Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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Posted by: @jamespa

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What value of air changes per hour is assumed?

It varies by room, but the conservatory is assumed at 2 per hour, as is the kitchen, hallway and landing.

Living room and upstairs office are assumed at 1.5, bedrooms at 1, and bathroom/toilets at 3.

Two calculations both use similar figures, with the exception that one of them assumes 2 for the ensuite and downstairs toilet, rather than 3, so I assume they have some sort of common reference point to estimate this.

One of the calculations excludes the conservatory, so I only have one calculation showing a figure for this.  Within my replicated spreadsheet I can manipulate the figure and each additional digit adds about 400W to the conservatory ventilation heat loss.

 

I think those are pretty much the standard figures that used to be quoted in mis3005-d (which now instead references a BS EN standard that I have yet to read)

The good news is that I've now concluded the quotation process and chosen a provider for the installation.  I'm planning to do a bit of a summary with regard to the experiences with various providers but having just provided a bit of direct feedback to one of them, which was received sympathetically, there are some very general observations I can take away from the exercise which I don't think are widely appreciated by the wider public, and which will undoubtedly impact the long-term target of getting increased uptake of heat pump technology.

The most obvious one is that we are not the only house in the UK to have a conservatory, and if the default response of a heat pump provider is to want to exclude it from consideration for a heat pump then what's being offered as a BUS Grant quote isn't a Boiler Upgrade at all.  It's a partial one, with a requirement that the customer finds another solution for a room within their house.  I can understand this approach if the conservatory is already unheated or separated from the wet system already.  However, some providers (typically the bigger ones who have to submit designs to a senior designer for approval) automatically default to a position of insisting on disconnecting a room from the existing wet system, which will seem ludicrous to a customer expecting a heat pump to do the same job as the outgoing boiler did, and I suspect that the outcome will be that many will give up on the idea at that point and choose a new boiler.

Secondly, the MCS requirements for system designs are either misunderstood by some, or are at least open to wide interpretation, as there have been several different approaches to design suggested, all of which are part of BUS grant quotations, but some of which do things that other providers say they're not allowed to do.  Specifically, some have said they're not allowed to treat a conservatory as a habitable heated room, whereas others did so.  Some said they were not allowed to treat it as anything other than a habitable heated room as a reason for excluding it from their designs.  Others said they could design it as an occasional room, which ultimately seemed to me to be the most sensible and flexible treatment available.  In this regard, the independent companies, including the Heat Geek affiliated ones I spoke to, were much more accommodating to finding solutions rather than avoiding problems, which is the approach that most of the 'big name' providers seem to default to, presumably as a consequence of risk avoidance.

Thirdly, not everyone will choose to undertake as detailed an exercise as I chose to go down.  In fact, I hadn't anticipated doing so, but a combination of doing my own research (including on here) and learning about the specific challenges of our property pretty much led me down that route.  This ultimately exposed how variable the heat loss calculations being done under the same MCS guidelines proved to be.  Again, I think the big energy companies are building in a significant margin of error into this process to cover their own backs, but this then potentially exposes issues of oversizing with the solutions that they offer.

Finally, as has already been highlighted in a recent article on here, the badging of heat pump sizes is an absolute minefield for a typical user.  Some of it borders on being misleading, and it will only add to the general confusion if it's allowed to continue 'as is' where you need the assistance of some of the technical experts on here to be able to tell you how a particular system is likely to perform.  In fairness, most people will typically be guided by their installers on this so it's unlikely to be an issue provided that the installer knows their stuff.  However, it was certainly an eye-opening part of the exercise for someone like myself, who is naturally interested in the more detailed aspects of the design.

I'll add a summary of my experiences with individual providers when I have a bit of time to compile it, but these updates will hopefully soon become more focused on the experience of going through an actual installation.  We're waiting until my daughter's GCSE's are out of the way, so are likely looking at a late June start date in this regard.

@sheriff-fatman I hope it all goes well for you when you ‘take the plunge’. Like you, I did a ‘nawful lot of research before hand; I didn’t even contact a potential installer until the first ‘BUS’ came along😉. By the time that BUS was due, I had spent over 6 months looking at the needs and requirements for a heat pump. The supplier we ultimately did choose complimented me on my knowledge and for knowing what I wanted to get out of the purchase! (He even politely said that they frequently had customers 20 years younger than me who neither understood anything about the equipment, how it worked or what they really wanted the system to do for them!)

