We’ve had a mention in the Financial Times. 👀

What’s encouraging is that mainstream media outlets like the FT are increasingly recognising that the conversation around heat pumps isn’t simply "heat pumps good" or "heat pumps bad". The real story is far more nuanced. Design matters. Commissioning matters. Controls matter. Installer competence matters. A heat pump is not a boiler swap, and the outcomes homeowners experience are hugely dependent on the quality of the design and installation process.

That’s ultimately why Renewable Heating Hub exists, and it's great to see we're getting recognition.

The article is behind a paywall, but I’ll attach a couple of screenshots below for context, and for those who can access it. Financial Times article is here. 

And finally... thank you to everyone here. The value of this community comes from the people contributing to it every day. 

@editor this is great news.

The circus surrounding the heat pump journey is at the centre of my new book, Britain’s Heat Pump Shitshow: How Installing a Heating System Became a National Nervous Breakdown.

It is not an attack on heat pumps. Good systems can work brilliantly, and competent installers deserve far more recognition than they receive.

The book is angry because poor work, weak oversight and useless consumer protection are damaging excellent technology, wasting public money and leaving homeowners to become unpaid heating engineers, contract lawyers and complaints administrators.

After writing and proofing it, I was struck by how little needed inventing. Put the survey, quotation, installation, commissioning, certification and complaints process in the correct order and the satire is already sitting there, clutching a certificate and explaining that the problem belongs to another department.

I suspect many Renewable Heating Hub members will recognise parts of the journey. Some of you may recognise the entire bloody production.

The book is available to pre-order directly from Renewable Hearting Hub with free shipping. RHH copies will be dispatched on Wednesday, 9 September. The Amazon paperback and Kindle edition will be released on Monday, 14 September 2026.

If you'd like to support us, you can order a copy here:

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/britains-heat-pump-shitshow/

Thank you to everyone who has already pre-ordered, shared the announcement or supported the project. It genuinely means a great deal.

The circus was already in town.

I have merely printed the programme.

Awesome! Love the title 🤣 

Posted by: @bobflux

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Awesome! Love the title 🤣 

Hmm, not so sure personally about the title.  Who is it aimed at?  Presumably not those who want a heat pump because the title doesn't include 'and how to avoid it'.  Is it aimed at people who have already decided to campaign against reductions in carbon emissions and want evidence to feed their views?  The people who should read it almost certainly wont or if they do will dismiss it I fear.

Of course @mars you are right to write the book you want.  However I think the book we now need is a very short no nonsense guide to getting it right (IE spotting the cowboys) for a typical 6kW house, which actually is relatively simple.

@jamespa, I understand the concern. The title is deliberately provocative because polite titles disappear and frankly I've seen no improvements in install quality on five years. The subtitle explains the target: How Installing a Heating System Became a National Nervous Breakdown.

The book is aimed at homeowners considering a heat pump, those already living with one, competent installers, policymakers, politicians and journalists. It is explicitly pro heat pump. The book attacks the circus of conflicting designs, poor installations, public money funding bad outcomes and consumer protection that always vanishes when somebody needs protecting.

People campaigning against decarbonisation may seize upon the title, but the content gives them a far less convenient argument. It repeatedly demonstrates that heat pumps can work brilliantly and that poor work is creating much of the hostility subsequently blamed on misinformation. Hiding those failures does not protect the transition. Fixing them does.

I have already written three serious books explaining heat pumps and how to get them right, including Bodge Buster. There is also the Heat Pump Fundamentals course. This book has a different job. It is satire about accountability, not a fourth installation manual.

A short, practical guide to identifying cowboys could certainly be useful, and perhaps that is something we should produce through Renewable Heating Hub. However, we must be careful not to make homeowners responsible for detecting professional incompetence. If a customer needs enough technical knowledge to identify a faulty heat loss calculation, unsuitable hydraulics or a dishonest performance promise before signing, the protection system has already failed. 

The people who most need to read the book may dismiss it. That is possible. Satire can still reach homeowners, policymakers and the wider public in ways that technical guidance rarely does.

A book called A Sensible Guide to Improving Domestic Low Temperature Heating Outcomes would upset nobody. It would probably also be read by nobody.

For me the whole situation now reduces to:

The industry won't change unless forced to by government, and possibly not even then.  This takes time, certainly more than 3 years.

Consumer education and consumer protection are the only ways to improve things in the absence of forced change.

