Posted by: @jamespa

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Most customers seem to know if their heating is costing them too much or not heating the house.  For most products and services the onus is on the customer to spot problems not the supplier to alert them to problems, unless it's a safety issue.  This is no different!

I'm not so sure. If the onus is on the customer to spot the deficit, then why do Heat Geek need to monitor the customer's system? We don't know how it works in practice. Customers will spot gross deficits, but what about less obvious but still significant deficits? How many typical customers even know what their heat pump's real world efficiency figure is?

The guarantee is very specific, and covers only the trailing 12 months efficiency in the event that heat pump fails to reach the guaranteed efficiency. It is also appears to be limited to just the heat pump itself and its installation, which leaves the rest of the system, including pipework, emitters and DHW tanks, in a grey area. The 'comfort guarantee' (reaching design IAT at design OAT) is somewhat ephemeral, I have seen it mentioned in one or two places, but it is not in the 'Homeowner Agreement', which appears to be Heat Geek's T&Cs, given that in the agreement, Heat Geek refer to the agreement as 'these terms and conditions'.

Really, we need to know how the guarantee works in practice. To date, so far as I can tell, all we have is accounts of people who thought they were covered by the guarantee, but then found they weren't, because they didn't arrange the installation via the Heat Geek website.

I do agree with the horses for courses argument, but I also agree with principle that when the horse asks a reasonable question, the course manager should provide a reasonable answer!      

Posted by: @scrchngwsl

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The guarantee seems good to me... I suspect they'll be back to fit bigger radiators by February.

It appears to be explicitly a SCOP guarantee. So, if you were to install now and it performed worse than you expected, they would (rightly) argue that the rest of the year should raise the SCOP and possibly meet their guarantee. So it would likely be Feb 2028 before they get around to fitting the bigger radiators.

If theres been a shed load of installation failures to meet the guarantee, will HG still be HG, or will it phoenix into HG2027 and wiggle out of prior obligations?

Posted by: @singlespeed

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Posted by: @scrchngwsl

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The guarantee seems good to me... I suspect they'll be back to fit bigger radiators by February.

It appears to be explicitly a SCOP guarantee. So, if you were to install now and it performed worse than you expected, they would (rightly) argue that the rest of the year should raise the SCOP and possibly meet their guarantee. So it would likely be Feb 2028 before they get around to fitting the bigger radiators.

If theres been a shed load of installation failures to meet the guarantee, will HG still be HG, or will it phoenix into HG2027 and wiggle out of prior obligations?

Of course we do not know for sure what the future will bring, but HG have been around for a long time and to my knowledge honouring the warranty. 

@batpred 

Four years ago, Adam was saying that a potential installer should be doing a full heat loss calc and clearly showing the design flow temperature to meet the calc . Anyone not doing so is basically just a salesman.

Buying a heatpump. What to ask...

They have obviously strayed from the original ethos and the recent quotes on here certainly look like a salesman, out to harvest the grants as quickly as possible. Its all well and good them saying here's a HG guarantee SCOP and comfort... but how easily could a customer get them to honour it, Will they just come and replace radiators free of charge in a years time, or, would you need to take them to court? Is there still the loophole where the installation had to be booked through HG website directly to qualify for the warranty?

Will they expect you to cover the cost of the new radiators? Or, have they already written the price of replacing a house full of radiators into the quotation but omitted to include them, thereby making a shed load of profit for less work and that greed will be felt by the trusting customer. I think its going to get messy.

There's a number of "trusted" double glazing companies that have gone bust and reformed as an identical company the next day. A big name being Everest, whi folded and became Everest2020 Ltd. Everest2020 goes bust in 2024 and Anglia buys the name. Anglia amend the Everest website to delete the 2020 company and keep up the trusted brand appearance. Obviously Anglia aren't honouring the 10 and 15 year warranties held by previous Everest customers.

Posted by: @singlespeed

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@batpred 

Four years ago, Adam was saying that a potential installer should be doing a full heat loss calc and clearly showing the design flow temperature to meet the calc . Anyone not doing so is basically just a salesman.

Well, I disagree. They are not merely salesmen.. they handled the purchase and overall process for our ashp. They provide a guarantee, other just stick to mcs. 