I am a nerd but not an electrician, plumber, builder or a scientist and in the late stages of my research came across RHH CO UK which provided the final impetus (along with the £5K BUS the govt. had by then made available) to take the plunge. I have no regrets whatsoever; previous to the ASHP project, I had researched, plotted out what I wanted and had 8.1 kWp. of solar panels installed on the roof, flat roof, garage and in the garden. My supplier tried to discourage me from going for 2 Tesla 13.5 kWh Powerwalls and installed just 1 when it became available as they were in very short supply. They then even offered to take a 25% deposit on a second battery (at a substantially higher price tag too!) with a vague promise of a delivery in possibly 15-16 months time!

A few months after the installation of the ASHP I had the second Powerwall installed by the ASHP installers - at a lower cost and with delivery within 3 weeks!

We are an all-electric household, induction hob, microwave cookers, air fryer, solar diverter (MyEnergi Eddi) feeding the Sunamp Thermino DHW system (grid backup) and the gas meter was removed by Octopus Energy 2 years back. Regrets? None! Regards, Toodles.

@sheriff-fatman 

Thanks for the very well thought through summary, which has elements common to others who report problems.  Fortunately there do seem to be a large number (perhaps the majority) of successful installs, either by the large energy companies (who often seem to avoid 'difficult' properties, or as you say difficult aspects of otherwise regular properties), or the better independents.  There are sadly a group of 'grant harvesters', who exist (temporarily) for one purpose only and also some installers who just don't 'get it'.

The prime purpose of MCS appears, in practice (in my view) to be to protect installers, not consumers.   They seem, at least outwardly, to be blind to the challenges in the industry which one would hope they should be dealing with through rigorous education and (for example) a structured hierarchy of qualifications.

IMHO this isn't so much different to the building trade as a whole, so I'm not personally optimistic it will change in the near future.  It's worth bearing in mind that the heating industry has, for 20 years, been obliged to fit condensing boilers but almost invariably does not set them up so they actually condense, adding 10 percent to our heating bills and reducing comfort.  Caveat Emptor, sadly, applies here as everywhere else.

The good news is that, with the right install, heat pumps can be brilliant.  My house (7kW, radiators, 1930s) is significantly more comfortable with the heat pump than with the gas boiler, the running cost is 20% less (even before accounting for cheap energy from my solar), the hot water system is a revelation compared to the one it replaced, I don't have to fiddle constantly with controls for the house temperature to be steady, and I can get light cooling in the only room that really needs it.  What's not to like?

@jamespa And at the same time, demonstrates how fragile the whole infrastructure is - one can’t trust the majority of newspapers, many of the potential installers, as to social media err…!!! The man on the Clapham Omnibus is a sitting target for the rogues and vultures.

I suppose that the MCS was a good idea at the time - it is just that it failed in the implementation. I realise that not everyone has the wherewithal or the time and inclination to mug up on the subject (this is where Mar’s publications may help some potential purchasers of course!)

We seem to have governmental schemes and initiatives that fall down due to failing to attend to details ensuring that the investments (both from the tax payer and the individual) are not hived off by unscrupulous agents and poor quality installations. I’m afraid I don’t have any solutions but I do feel sorry for all those unfortunates who get snagged up in the mire and, (rightly) feel aggrieved. Regards (I’ll get down from my soap box now, I’m beginning to feel a little dizzy) Toodles.

@jamespa Thanks for your input into this thread so far.  Your information has certainly added to my understanding along the way.

I'm looking forward to having the heat pump installed, so am certainly not regretting the decision to go down this route.  I've also realised that there's only a certain amount of preparation that even the most rigorous of research will provide, especially within a 'compromised' house design such as hours.

Ultimately, we have to now go on the journey of making the installation option that we have chosen work for us, which means living with it for a heating season initially and seeing what it delivers.  We can then look to address any shortfalls in the experience in a sensible way, which most likely for us will mean examining what the 'real-life' situation proves to be with the conservatory. 

If the heat it produces within there is sufficient, then the room will naturally get used.  For example, my wife likes to sit in there with a cup of tea on a morning, or sometimes in the early evening, just for a bit of peace and quiet.  Even if the room is 'cool' on a target temperature basis compared to the rest of the house, then I can envisage this still being the case.  If it's oppressively cold, then she'll avoid doing so, and we can look then at options to boost the heat when needed.  If this was the case, then we could also experiment with shutting down the TRVs in there to bypass the room in a scenario where it's oppressively cold either way, and see what impact this has on the heat pump's performance.  My gut feel is we'll get a scenario more like the former than the latter, but we simply don't know without experiencing the reality.

