Posted by: @leigodfrey

Hi my name is Leigh. 

Im currently considering getting a ASHP for me house. My house is a small 2 bedroom old 1860 stone walled build. Quite cold a draughty in the winter. We have 6 radiators in total in the house and currently have a combi boiler powered by LPG. We currently pay £120 a month on lpg. Ive been trying to gather information as to whether getting a ashp would be worth it. Some people are telling me to it wouldn't be beneficial in our setup whilst other people mainly sales guys are trying to sell me there product saying it would work and a 16kw ashp would do the job. Ive been quoted £15k over the phone to install with a tank in the loft.

Any advise would be most welcome and to see your own thoughts on how your home systems work.

Cheers

Hi Leigh and welcome.  If you really do need a 16Kw ASHP then it's going to cost a lot more than £120 per month.  But if £120 a month of LPG heats your house then you probably won't need a 16Kw ASHP; that's about the biggest domestic one you can get. I don't know the price of LPG per kWh but at 30p per kWh and a SCOP of 3, an ASHP will be 10p. What does your EPC say for your annual heating requirement?  

If you can reduce the draughts and insulate the loft, an ASHP could work. You might have to factor in new/bigger radiators. 

You should definitely get more quotes and not over the phone ones.  Your one sounds expensive.  I paid about £16k for a 14kW ASHP, tank, 13 radiators and all pipework (I had no central heating at all). 

I doubt you'd be able to heat the property with a 16kw heat pump for cheaper than £120 a month (especially with the direction of travel for electricity prices). With your property being cold and draughty in the winter the lower flow temps of the ASHP wont help either and you might feel even colder and be paying more.

Posted by: @leigodfrey

Hi my name is Leigh. 

Im currently considering getting a ASHP for me house. My house is a small 2 bedroom old 1860 stone walled build. Quite cold a draughty in the winter. We have 6 radiators in total in the house and currently have a combi boiler powered by LPG. We currently pay £120 a month on lpg. Ive been trying to gather information as to whether getting a ashp would be worth it. Some people are telling me to it wouldn't be beneficial in our setup whilst other people mainly sales guys are trying to sell me there product saying it would work and a 16kw ashp would do the job. Ive been quoted £15k over the phone to install with a tank in the loft.

Any advise would be most welcome and to see your own thoughts on how your home systems work.

Cheers

If you wish to save money and energy then improve the insulation and draft proofing.

Hi

i am not an expert in fact the reverse and as I type our ASHP is being installed and at the same time they are ripping out all our 38 yr old radiators and micro bore pipe work. However we are a 5 bed scottish random rubble (solid stone equivilant) cottage with 2 x extensions added in the last 35 yrs. our LPG bill was £140 pm so i suspect you need a large amount of insulation then draftproofing. I too had a quote by phone or rather email from someone looking at our old EPC but id took no notice of it as it is impossible to set up a system without the contractors coming out and looking, the measuring up and getting a feel for exactly what you want and expect.

we are setting up 2 x 7KWh ASHP reasons are already covered in my post we at the time of calls only needed 12KWh so if you are 2 beds i suggest that you get a series of quotes and just check if you really need 16KWh pump. I will be in a position in 7 or so days to let you know what our initial results are

incidentally according to comparison sites on google one ltr  of lpg gives approx 7 KWh so at my calor rate of 60p that equals 8.5p  per KWh. 

Hi Leigh

right now the world of heat pumps is super busy so you are going to get quick advice as installers are struggling for time.

i use a quick calculator attached here to throw budget figures out just to give you some rough ideas of savings grants etc. if this looks like something you want to persue i would recommend asking an installer to come and do a proper survey and tell you exactly what you need.

good luck 

@sapper117 Hello and Bore da, we had a project in 2009 similar in nature to your own, with 3 bed rubble stone walled cottage in Mid Wales. Before installing the ASHP in 2019, we installed, internal wall insulation, UFH double glazing and max loft insiulation. Original and subsequent heat loss calcs showed 12kW gas boiler or ASHP. The ASHP replacement for LPG has been very satisfactory and costs approx 35% less than the cylinder LPG. But has the benefit of providing more than background heat for the house.

Comapable running costs for heating seasons: £840 LPG , £570.

This year will be more due to prices increasing but we are experimenting with different strategies to optimise where we can.

Good luck with your installation.

Ant

@ant-brown hi thanks for your comments  the system has been up and running for the last day and once the bugs were knocked out it has been working well.it is difficult to get used to the whole house being comfortably warm and not having the log burner on. The smart meter is undergoing intense scrutiny and the whole system has been described as my new obsession which is fair and accurate 😂. At the moment it is not possible to work out accurate costs this will take a full year but quick calculations show that we are matching our LPG costs but have a much warmer house all day. In addition we are saving the cost of buying in logs which these days have to be dried and that is several hundred pounds.

the really interesting thing is the fact that had i gone by all the doom mongers i would have believed that heat pumps would not be able to heat my property, it also highlights the need for the calls and installation to be done by someone who really knows what they are doing, it also is not a cheap operation in fact quite the reverse and i think if someone tries to cut corners it will simply be a waste of funding - quite how the govt expect 600000 people to fund the change is beyond me. Phase two of our scheme is laying out an 8KWh solar panel and storage system which should bring down the running costs

Hi @sapper117

I am pleased to hear that your system is up and running. Do you know if your installer set your system to operate in weather compensation mode, and if so whether to operating parameters were correctly configured?