Posted by: @goody

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@marcexec Hi, after having couple of winters where the electricity was costing me over £30 a day, in Feb 2025, I decided to have the air source heat pump removed and replaced with a combi at a cost of £2600. Bearing in mind with recent energy price fluctuations, our bill has gone down by about a third £3000 to £1900 and our well insulated 1930's home is now once again ...WARM . Thanks

Thats disappointing.  

In my 1930s home my ASHP has worked out about 20% cheaper than gas in the first year and about the same as gas/a little bit less in the second year (because of changes in relative prices).  The house is much, much, more comfortable than it ever was with my boiler and there is no way I would go back to a boiler having realised how much comfort can be transformed.  I think this illustrates how important quality of installation matters.  For the avoidance of doubt I'm not playing games with batteries because I don't have one (and currently cant make the business case stack up).

Fortunately its now pretty clear what questions to ask to ensure you get a good installation, and equally clear how to run it to ensure both highest comfort and lowest cost, which fortunately (and unusually) also pretty much coincide; 3 years ago when I started my journey this was much less clear.  The challenge now, IMHO, is getting this information, in actionable form, to consumers who don't happen upon this site before committing.  

Posted by: @chimpy

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Hi,

Can anyone recommend a good, reliable and trustworthy ASHP installer in the north Hampshire area. I have a Mitsubishi ECODAN. The installer I reached out to was less than complimentary about ECODANs and wouldn't touch it!

Thanks
Rob

You might like to try cinergi.co.uk at Romsey.  I am about use them to replace my Hitachi HP, they are also installing a Tesla battery for me.

I have done the same! 

Wish I never bothered with the heat pump. Caused nothing but stress…

Posted by: @goody

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Posted by: @marcexec

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Sorry to resurrect, but did you have any luck tweaking the system to have better efficiency, @goody? 

 

@marcexec Hi, after having couple of winters where the electricity was costing me over £30 a day, in Feb 2025, I decided to have the air source heat pump removed and replaced with a combi at a cost of £2600. Bearing in mind with recent energy price fluctuations, our bill has gone down by about a third £3000 to £1900 and our well insulated 1930's home is now once again ...WARM . Thanks

Posted by: @parmstar

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I have done the same! 

Wish I never bothered with the heat pump. Caused nothing but stress…

Again what a shame.  I almost touch the controls on mine, it just does it's thing and keeps me more comfortable than the boiler ever did for less or the same money.

It's a pity that the heating industry is so inconsistent, the biggest independent survey available shows that satisfaction with boilers and heat pumps is about the same, unfortunately neither as good as they need to be. It's also a pity householders aren't taught how to run heat pumps (or indeed boilers) properly!

I hope you sold the heat pump on eBay!

Posted by: @parmstar

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I have done the same! 

Wish I never bothered with the heat pump. Caused nothing but stress…

Again what a shame.  I almost never touch the controls on mine, it just does it's thing and keeps me more comfortable than the boiler ever did for less or the same money.

It's a pity that the heating industry is so inconsistent, the biggest independent survey available shows that satisfaction with boilers and heat pumps is about the same, unfortunately neither as good as they need to be. It's also a pity householders aren't taught how to run heat pumps (or indeed boilers) properly!

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @parmstar

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I have done the same! 

Wish I never bothered with the heat pump. Caused nothing but stress…

Again what a shame.  I almost never touch the controls on mine, it just does it's thing and keeps me more comfortable than the boiler ever did for less or the same money.

It's a pity that the heating industry is so inconsistent, the biggest independent survey available shows that satisfaction with boilers and heat pumps is about the same, unfortunately neither as good as they need to be. It's also a pity householders aren't taught how to run heat pumps (or indeed boilers) properly!

I sold it via Facebook and the plumber, who bought it was driving back to his home country- Poland to put it in one of his apartments. I’m glad it went to a good home

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @goody

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@marcexec Hi, after having couple of winters where the electricity was costing me over £30 a day, in Feb 2025, I decided to have the air source heat pump removed and replaced with a combi at a cost of £2600. Bearing in mind with recent energy price fluctuations, our bill has gone down by about a third £3000 to £1900 and our well insulated 1930's home is now once again ...WARM . Thanks

Thats disappointing.  