Either way, the 'unknowns' are preferable to facing the winter months with our current boiler so, while the first winter with the heat pump might not be a 'perfect' one, it will still be better than the alternative option of doing nothing.

At least we can also get used to the difference of having a heat pump in the house during warm months initially, so we'll at least have some familiarity with the overall system by the time it needs to be properly put to the test in the winter months.

So, as mentioned previously, this is my summary of the interactions with various providers through the quotation process.  It's intended primarily to focus on the bigger, nationwide installers that most people are likely to encounter, so I've grouped together some of the others as 'local installers' or 'Heat Geeks', rather than use specific names, as a generic grouping.  They're not intended to be full reviews of the merits (or otherwise) of the proposals offered, but a summary of my overall experience with them.  Hopefully, they might be of use to anyone looking to start a Heat Pump quote process to help with expectations beforehand.

I've included quote price information (all quotes are after deduction of the BUS grant) in a categorised way, as one of the takeaways from the exercise is that there turned out to be almost 3 distinct categories of pricing which were attributable to the groupings.  For info, the quotes relate to a 4 bed detached property, 130m^2 floor area including a heated conservatory on the existing wet system with polycarbonate roof and ceiling blinds.  The consensus heat loss at design temp is in the 8.5kW-10kW range, which is consistent with my own sense checks on the calculations, of which the assessed heat loss from the conservatory is 2-3kW in its current state.

It is also worth pointing out that I was intentionally transparent with each company about the processes being undertaken with other parties.  I did not share information between them without consent, but was able to talk generally about our property based on the cumulative knowledge built up through the quotation process.  I would recommend this approach to anyone.  In some cases, my ability to speak as a 'better informed' customer was sufficient to overcome the very basic "tyre kicker" test that companies will apply to their enquiries and this allowed me in some cases to get a more in-depth level of indicative quote via remote means and without having to engage every company contacted in a full heat loss survey from the outset.  One of the fundamental barriers to a heat pump purchase is that there's a requirement for companies to incur the costs of heat loss surveys, many of whom will seek to charge for this, as it involves a considerable time investment on their part.  Ultimately, I sought to minimise this aspect as much as possible and to seek to avoid companies incurring these expenses unnecessarily, at least until the point where they were likely to be in serious consideration.

I can't think of any other category of purchase where the up-front costs to obtain a quotation are quite like this, and they will prove to be a significant barrier to some potential heat pump customers, as there's a natural suspicion as to why there should be a charge applied just to receive a quote.  It becomes very obvious after having a heat loss survey done as to why this is the case, but there's an inherent barrier to overcome to reach this point.  In my case, I relied on the fact that the energy companies tend to offer this as a refundable charge, so it removes the risk to the customer.  They can obviously sustain the costs of this, due to their size, but this isn't the case for the smaller, independent companies, so perhaps any future iteration of the government support plan should look at viable solutions to this natural barrier to uptake (e.g. each household is entitled to a £350 voucher to obtain a paid heat loss survey on their property, subject to some sort of qualification criteria).

'Block 1' - Energy Companies (Quotation range £5,400-£7,325)

Octopus Energy
Octopus are our existing energy providers and were a natural initial point of call to start the journey (via a quote request on 22nd February, in our case).  Any basic heat pump research via YouTube, etc will soon point to a plethora of people discussing their Octopus systems, and how cheaply they can be installed for.  As such, I'd describe them as a likely "gateway drug" for a typical person starting a heat pump journey (and this description is meant in a complimentary way).

My experience of them was that they were extremely accommodating and, at least as far as my experience with the sales consultant went, were content that I ultimately found a heat pump solution, whether or not it was obtained through them.  The journey begins with an online quote request which used to spit out a single indicative price (and did so for me, but this had been updated within the 30 day period that the quote was valid for).  If done now, it will give two prices, one for a 'Turbo' system and one for a more expensive 'Eco' one.  If you opt to have a survey done (at a fully refundable cost of £200) you find out which one they recommend, but the difference is that the Turbo (using their 'unique looking' Cosy heat pumps) is designed at a higher flow temperature and they state up front that the cheaper install will be less efficient than the Eco option, which ultimately would be linked to a Daikin heat pump.

