Posted by: @squeakysim

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Didn't somone post recently about an experience someone had with their install..? 

I wouldnt be touching them with a bargepole based on that experience!!

There have been some horror stories across the newspapers where people that have paid their £55 per month maintenance and service fee have been without heating for weeks. They apparently don't have the manpower.

My biggest cause for concern, however, is that they just don't just start slapping in heat pumps as direct boiler replacements. The terms I've seen thrown around is that this will become a race to the bottom, making the installations as cheap as possible. Given that 'expensive' installations have been hit or miss, making them super cheap could be even more problematic if attention isn't paid to heat loss calculations and design. 

@editor With regard to BG, I am one of the poor suckers who have experienced their expensive service contracts for a gas CH system. They are quick enough to send out the details of the annual bill but when it comes to getting any service from them …. Well ermm …. ‘We are very busy and all our operatives are on other calls’ … etc. etc. etc. If one relies on the BG system to remind you that your ‘annual service’ is due, you will wait 20 months or more before being contacted - I haven’t seen the BG calendar but I feel sure it would make interesting reading! The engineers who attend seem to vary between excellent and well … the system would still work better if they hadn’t attended and I have had a number of call backs due to this appalling standard of workmanship. When asked, the engineers admit they are supposed to carry out anything from 9 to 12 services per day and this amounts to about ten minutes to service the boiler allowing for travelling to premises etc.! If these policies extend to the installation, commissioning and servicing of ASHP’s then this does not bode well!

My failing BG installed 15 year old gas fired central heating system is being replaced with an ASHP in February BUT NOT BY BG! I am probably paying rather more than what might be regarded as a basic installation - but it is a bespoke design and I had fortunately saved funds to indulge my renewable energy ideals. If it cost me more to run, then ok, it will be clean! I have 8.1kWp. Of solar PV and a storage battery and buy my energy From Octopus; Agile tariff is a great help in this! Regards, Toodles.

I don't see any big push towards ashp at the moment. 

The boiler upgrade scheme is limited to 30k installs a year, 90k max over 3 years.

The follow on scheme is likely to be less generous financially in terms of cash towards the install. 

No big uptake anytime soon untill replacement gas boilers are actually banned currently sometime in the 2030s

Still small fry vs the 1m plus gas boiler replacements a year.

That is the reality i think... 

Posted by: @jeff

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Still small fry vs the 1m plus gas boiler replacements a year.

Exactly. The whole heat pump installation thing is but a small boy pissing in the wind against a hurricane of fossil fuel boiler installations. Let's consider the recent numbers (various links to sources hidden in what follows). 

Currently, around 1.75 million gas boilers are installed every year, compared to just over 42,000 heat pumps. That means:

• over 40 gas boilers installed for every heat pump
• at current installation rates, it will take almost 650 years to meet the 2050 heat pump targets (27m homes at 42,000pa  = 643 years)

The whole thing is ludicrous, absurd, bonkers, a diabolical fantasy. Add in a price war triggering a race to the bottom, with the likes of British Gas offering drive by budget installations (as ever, what could possibly go wrong), and an already reluctant UK public (over 80% want to stick with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future), it won't be long before even more people won't want to touch a heat pump with a barge pole.

Yet, as I said before, the only way this will change is by changing sentiment towards heat pumps. Things have to shift towards people wanting to install heat pumps, as against the more than 80% who currently don't want to install a heat pump. I can hand on heart say I have done my bit, forced an installation of a heat pump in an old leaky building that many said couldn't, even shouldn't, have a heat pump, and shown that by and large it works (I have more than achieved proof of concept, it only fails in cold weather, and that only because of a toxic but not necessarily inevitable combination of over-selling, supply chain problems and grant deadlines) and so, in principle, there is no bar to fitting heat pumps to any old leaky building. Come the end of the current heating season, I will also be able to say how heat pump energy use compares to using a fossil fuel for heating (early indications are 'about the same', but that is currently only a guesstimate). In other words, ASHP do work, even in buildings where they are supposed not to work, and apart from installation costs, they don't have to cost the earth to run.

But in reality, I still remain just another small boy pissing in the wind against a hurricane of fossil fuel installations.