Posted by: @toodles

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The branding is therefore more to do with the installer’s skills and abilities to carry out work efficiently the in my opinion.

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That is where I both agree and have the biggest problem with corporate marketing.

If I think about anyone I know well and have a personal connection with, part of my knowledge of them is what their values are and how they will react in certain situations. It's not unreasonable for me to think, "Of course; that's very Steve". In effect, that person has a public image or "brand" that is the sum of my understanding of them, and that builds confidence in how genuine and sincere they are; how much I can trust them is heavily linked.

Marketing departments, of course, know this perfectly well and try to craft an image not of what the company is but of how they'd like us to think they are. If, after some time, I find the real company and the brand match up then great, but if not then in effect I've been lied to. Unfortunately, I have found very few companies where the brand feels deeper than a cynical facade.

With Heat Geek, the branding is a bit clumsy which, to me, tends to confuse a bit (a negative) but also add weight to their sincerity (a positive). On balance, it means I'd be positively inclined to at least start a discussion with them if I were needing what they provide, but I'd also drop them pretty quickly if their impression from that first discussion didn't match what I expected from the "brand". Members here so far have tended to suggest Heat Geek are who they appear to be, which is a good thing in my mind.

Posted by: @prunus

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More generally, the initial pitch for HG in terms of doing things properly was good and it made them attractive to me as someone considering the next heat pump install. But the more they turn into an AI-focused venture capital funded startup the more they send the message that they are actually drifting away from my interests as a potential customer.

I am not here to defend Heat geek or anyone else, but I think it that's perhaps a bit harsh if its intended as a criticism as opposed to an observation that their approach is not to your personal liking. 

Its clear that Heat Geek initially started doing everything more or less bespoke based on well trained engineers.  Now they are trying to use the accumulated experience together with their understanding in a productive way to simply the sales, design and install processes whilst maintaining end quality.  More or less uniquely they also specify their product based on achieved efficiency (which the customer cares about) not a load of design detail which the customer does not (and should not have to) care about.  Thats how innovation happens, and the heat pump installation industry desperately needs innovation because the current way of doing things is not even faintly scaleable and not particularly customer focussed iun the way it specifies its product.  Of course it remains to be seen whether the way Heat Geek have chosen to innovate ultimately plays a part in delivering the sea change that the industry needs in order to become mainstream, but they should not be criticised for having a try.

Of course some customers may not like it and that is their prerogative.  In a mature (or maturing) market there is both space and the need for a variety of approaches to suit different customer types and different house types. 

Ultimately they are trying to make it possible for low skill, low training employees to install their systems. That's a necessary part of scaling for most businesses because there are not enough experts whereas if you can stuff someone through a 6 week training course on product installation, customer service and not being a tw*t and have them do a decent job installing your product then it can scale and you can save your experts for the hard jobs, and as backup when the 6 week course installer hits a case that's out of their depth.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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Ultimately they are trying to make it possible for low skill, low training employees to install their systems.

... Which is what the whole industry must do if we are to decarbonise heating.  If your local plumber can't do it then it's too difficult for the mainstream.

@jamespa I wonder if there ever was an equivalent situation in the early days of the first fossil fuelled heating systems? Might they have been thought of as ‘new-fangled systems’ requiring specialist skills / knowledge to install and commission? Curious, Toodles.

Possibly, @toodles, but there was never a national or international drive to push people towards gas central heating in a finite (and, in particular, short) timeframe. It was demand-led.

@majordennisbloodnok Those energy pioneers have a lot to answer for!

I'm pretty sure that in the early days of commodity gas central heating installers did design systems in a similar way to the way you design for heat pumps. I recall my parents having a gas system installed to replace coal fires in the late 60s and that must have been designed to size radiators to more or less match heat loss.

You have to remember that boilers didn't modulate and thermostatic radiator valves were unknown so you had to try and make the system output match the demand if you could. Also the system had to heat a hot water cylinder if you wanted it to provide hot water. Combi boiler didn't exist.

Of course when combi boilers were introduced and TRVs became cheap the need to design the system disappeared. You just chucked in an over sized boiler and let the thermostat and TRVs sort things out.

I've still got the book that I used when I installed my first CH system. Central Heating a design and installation manual by George Steele, 1986. It covers lots of things in sufficient detail, including stuff that doesn't seem to be covered theses days - heat loss in relation to comfort and room surface temperature. In the days of poorly insulated houses that was important; not so much now with well insulated structures. He also show how to design pipe systems as well as sizing radiators and boilers.

Heat pumps haven't created a new knowledge base, it's been there all along.

Posted by: @hml1827

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Heat pumps haven't created a new knowledge base, it's been there all along.

...or it was there and was lost thanks to laziness and has been forgotten now it's needed again.

That's a fantastic insight, @hml1827; thanks for sharing. I might look up that book to see if there are any gems that could be put under the noses of various official stakeholders to explode any "it's impractical to do it that way" myths.