I paid for the Octopus survey, as they confirmed prior to doing so that they would do the EPC on the property (ours being an expired one from 2010) within this and, in the event that we didn't choose them, the £200 deposit remained fully refundable, resulting in a free EPC certificate.  The survey was the first point at which we learned that the conservatory was a potential issue for us, as the surveyor initially expected that he would have to exclude it from the design.  However, when he calculated the heat loss recovery from the existing radiators to be 97% of the design heat loss, he was able to keep it within the design (and this being on the basis of the conservatory as a habitable heated room).  With hindsight, I suspect that this planted the seed of thought in me that I wanted to include the conservatory within the heat pump system, albeit I only realised this for sure when confronted with the prospect of it being excluded, and discovering that my instinctive reaction was to reject this.

The survey also eliminated the possibility of a Turbo installation, as the Cosy units are only currently available as 6kW and 9kW options.  I hadn't intended to go down this route anyway, so this was actually a relief.

I stayed in touch with my sales point of contact, who was brilliant throughout, as I then looked at other options, during which he stated that he was content for the details of their survey to be shared (which surprised me, but was very useful as it allowed me to provide a floor plan and radiator information, if needed).  Ultimately, once we confirmed to them that we weren't going to proceed with them, the £200 refund was processed quickly back to us, without issue.

With the hindsight of all that I've learned on this journey, it's clear that Octopus' current offerings aren't the best technical solutions, and are no longer guaranteed to be the cheapest ones, based on their new pricing model (they were nowhere near the cheapest in our case, but several other companies pre-empted their conversations with "we won't be able to compete with Octopus pricing", almost as a default).  Ultimately, I developed an aversion to the the Daikin systems over the course of the quotation journey, relative to other available options.  However, I would still class my experience with Octopus as an overwhelmingly positive one, as they essentially made it easier for me to have better informed discussions with other providers, which was a position that they openly supported.

EDF
As with Octopus, and several others, the journey with EDF begins via an online enquiry and an indicative price, subsequent to which it will be followed up by a member of their sales team.  All of EDF's Heat Pump business is handled by a company called CB Heating, who were acquired by EDF for this purpose.  This came across in the interactions with them, as it was apparent that they understood things well, from an early stage, particularly when I referenced the design challenges of the conservatory.

Via a combination of sharing floor plans and providing photographs, EDF were able to provide a more tailored indicative quote prior to having to carry out another full heat loss survey (which would have taken place had we chosen to proceed with them, so this was not an either/or situation).  Having proposed a sensible workaround for the conservatory, the process then hit a barrier when the senior designer got involved, as he then steered it back to a proposal of excluding it completely and I think this highlights a challenge that is common to all the bigger providers of this type is that they are naturally steered towards a 'safer' option, from a governance perspective, rather than the one works best for the customer.

Ultimately, with EDF, it felt like a very positive way forward then had a barrier put in front of it as the design was passed upwards for review/sign-off.  This was no fault of my initial point of contact, for whom I have nothing but positive feedback, but was ultimately a compelling reason why I opted not to pursue their quotation beyond this stage.

E.ON NEXT
Once again, an online quotation process and a telephone follow up.  To progress things further with EDF at that stage there is a refundable charge of £50 for a heat loss survey to be carried out, which I opted for on the basis of the low risk involved.

The survey itself was fine, albeit I got the feeling that the surveyor was less experienced than his Octopus counterpart.  He did surveys on two days per week and fitted smart meters on the other days, so was not full-time in that particular role.  Unlike with Octopus, he was not responsible for the subsequent design which followed, as the survey results were passed to another person for this, which is the point at which the process fell short, from my perspective.  The surveyor contacted me during the period in which she had been allocated for my job, and explained that the conservatory was likely to be an issue and was perhaps better being excluded.  She said that she would forward two designs to me, one being a formal quote and one being a clone of this with the conservatory added.  I was content with this as a suggestion, as it would give me the information that I needed to better assess things.

When the quote came through, this turned out to be a single quote excluding the conservatory.  When queried, this was at the insistent of their design team as their system only allowed one quote to be generated.  By what I suspect was a lucky accident, they had left the U-value information for the conservatory in the design key, even though the conservatory had been removed from the design, and it was this that allowed me to spot that they'd used a U-value of 5.11, equivalent to a single pane of glass, for the polycarbonate roof.

