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My Shropshire ASHP Installation 2021

siko · 2021-10-14T07:55:29Z

Hello! Now I have finally got my ASHP installed I will start to document our journey in case anyone is interested. We bought a forever house in Shropshire 3 years ago which was perfect for us in almost every way, apart from the heating system, which was comprised of 2 massive log burners feeding a HUGE Akvaterm thermal Store (picture below - it's about 6 foot high and 4 foot wide). On the upside we were struggling to find a suitable property at the time and there was a lot of interest in this house, but the lack of a heating system put off everyone else apart from us and we managed to factor in the cost of a new system into our offer, luckily securing it before anyone else jumped in. This Thermal store linked to UFH downstairs and some upstairs too, although some of the UFH was underneath wooden floorboards so those rooms have obviously never worked well anyway. To get hot water into the Thermal store could take an entire day of burning logs on cold days and boy did we get through wood....my record when I was working from home through the cold and very long winter of 2020/1, was in the region of 15 tonnes (yes honestly!) of wood.....all of which I sawed, split and stacked totally by myself with nothing other than a chainsaw, axe and wheelbarrow! We had a heap of problems waiting for us when we moved in and it was clear that the charlatan who sold us the house had lied through his teeth about whether the heating even worked, how effective it was and a whole host of other things (faked receipts for Septic tank emptying amongst other things). He told me that a stack of wood he sold us with the house was "2-2 1/2 years worth" - it lasted 3 months to give us a lukewarm house at best. Sadly we found out on day 1 that the Akvaterm had been misused by the previous owner and every single seal was weeping, which meant emptying a drip tray every few days and reduced the effectiveness rather a lot. I found the original plumber who fitted it and it was clear that he had had a number of personal difficulties with the original owner and wanted nothing more to do with the heating system or house and refused to have anything to do with it. So - we were stuck with a badly designed system that barely worked and left us with a cold house for the most part and a constant laborious job of splitting, sawing, stacking and moving wood, setting fires and cleaning out logburners - every day. On the upside it was reasonably cheap and £800 bought me 12 tonnes of cordwood which normally lasted 5 months or so of winter.

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Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)

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Derek M

(@derek-m)

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Joined: 5 years ago

Posts: 4427

18/10/2021 11:33 am

@siko Hi Siko,

Did you manage to perform the suggested test? Feedback is always useful.

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siko

(@siko)

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Joined: 4 years ago

Posts: 44

Topic starter 18/10/2021 11:44 am

Hi Derek, I've not got anything suitable to measure it with TBH.

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Derek M

(@derek-m)

Illustrious Member Member

Joined: 5 years ago

Posts: 4427

18/10/2021 6:04 pm

Posted by: @siko

Hi Derek, I've not got anything suitable to measure it with TBH.

Hi Siko,

If you stand naked outside away from your heat pump and then stand behind it, if it feels perceptibly colder then you may have a problem.

Joking apart, a simple thermometer would be adequate, you are looking for a difference in the temperatures.

👍

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siko

(@siko)

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Joined: 4 years ago

Posts: 44

Topic starter 31/10/2021 1:22 pm

@cally-m Just a quick update ref our elec usage for Oct. Yes, it was a relatively mild one sofar, but we have been using the pump a fair bit for heating (often a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening too) to maintain a steady temp and the kids love having baths so lots of hot water used. As I mentioned before we are very heavy users of electricity as a busy family of four with washing machine, condensing dryer, dehumidifier, dishwasher etc all on permanently along with various computers, monitors, phones and lots of other things. So I appreciate it is a mild (ish) Oct sofar but I am very pleasantly surprised that our total Elec usage for Oct is still only 843 units (633 Day and 210 Night), which even with our expensive variable tariff works out at £180 total.

Now here's the impressive bit - last Sep and Oct we used 1304KwH just on hot water and everything else electric related. This Sep/Oct using the ASHP instead of log fires and immersion heaters (on cheap overnight rate) we have used a grand total of 1367KwH or just 63KwH (about £13) more. I appreciate that it was colder last year and we were all wfh during that period but I am really very impressed with that. I know the real test is yet to come when the cold long winter months of Dec-Feb really hit home and the ASHP is working harder to keep the house warm, but sofar I could not be more impressed.

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siko

(@siko)

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Joined: 4 years ago

Posts: 44

Topic starter 30/11/2021 9:43 am

So as an update, I think November has been the first real 'cold' month we've experienced and we had some really hard frosts aswell out here in the middle of nowhere. As expected our usage has gone up considerably but the house has been really quite warm throughout. Our thermostats are still set to 17-18 in 'quiet' times and 19 during peak hours in the house and we have used the fire in the lounge sporadically in the evening a few times, but only because my wife likes it!

Scores on the doors for our total electrical usage are 920kwh Day/365 Night=1285kwh and total cost for my non-fixed expensive rate was £269 with Octopus. I still think this is quite reasonable as our previous Nov usage was in the region of 800kwh, so whilst the bills are definitely higher this is a small price to pay for a warm house which was sporadically heated by logburners before.

Only issue I have noticed is the system struggling to heat the kitchen and bathroom, although I can't really fault the installation. The reason is these two rooms have floorboards rather than tiles and are an insulator of course! When it was really cold (-2 or so outside) the kitchen just didn't warm up at all and eventually went up but I think it was more warm air from the rest of the house circulating. Longterm we are going to replace the floorboards in the kitchen with tiles which should work much better(the boards are crap anyway) but we are probably stuck with the bathroom.

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