I had plenty of estimates from other companies and it is clear most have great profit margins. 

My installer heat pump installer is Heat Geek Certified and along with the work that he does under the Heat Geek umbrella, he undertakes his own bespoke system design and heat pump installation work.

I doubt that an independent heating and plumbing contractor who has built up his own business and reputation from scratch would undertake a Zero Disrupt Installation if he thought that it might end up doing his company long-term reputational damage.

For what it is worth, I got three quotes. One for £10k cost to me (do your own heat loss survey and no replacement radiators or cylinder); a second for £5600 with a new cylinder plus £500 for each radiator that needed to be replaced and Heat Geek which was considerably cheaper and included 8 radiator changes (including a 1700 by 600 K3 Stelrad which is a big cost in itself).

Putting to one side whether people think that the Heat Geek performance warranty is worth the paper it is printed on, I would interested to know what legal comeback people think they have against an installer of a system fails to meet its design flow temperature?

I have been critical in the past of some of the obscure Heat Geek HQ practices: their default position is ‘talk to your installer’ when Heat Geek itself is the contracted party. However, they did secure the grant and DNO approval, and all the post installation paperwork has been produced. Most importantly, the installer has done a good job on the installation itself (the system is currently running on a Valliant 0.2 heat curve). Total consumption to date from early April (heating turned off early May) is 363kWh with a combined SCOP of 3.67 ( existing Worcester Bosch Greenstore cylinder: includes disinfection cycle).

Posted by: @l8again

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Putting to one side whether people think that the Heat Geek performance warranty is worth the paper it is printed on, I would interested to know what legal comeback people think they have against an installer of a system fails to meet its design flow temperature?

If the experience of those who report here is anything to go by, very little unless there is a gross problem.

I personally think that design flow temperatures are nothing more than indicative given that the information on which they are based (a survey) is itself suspect.  That doesn't equate to meaningless, but it would be foolish to expect the FT to be matched exactly in practice unless the heat pump is in practice controlled by a thermostat which, as we know, is sub optimal.

Posted by: @l8again

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Putting to one side whether people think that the Heat Geek performance warranty is worth the paper it is printed on

It's not what people think of the performance guarantee that has been put on one side, it is the guarantee itself. Despite a reasonably thorough search, I have not been able to find even one report of an actual claim against the guarantee. Nothing. No I claimed and was successful, no I claimed and got fobbed off, no testimonials on any website. The only complaints have been from those excluded from the guarantee because they did not arrange their installation through the Heat Geek website (edit to clarify: the complaints do not appear to be that they tried to make a claim, but were rejected, rather that they did not have a guarantee ('peace of mind') that they thought they had).

Maybe no one has ever had the basis for a claim? If so, well done Heat Geek!

Maybe the guarantee hasn't been running for long enough? The first 12 months are excluded (its a performance over one year guarantee, so you have to have 12 months of data), but it seems likely from various reports that the guarantee was launched in or around early 2024. That means the first potential claims could have arisen from around early 2025, giving around 18 months to date for claims to appear. But from what base? How many performance guaranteed systems have been installed? Perhaps the numbers are just too small.

What do I think we already know (and have the evidence to show for it):

(1) it is a five year guarantee, but in practice is four years because the first 12 months is excluded

(2) it covers only the heat pump efficiency (in %), not the performance (in room temp °C at design OAT). The 'comfort guarantee' is not written into Heat Geek's standard T&Cs. It may appear in individual T&Cs handed to individual customers - perhaps anyone who has had a Heat Geek guaranteed installation can enlighten us?

(3) the 'liability' is limited to the heat pump and its installation, strongly suggesting the rest of the system (emitters, cylinders etc) is not guaranteed

(4) the determination of whether the heat pump performance has failed to meet its target or not is based on Heat Geek monitoring which in turn is based on long term (trailing 12 months) live manufacturer data from the particular heat pump in question. This appears to exclude any independent monitoring you may or may not use

(5) there are some pretty rigid but perhaps not that unreasonable requirements including regular servicing, no major tinkering and rather onerously but at their discretion strict water quality control (to VDI2035), acceptance of remote monitoring and no leaving the doors and windows open all the time etc etc.