I emailed the surveyor to request the missing information for the conservatory, i.e. dimensions and radiator assessments done during the visit as standalone information, and to query the use of the 5.11 figure.  This was ignored and I received no subsequent reply from them prior to the original sales consultant following up on the enquiry.  I fed back that it felt very much like a 'computer says no' scenario, to which he was sympathetic, and it again confirmed my belief that the edict is towards 'non-challenging' jobs for an easy life from a governance point of view with all of the energy provider installation options. 

They are currently processing the £50 refund, which I expect to receive back in the next few days.

'Block 2' - Heat Geek Verified Installers (Quotation Range £11,277-£11,288)

It doesn't take too much time doing heat pump research until the phrase 'Heat Geek' pops up, and there's a huge amount of great YouTube content from within that community.  I had an expectation that there would be a premium attached to a Heat Geek quote, but I wanted to include them in the process so that I could assess the expected quality of installation vs the difference in price.

As a consequence of a delay in one online enquiry being picked up, I ended up speaking to two separate Heat Geek providers, both of whom were content to provide an indicative quote based on remote information, without applying their usual £350 charge to carry out a heat loss survey.  One in particular went beyond this and actually did a more detailed heat loss calculation remotely that was certainly better than the 'paid for' output from E.ON.

Unfortunately, it became clear that the scale of the 'premium' would more than double the cost of the installation, compared to other alternatives, which was a bigger jump than I had anticipated.  Perhaps a more relevant view of this is that it moved the price difference from replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump significantly beyond the 'broadly equivalent' range that had justified the search to begin with.

I have no doubt that I'd get an excellent solution from either provider, but within a design scenario that is going to be compromised by the conservatory in any event, the difference in cost wasn't justifiable to me in our situation, and the funds saved are likely to be more effectively invested elsewhere as part of the overall plan for the house.

'Block 3' - Local Independent Installers (Quotation Range £4,400 - £5,200)

I found these providers via various sources, including some via a search generated from an unconnected site to this one called Renewable Energy Hub.  I had sourced my solar PV system via a similar type of local search process (but via a different site) in October 2021, so was open to doing something similar, provided that the site didn't have a reputation for generating loads of spam calls.  In this case, I received 3 contacts based on their recommendations, so it proved to be the type of focused and limited search that I had hoped for.

I also searched out Which? Trusted Traders via their website, via my existing subscription, and cherry picked from there (NB: this process also identified the two Heat Geek providers referred to above).

Ultimately, from the local pool, 3 came to the house to do visits (not all were full heat loss surveys) and one did a remote design with an offer to come to the property, which I suggested we could defer initially to avoid time/cost on their part.  The site visits were interesting, as two were done by people with plumbing backgrounds as their primary trade, whilst the other was from a guy with a design engineering background.  It was interesting to see the differences in focus between the two.  The plumbers were much more focused on the infrastructure, pipework and potential complexities of installation (i.e. we might need to take this carpet up here, etc).  The design engineer spent much more time doing measurements for the heat loss survey and was far less interested in the practical aspects (including being the only person to visit the house who wasn't interested in viewing the loft, which I found odd, as it is the consensus pipework route from the heat pump to the proposed site for the cylinder in an old airing cupboard).

Some of the companies had experience of being used as sub-contractors by the bigger companies, such as Octopus.  I had initially expected that their quotations would be at a premium to the Energy company quotes, but all came in below their pricing, which was a pleasant surprise. 

Beyond that I then did a fairly vigorous review of company histories, director searches, Trustpilot reviews, contract terms, etc to obtain as much reassurance as possible as to the potential risks and pitfalls.  I ruled one out company on the basis of Trustpilot reviews, but reached a point of comfort with the others.  All offer solutions providing the necessary MCS certification and these, in general, were the ones I went back to with specific queries on designs, solutions, etc and much of the overall assessment of them boiled down to the quality of the responses received from them, which I used as a final form of quality control, given that these were companies that I am far less familiar with than the alternatives.

'Block 4' - Others Not Quite Fitting Any Of The Above Categories

Aira
I've included Aira here as these were one of the first companies I sought a quote from after the Octopus survey.  This requires them to conduct a free initial 1 hour home visit, not a full heat loss survey, to get an indicative quote, and I had scheduled for this to take place as our second visit after Octopus.  I'd liked the look of their offering from the online content, and I'd seen a YouTube video of one of their installations, which looked positive overall.

