@agentgeorge, I can certainly raise it and recommend it, but I’ll be blunt about expectations. Given that many heat pump manufacturers struggle (or outright refuse) to engage with existing, well-documented, often easy-to-fix problems there’s a high chance it’ll fall on deaf ears.

@agentgeorge that would be a great idea. My installer knows about my problem but isn’t sure how to fix as I’m guessing they don’t want to buy a pile of sensors to just find a matching pair plus it’s about a 3hr round trip to my house.

ive been told by others the accuracy of them is not important as long as they match as a pair. But surely if the ecu sees a lower temp than target it will always work herder to reach it. When I asked this I was told it doesn’t matter as I would just need to adjust the wc.

@editor I find this sort of response from the manufacturers to only reinforce news outlets like GB news view of heat pumps. They ran a story recently on fb saying 660 hp owners were fed up of there heat pump. If we’re not only up against bad installers but also the manufacturers this industry won’t survive. It worries me as I wonder what will happen if in 15-20 years time there won’t be any hp manufacturers selling into the UK.

Posted by: @adamk

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ive been told by others the accuracy of them is not important as long as they match as a pair. But surely if the ecu sees a lower temp than target it will always work herder to reach it. When I asked this I was told it doesn’t matter as I would just need to adjust the wc.

That last sentence is absolutely right.  In fact if you do what is strongly recommended here, ie adjust your wc until the house is just sufficiently heated with all thermostats and trvs at max and heat pump operated 24x7 and any room influence disabled, any error in the sensor is automatically accounted for and nothing is working harder than it needs to.  Mismatched sensors will still lead to incorrect reporting of COP but not much else that matters and nothing that materially affects operation.

Furthermore if you don't do this then any 'error' in the WC curve will be dominated but the inevitable uncertainty in the house loss not to mention the loss of efficiency because you the WC curve isn't the optimum possible.  The sensor error will pale into insignificance by comparison. 

It's probably worth noting, in addition to the above, that we don't expect our boilers to give a minute by minute accurate account if how they are performing.  Typically we expect nothing. 

Noting this heat pump manufacturers are unlikely to spend lots of time or money measuring things that don't affect actual performance, nor in reality would most customers want them to!

In many ways heat pumps are embarrassingly well instrumental, which must be a cause of concern for manufacturers as well as a source of valuable data.

Posted by: @adamk

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@editor I find this sort of response from the manufacturers to only reinforce news outlets like GB news view of heat pumps. They ran a story recently on fb saying 660 hp owners were fed up of there heat pump. If we’re not only up against bad installers but also the manufacturers this industry won’t survive. It worries me as I wonder what will happen if in 15-20 years time there won’t be any hp manufacturers selling into the UK.

I’m working on a piece at the moment based on insider industry info and without getting ahead of myself, the dissatisfaction numbers don’t look good.

What worries me most is that the industry keeps externalising blame. Bad installers, bad homeowners, bad media, bad journalists. Very little serious introspection. Meanwhile manufacturers are either absent, defensive or hiding behind distributors and "approved installer" structures that conveniently insulate them from the real-world fallout. 

Sadly, the sector is slowly eating itself from within. Poor installs create angry homeowners. Angry homeowners create bad press. Bad press hardens political and public resistance. And all the while, the powers that be are watching very closely and doing nothing. 

If we don’t start being honest about failure rates, support quality, noise issues, incorrectly sized units, bodged installs and the gap between promises/claims and lived experience, others will do it for us. GB News and other outlets won’t be the problem... they’ll just be the messenger. And once trust is lost at scale, it doesn’t come back easily, if at all.

Posted by: @editor

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What worries me most is that the industry keeps externalising blame. Bad installers, bad homeowners, bad media, bad journalists.

You may already be on this but it would be interesting to compare the two vertically integrated operations, Octopus and Aira, with all the others.  The verticals have a lot fewer excuses, I wonder how it affects their approach?

@adamk You may want to get Vaillant to deal with it under warranty rather than the installer. In my case the installer opened a case with Vaillant. A Vaillant service engineer visited and had many of the sensors on his van. Didn't take too long to find a matching pair.

@jamespa I've spent considerable time investigating Octopus, Aira and EDF installations. It's virtually impossible to extract detailed info or data directly from these companies.

This issue is compounded by the notable scarcity of reports from independent installers who have visited "problem" sites originally serviced by these providers. 

@editor i have detailed my experience with Octopus on your forum, if you need further discussion on them id be happy to spend a few hours detailing how they failed to survey, install and commision the system 

it was after their last email asking me to pay the balance that I sent them a list of faults with their installation and said id pay up when the list was cleared. That got the manager involved and she was a tyrant. I just kept my cool and we came to a compromise 

@agentgeorge any additional insights would be helpful to me and other members/visitors. I hope the failures and issues weren't that severe that it would take hours to write them up 😉 🤣 

@simonf I’ll give it a go. I’m a bit worried they will try and charge me though as been warned by them in the past when the installer tried to arrange them to visit, which I don’t get really cause if the installer thinks there is an issue and organises the call out why when Vaillant call me do they warn about a charge. I declined the call out at that time, it was to do with ongoing inside house humming. still got it but not sure how to stop it short of ripping bedroom floor up and isolating the pipes, which is what the installer suggested. It would have been handy if he’d told me that when they first quote visited and I was showing them where my plumber was going to run the pipes.

im also wondering if they will bring any sensors with them as I’ve heard other people say one turned up with none, even though they were told it was a sensor fault, and the second visit by a different engineer only had one new one and one seemingly off another hp.