The future of consumer protection in the renewables sector is dependent on only one thing, namely which party is in power after the next election (because anything the current government changes will take the rest of the current term to implement, and a government hostile to renewables will help inevitably find ways to frustrate it.)

The future of renewables more generally depends on only one thing, namely which party is in power after the next election.

Thus consumer education is the only non- political thing we can do which changes things.  

In our increasingly polarised discourse it's now as simple as that for me, and everything is filtered through that lens.  Either educate people (or not depending on outlook) or campaign, directly or indirectly, for a party that embraces your chosen approach to renewables.

Moderators please feel free to delete this post if you feel it violates forum rules.

@jamespa there's no need to delete this. You’re discussing the political context surrounding renewables, not campaigning for a particular party, and I think the distinction is obvious.

I understand why you’ve reduced the situation to those choices, although I’m not convinced it is quite as binary. The government of the day clearly influences the direction, funding and pace of the transition, but the industry does not need to wait for another election before behaving better. Certification bodies can improve oversight. Consumer codes can stop passing complaints around. Manufacturers can police their approved-installer networks. Grant administrators can examine outcomes rather than counting redeemed vouchers. Installers can peer-review designs, guarantee performance and stop protecting dreadful work through professional silence. None of that requires a change of government. It requires the organisations already holding authority to use it. I've covered all these things in the book.

Consumer education is essential, 100%, and it is a huge part of what we try to provide here, but it cannot become the principal safety system for a complex installation costing £10,000 to £20,000 and supported by thousands of pounds of public money. We should help homeowners ask better questions, recognise warning signs and understand what they are buying, but we should not expect them to become heating designers, hydronics specialists, contract lawyers and complaints administrators simply because the professional protections failed. "Educating the customer" is IMO too easily turned into professional failure repackaged as consumer homework.

There is also a third route between education and party politics... evidence, scrutiny and sustained pressure. Publishing poor outcomes, exposing broken complaint processes, challenging misleading claims and refusing to let certified failures disappear into closed files can force change long before legislation catches up. That pressure can come from homeowners, competent installers, forums like ours, journalists, manufacturers and, occasionally, a profane little book.

Political leadership will undoubtedly shape the future of renewables. But a warm house, competent design and functioning consumer protection should not depend on how somebody voted. I do not think that those are not ideological luxuries. They are the bare minimum the industry should already be delivering. And frankly, I'm fed up with the inaction.

All of the things you say the industry could do are fair, but it won't unless there is either government or commercial pressure.  I can't see a commercial pressure to change at present, if anything the opposite, the current approach protects installers rather well so far as can be ascertained from what we see here.  Of course if people stopped buying from the scammers and incompetents there would be commercial pressure.

I think the education thing is worthy of serious debate.  In most fields of consumer choice we expect to encounter a range of product quality from almost useless to excellent in all respects.  Consumers educate themselves by reading reviews (for which there is a while industry), talking to others and developing an understanding.  This applies to the most technically complex consumables such as cars and computers.

Yet somehow we think that construction projects are different.  Consumers apparently don't need to know or understand anything, not even something simple like how many showers they want in quick succession .  Why is that the case when it isn't in other fields?

I grant you that In the ideal world every product should be fully fit for purpose, but we live in a world run by humans, some of whom are frankly crooks.  That isn't going to change, ever.  So perhaps we need to get off our high horses and accept the world for what it is, imperfect.  All the changes that you (and I) say the industry could make are very fair, but why are they going to bother(and, frankly, do the people 'in charge' have the intellectual capacity to bother, or are the very best people just running their own businesses despite the industry bodies rather than because of them?)

The dodgy bits of the construction industry (just like the dodgy bits of, say, the finance industry) relies on consumer ignorance and wrapping everything in technical mumbo jumbo.  We facilitate that by supporting the argument that consumers 'shouldn't' have to enquire. Maybe, just maybe, consumers should enquire to the same extent as they would if buying a car or a computer.  This doesn't mean try get have to be able to design either, they just have to know the right questions to ask and how to interpret the answers!

@jamespa, I think we agree on about 80% of this. Where we differ is the point at which sensible consumer education becomes the transfer of professional responsibility onto the customer.

Homeowners absolutely should understand what they want. How warm should the house be? How many showers are likely to run consecutively? What space can be surrendered? What disruption and expenditure are acceptable? They should compare installers, ask questions, request references and understand the broad principles. That is exactly why RHH, the forums,  the books and the course exist.