In my 1930s home my ASHP has worked out about 20% cheaper than gas in the first year and about the same as gas/a little bit less in the second year (because of changes in relative prices).  The house is much, much, more comfortable than it ever was with my boiler and there is no way I would go back to a boiler having realised how much comfort can be transformed.  I think this illustrates how important quality of installation matters.  For the avoidance of doubt I'm not playing games with batteries because I don't have one (and currently cant make the business case stack up).

Fortunately its now pretty clear what questions to ask to ensure you get a good installation, and equally clear how to run it to ensure both highest comfort and lowest cost, which fortunately (and unusually) also pretty much coincide; 3 years ago when I started my journey this was much less clear.  The challenge now, IMHO, is getting this information, in actionable form, to consumers who don't happen upon this site before committing.  

 

The radiators in the upstairs, the underfloor heating installation in the ground floor and sub floor levels is perfect, as when I had a combi working at 45 C for years before the ASHP, everything was comfortable without cold spots . During the ASHP the whole house was a cold spot! It was the Cowboy company that fitted it and the fact that it was massively undersized that put me off having another. 

Posted by: @goody

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. During the ASHP the whole house was a cold spot! It was the Cowboy company that fitted it and the fact that it was massively undersized that put me off having another

That's a real shame and wholly unnecessary, albeit a symptom of the human condition which unfortunately includes a proportion of cowboys and scammers.

Although retired, I am involved (as a volunteer 'community member') in a local authority working group which is aiming to stimulate retrofit (solar, insulation, batteries and heat pumps), and one of the things I am championing is the customer experience. 

Would you be prepared to summarise in a few sentences that I could use what was done, what went wrong, a bit about your house and how you were operating the heat pump.  No need for it to be polished, just factual.  If you have already posted about it just point me to the posts if that's easier.

No pressure, but if you were able to do this it would be good.

Thanks @goody, appreciate the feedback and sorry you had to go through this... 

Posted by: @chimpy

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Can anyone recommend a good, reliable and trustworthy ASHP installer in the north Hampshire area. I have a Mitsubishi ECODAN. The installer I reached out to was less than complimentary about ECODANs and wouldn't touch it!

We are considering an Ecodan R290 ASHP, they seem to be solid and well designed.

But one thing we are a bit puzzled about is the size of the outdoor unit. It is 500mm deep and that´s twice Vaillant´s. They also do not provide brackets for wall mounting, even if there are third party ones..

I am wondering why the outdoor unit is so large. 

Posted by: @batpred

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We are considering an Ecodan R290 ASHP, they seem to be solid and well designed.

But one thing we are a bit puzzled about is the size of the outdoor unit. It is 500mm deep and that´s twice Vaillant´s. They also do not provide brackets for wall mounting, even if there are third party ones..

I am wondering why the outdoor unit is so large. 

We've had an Ecodan R290 for 18 months and it's been reliable and efficient (SCOP of 4.8+). 

The Vaillant spec says the Aerotherm Plus is 450mm deep. Not checked but given Mitsubishi do wall mounted AC units, they probably don't do a Ecodan specific wall mount as they can use the existing AC wall mounts. 

Is it so much larger? 

Vaillant 7kW is 965x1100x450

Ecodan 8.5kW is 1040x1050x480

Posted by: @batpred

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I am wondering why the outdoor unit is so large.

If you put a fan in a pipe you get a much more efficient ducted fan. To get a quiet heat pump you need a fan that spins as slow as possible while moving the required volume of air at the required pressure, so it has to be a huge ducted fan. That takes a lot of space. Thus the heat pump is mostly an empty box full of air. Frontal area is determined by the size of heat exchanger (bigger being more efficient) and depth by the ducted fan design. It could be built smaller, but it would be less efficient and louder, like previous generation models.