@adamk I think this may qualify as ‘local’ if my experience is anything to go by. Many of the installers seem to work over two or more counties as they are still very ‘thin on the ground’ so to speak.

I wish you every success in finding an installer worth their salt within say, ten miles of your home. I think we are all ‘ahead of the herd’ in wanting an installation at present - there are just not enough good installers in any one county at the moment - vast training programmes are needed to improve matters. I imagine that the good installers are very used to travelling fair distances to carry out installations at present. Regrets, Toodles.

the training is not happening at any pace. they have a whole room with HP's of different brands in at my local college but no one to teach it, the gas trained plumbers in the dept have been offered to be sent on the training course but have refused to get involved.

the plumber im using has said every HP install hes heard of has cost more to run, including his own brother in law who had a company from Hull install his.

@adamk 😪

Posted by: @adamk

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the plumber im using has said every HP install hes heard of has cost more to run, including his own brother in law who had a company from Hull install his.

which

(a) is, I suspect, the outcome he wants (because he doesn't want to bother training up) and

(b) may well be at least in part true because of installs with LLHs, buffer tanks etc and heat pumps run like a boiler (because thats convenient for the plumbers).

Given the ludicrous relationship between electricity prices and gas prices, where the 'green' policy costs are loaded onto electricity not gas, it is currently necessary to have a reasonably good install run properly as a heat pump (not like a boiler) to break even vis gas or be cheaper, that's a fact.  It helps also to choose a sensible electricity tariff.  If you do that it should be about the same or a bit cheaper, and more comfortable, even with todays gas/electricity price ratio.  

If you get it right it works, unfortunately a proportion get it wrong, - both installers and homeowners - the latter can be excused because the education is almost non existent, unless you visit a site like this, the former not so.  We don't actually know what proportion get it wrong - what we see here is likely highly distorted - 98,000 heat pumps were sold last year in the UK and we dont seem to hear 98,000 people complaining. 

None of this, of course, changes the fact that heat pumps are the only known way to decarbonise domestic heating and climate change is going to be catastrophic if we don't deal with it.  Somehow we need to get our minds round doing what we need to do rather than finding excuses not to.  Is the political will there - certainly not if you believe some media outlets.

@adamk good luck. The master Vaillant companies, I think, have had more training and will be able to offer extended warranties.

Keep us posted.

@adamk

Please feel free to post any proposals for comment.  I'm sure you will get some useful feedback.

If it helps, and I hope it does, my Vaillant 7kW is working out 12% cheaper than my gas boiler compared on a like for like basis (I have very good records of my gas consumption so am able to do a comparison which is pretty sound).  It required only minimal tweaking from how it was installed (basically turning down the WC curve, which is easy) to get to this point.  There is nothing fancy or clever about the installation, just a heat pump connected to a radiator based central heating system (running at a FT of 42 @-2) and DHW tank.  It could be cheaper still, Im not on the optimum heat pump tariff because I also have an EV.

tf heating and plumbing Visited today. They are suggesting a 2 port buffer/volumiser. Also said the rads would needs to be upgraded if needed otherwise MCS will not be happy. I’d planned to do this as I find out which rooms struggle in the winter.

Posted by: @adamk

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tf heating and plumbing Visited today. They are suggesting a 2 port buffer/volumiser. Also said the rads would needs to be upgraded if needed otherwise MCS will not be happy. I’d planned to do this as I find out which rooms struggle in the winter.

2 port buffer/volumiser is fine, will help with defrost/system volume and no downsides.  2 ports good, 4 ports bad!

The general rule for rads is to design for an absolute max FT of 55, preferably 45 or a bit less (which should make it about the same or cheaper to run than gas).  This will usually mean upgrading rads.  I think you will struggle to get anyone signing off on a design for FT>55, but up to that you may well be able to argue the point if your intention is to upgrade later.  Efficiency increases by roughly 3% for each degree drop in FT so rad upgrades often pay themselves back quite quickly.  Adia Thermal offer a set of kit allowing you to both fine tune more or less everything and determine the impact of upgrading any given rad, if you are interested in after the install upgrades it might be worth exploring.  Its still in beta testing or thereabouts and they are looking for installers to work with. 

Hope that helps.

20miles away is not too far for a good install. Our installation was done by a guy who lived about 25miles away but some of his subcontractors (who changed radiators and some pipes) were closer.

Don't forget Vaillant have a big boiler business. You should try for your nearest Heatgeek Elite installer too.

@adamk i chose octopus cosy tariff, which gives 8h a day at half price and 3h a day at 50% more (4pm-7pm)

I have the battery set to top up during the cheap periods and discharge during expensive periods.

since optimising the power storage, I now use <1% during expensive periods and <5% during normal tariff period, makes my average p/kWh 13p

This combined with a COP now averaging 4.0 makes the Heat Pump half the cost of using my previous Gas Boiler.

The proof is in the average cost of my Direct Debit to Octopus reducing from £100/m last year, to £50/m this year.

Don't listen to Gas Boiler installers; Trains were electrified decades ago, Blast Furnaces are changing to Electric Arc, next will be cars

@jamespa I’m planning to try for 40c as that’s what my old installer was going to do. I will measure the rads and see where I need to upgrade. One of the reasons I was going to wait till winter was because we’ve got about half the house packed into other rooms due to the building work, so can’t get to rads easily. Also I’m not entirely convinced the heat loss the last company did is that accurate.

@adamk I had 2 heat loss calculations on my house, and did one myself. Quite easy as you just need the wall types: outside, window, inside, party, ceiling and floor insulation levels.

I didn't check Octopus recommended changes, yes I know dumb me, and it was obvious on install day they had one room over spec and one under.

I complained for several months to get their room calculations but they wouldn't provide them, but I stuck it out insisting the 2 rooms needed balancing as one heated up quickly and the other took 3h to get comfortable.

eventually we compromised, and they increased the pipework supplying the radiators; ill know next winter if that solved the issues. If not Ill change radiator sizes myself.