The car and computer comparison begins to break down, however, because those are largely standardised manufactured products. A buyer can compare the same model across reviews, specifications and thousands of other owners. A heat pump installation is usually a bespoke engineering and construction project assembled inside one peculiar house. Its most serious defects may be buried in heat loss assumptions, hydraulic design, emitter selection and commissioning. They are invisible when the quotation arrives and may not reveal themselves until the first cold winter snap, months after the installer has been paid.

A car buyer should know whether they need seven seats and a large boot. We do not expect them to recalculate the braking speeds before trusting the manufacturer. Likewise, a homeowner should know their hot water requirements. They should not need enough engineering knowledge to decide whether an 8kW or 12kW heat loss calculation is credible when both arrive from certified professionals with identical reassurance.

Crooks will always exist. That is not an argument for accepting weak protection… it is the reason protection exists. We do not tell victims of financial fraud that imperfect humans are inevitable and they should have studied banking law.

I am not asking for perfection. I am asking for the professional heating system to heat the house, for the claims used to sell it to be defensible and for somebody identifiable to put it right when it does not. That is hardly a high horse. It is the product the customer paid for.

You are also right that commercial pressure is weak. But consumers can only stop buying from poor installers if they can distinguish them from competent ones before signing. At present, the same certification logos can sit on excellent and dreadful work, while reviews frequently assess punctuality, tidiness, whether the side gate was closed and whether a dust sheet was used to cover the hallway rug. None of those establishes whether the system will perform in Jan or Feb.

Public complaint outcomes, verified performance, meaningful installer histories and certification with actual consequences would create the commercial pressure currently missing. Good installers would finally be distinguishable from businesses that are simply good at selling and crap at installing. 

Posted by: @editor

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, I think we agree on about 80% of this.

We probably agree on more than that, it's just nuance that differs.

Above all I am a pragmatist.  Installers should do a good job and consumer protection shouod work perfectly, but they don't and it doesn't, and that is true throughout the construction industry, not just for heat pumps. i would also argue that the construction industry is not alone, the finance industry is at least as bad both in terms of product quality and regulation.  However it is better at small print.  It's also  white collar, and of course white collar crime isn't as serious as blue collar crime 

Even in the subset of construction that is the heating industry that's the case.   Gas boilers, for 20 years, have been commissioned to cost at least 10% more than they should, probably more because they are invariably grossly oversized so are constantly cycling. 

So whilst I support campaign for change I also recognise it probably won't happen, or if it does it will be very slow and imperfect.

So what should we do?  We can give up on construction altogether, or we can go to school and learn just enough to ask the right questions.  In the case of heat pumps there are only really 3 to cover the vast majority of the problems we see here namely

• Is the capacity outside the range annual gas consumption/2000 and annual gas consumption/3000?
• Are you fitting a buffer tank?
• Are you fitting (or relying on) any controls other than those supplied by the manufacturer, homely, havenwise or Adia (Energiebee soon to be added).

A 'yes' answer to any of these is an immediate red flag.

For my money it is, to first order, as simple as that for the vast majority of houses of say 200sq m or less.  

Its clear from the consultation recently launched that Govt is aware of the issues and intends to strip MCS and other trade bodies of their consumer protection functions,  This will help, but its a massive project that surely will take the whole of the current term of parliament to implement and even then wont really be complete until the installation standards are updated in the light of what it finds.  This takes us well into the next Government which, unless its of a similar mindset, will stall/water down the changes citing 'red tape', 'nanny state' and 'costs to the taxpayer'.  Relying on this is therefore dangerous, to say the least. 

I felt I had to weigh in on this lovely exchange between you both.

The underlying issues are abundantly apparent and worthy of note.

After over 19 months my install continues to be informed by this shitshow. 

Policy makers could learn a lot from the systems they claim to advocate.  

To date the desperate need for change has resulted in a nonsense of immediacy.

After the £5 billion abject and systemic failure of ECO4, £17 billion for WHG will only add to the cowboys after the u bend.

This reflex response is fundamentally inefficient. Isn't meaningful debate the work of government?

The framing of "net-zero" policies as too expensive and harmful, despite public support for climate initiatives is a result of questionable leadership.

Is this not the work of journalists?

Well done @editor