problem presented by another, which again rely on 'experience'.

The success of the Haynes manual, I feel, will depend in large part on capturing these tricks (including when they wont wok) in an accessible and systematic way.  I don't think that's easy given the vast variety of the UK housing stock and customer demands, but if someone were to do this it could make a great contribution to the body of knowledge.  It is may be best undertaken by someone (perhaps like yourself, or indeed several on this forum) with relevant skills and background who is not a specialist in plumbing or heating, in combination with a couple of experienced installers who are willing to donate their knowledge.    The first of these is necessary to provide the 'intelligent non expert' viewpoint that a successful Haynes manual depends on if it is to serve as an instruction for such people, the installers provide the hands on expertise and the real-world knowledge of things that do, and dont, work.

If you do decide to do either of these, especially the manual, then I wish you luck, it might be a very valuable contribution to the industry.

Thanks Both for your thoughts.

I guess I’m a slightly bored retired engineer looking for problems to solve 😵‍💫

Like you not sure I would want to become commercially involved - I’m very lucky not to need to make a living anymore😀 But happy to be involved as a hopefully sensible pair of eyes.

As always in R&D first thing is to ask what is the problem to solve and how big is it really? Don’t reinvent the wheel.

I watched a video by MARs where he makes an educated guess at the percentage of sub optimal installations. If correct suggest there is quite a large problem.

It may be that the industry is naturally starting to get its act together as things scale up - in which case let them get on with it.

Definately think the main manufacturers are missing a trick - both in terms of driving installation standards and also in providing foolproof control systems that self optimise - I dread to think what the R&D budget for say Mitsubishi looks like , yet it takes a small start up like Adia to address automatic flow optimisation.Also Manufacturers could do a lot more on diagnostics and monitoring - Most heatpumps have all the info internally - why can’t the display have a red/amber/green indication as to how efficiently it is running? With further info to dig into as to why it is not green. There is a lot of stuff going on in industry like this (TPM. , total productive maintenance)  - e.g every pressure gauge should have a green band which indicates normal operating range.

Also just displaying a cryptic fault code is so 90s.

Agree there is always room for engineering judgement - that is why the Wiring regs book is over 20mm thick - it has to try to cover all eventualities and provide the data to allow design from first principles if this is needed. Most domestic situations fall into a relatively small sub set which is why the on site guide is a good idea.Most things are tabulated reducing the need to calculate stuff.

I don’t have sufficient exposure to the heating industry but would have thought that all of the flavours of domestic heating systems should be fairly well known and suitable design approaches identified for each.

In terms of diagnosing issues with existing systems - Open energy monitor - or indeed any other system that can collect data and display it as a trend is invaluable - of course you then need to understand and interpret what you are looking at - maybe a role for AI??

OEM is an investment in money and installation - but in fact I believe 90% of the value can be gained by just trending flow and return temps - this tells you most of what you need to know- a current clamp and external temp sensor is icing on the cake since this then gives you Carnot COP which on my system at least is always within a few % of real COP as measured by a heat meter. Such a kit can be put together for less than £100 and is non invasive  . It’s beyond me why this is not just built into the heatpump itself - MELCloud does offer trends but they are pretty clunky compared to what OEM can do.

Any way now the sun has finally come out my brain is moving away from heatpumps and on to solar panels😀