To return to the original question, is it worth the paper it is (not) printed on? Possibly, especially for the risk averse who want to manage their anxiety levels. Whether it is actually useful in the real world is another matter, the answer to which it seems to me has yet to be determined. 

Posted by: @cathoderay

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To return to the original question, is it worth the paper it is (not) printed on? Possibly, especially for the risk averse who want to manage their anxiety levels. Whether it is actually useful in the real world is another matter, the answer to which it seems to me has yet to be determined. 

I think that is the key, we have no reports of claims and you havent found any, so we have no way of knowing how it works in practice!   

It is, in some ways, a classic evolution/choice.  The more common way is to transfer quite a bit of the design risk (depending in practice on the installer) to the Customer.  The Heat Geek way is for Heat Geek to accept the design risk for sometimes a premium price.  Thats a fair trade off provided that the guarantee is honoured in practice (or proves unnecessary, which is more often than not the case).

Posted by: @jamespa

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I personally think that design flow temperatures are nothing more than indicative given that the information on which they are based (a survey) is itself suspect.  That doesn't equate to meaningless, but it would be foolish to expect the FT to be matched exactly in practice unless the heat pump is in practice controlled by a thermostat which, as we know, is sub optimal.

If your calculation is actually based on a survey of the property, you should be able to gauge how accurate its going to be, by how much needed to be guesstimated due to hidden features. 

In a perfect world, all the elements will tally with known U-values and prior energy usage backs up the calculated heat loss. However the heatloss is invariably a ball park figure which gives a definitive flow temp.  While the degree of uncertainty should really be saying your flow temp will be X°C plus or minus Y°C due to unknowns.

If X+Y makes the proposed system flow temperature inefficient, then remedy the survey to get better information if possible, and/or specify larger emitters.

Posted by: @batpred

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Posted by: @singlespeed

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@batpred 

Four years ago, Adam was saying that a potential installer should be doing a full heat loss calc and clearly showing the design flow temperature to meet the calc . Anyone not doing so is basically just a salesman.

Well, I disagree. They are not merely salesmen.. they handled the purchase and overall process for our ashp. They provide a guarantee, other just stick to mcs. 

I had plenty of estimates from other companies and it is clear most have great profit margins. 

 

 

Posted by: @singlespeed

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If your calculation is actually based on a survey of the property, you should be able to gauge how accurate its going to be, by how much needed to be guesstimated due to hidden features. 

I agree that you can check that the survey has correctly recorded the construction (assuming you know it).  However there are still several unknowns, namely the air change rate, thermal bridging and indeed the U values of some materials.

Posted by: @singlespeed

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While the degree of uncertainty should really be saying your flow temp will be X°C plus or minus Y°C due to unknowns.

It might be difficult to give a definitive value for the uncertainty, and many people wouldn't understand the concept/it would confuse them.  Nevertheless in principle I would agree. 

FWIW when I did my own house I came to the conclusion that the loss was definitely >6kW and more or less definitely <7.5kW.  I concluded that the probability it exceeded 7.5kW was sufficiently low that I could accept a 7kW Vaillant heat pump.  I got to this through my own calculations and fairly extensively analysed measurements of gas consumption.  That argument is, however, way too complex for most ordinary people who just want to be told it will work, and how much it will cost to run.

Posted by: @singlespeed

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If X+Y makes the proposed system flow temperature inefficient, then remedy the survey to get better information if possible, and/or specify larger emitters.

Get better information if possible for sure, which is one reason I consistently advocate sanity checks based on actual consumption.

Whether or not to specify larger emitters depends on how big Y is, what the likelihood is of the extreme, the impact on the number of emitters that need to be changed and the impact of a small increase in FT on a small number of days  If Y is fairly big but with a low liklihood of the extreme then it could well be better financially to design for something less than the extreme and change a couple of additional emitters if it turns out to be a problem (or more likely just crank up the FT by a couple of degrees on the extreme days).  Don't forget that the 'design temperature' is itself less than the extremes that might be encountered, because thats a sensible engineering trade off.

Basically at some point you have to 'take a view'  Its an engineering judgement which may, on a small percentage of occasions, turn out to be a little sub optimal, but thats life!