It was at around this time that I discovered these forums and one of the first things I did on here was search for experiences with Aira, at which point I discovered that the YouTube videos were from a user on this forum.  It was after reading some of the more detailed feedback within here that I realised that Aira wouldn't fit what I wanted as a user, as it's very much a 'set and forget' system with very limited ability for the user to influence this.  It also became apparent that the 'Scandinavian heritage' aspect of their marketing had been overplayed as they were essentially a recent start up operation, as far as the UK market were concerned.

Consequently, I cancelled the planned appointment with them without ever obtaining a price.  This isn't a dig at them, as it is primarily the lack of user interfacing that was the issue for me.

Green Squirrel Energy (Indicative Quotation £10k+)
Initially I was going to badge them as 'Non-local independent' or similar, but I have nothing negative to say about them so have named them to be consistent with the others in this section.

I got their details from a shortlist of "Octopus Trusted Partners" sent after I cancelled the process with Octopus.  The experience was similar to that with the Heat Geek installers, in that I had a very positive and detailed telephone discussion with one of their directors, and commenced a process of getting an indicative quotation, via existing floorplans and photographs, etc.  Again, my ability to come across in conversation as a serious potential customer assisted in this process, to the extent that they planned to put together a remote design for me.

Prior to us reaching this stage, the general challenge of the conservatory was such that they said that they'd only want to use a Stiebel Eltron heat pump as the solution, and that the likely cost of such would be £10k+ after the BUS grant.  This allowed me to have the same very honest discussion with them that I'd had with the Heat Geek team, in terms of it being unlikely to be a viable option for us, prior to the designer getting involved in the project and incurring any significant time or cost investment on the project, on their part.

And finally......
BOXT (Online Quotation £4,299)
I've mentioned BOXT several times within this thread already, and one of the big challenges with them is finding any relevant heat pump installation feedback on them.

For those who don't know, they're a big national installer of gas boilers, and have been front of shirt sponsors for both Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, so they have a considerable marketing resource to their name.  I hadn't initially thought of them as a viable Heat Pump provider but, no doubt as a consequence of all the heat pump related searches I was doing at the time, an ad banner for their heat pumps popped up on screen at some point, which prompted me to give their online quote system a go, as they're typically fairly cheap when it comes to boiler installations.

Lo and behold, their system spat out a quote of £4,599 based on a Vaillant 7kW heat pump, and an email follow up from one of their consultants offered to immediately reduce this by a further £200, at which point the fun and games began.

From the initial back and forth, the immediate issue was that the only way to proceed any further with them was via completing the quotation process and paying the full amount to proceed.  Within this you then select an installation date to commence, some of which were only a few weeks away.  It only became clear via email enquiry with the sales consultant that the amount would be fully refundable up to the point of install, that a heat loss survey would be carried out within two weeks of the payment being made and that, oddly, there was no finance option available, unlike with their boiler purchases.  They justified this on the basis that the £7,500 BUS grant ruled out the ability for their finance provider to offer finance options, despite the overall costs likely still being higher than for a boiler.  I wasn't specifically looking for finance, but I found this to be a weird anomaly.

Because of the significant barriers to considering BOXT any further, I 'parked' them as an option to return to at the end of the process when I had a more complete range of options to compare them to.  This required me to re-generate a quote that had expired after 30 days which generated the same overall basis quote as before, but which was then reduced to £4,299 via a phone call with the sales consultant.

By this point, I had largely completed the process with all the other providers, and was still looking at BOXT as both the cheapest available quote, and one that provided a Vaillant solution (BOXT confirmed that they only offer Vaillant heat pumps), which I had learned would be an attractive option in terms of desired manufacturer options.  I had also obtained as much information as was available regarding their installations.  TrustPilot reviews filtered on heat pumps, and a few positive experiences noted on this site, all suggested they were competent installers.  My only concern at this stage was that the 7kW solution looked likely to be undersized based on all the accumulated heat loss data, so I would need to await the outcome of their heat loss survey to determine whether it would need an uplift to the 10kW heat pump.

Consequently, prior to hitting the button on the £4,299 'deposit' for the heat loss survey I went back to them with a few, final questions (one of which was to 100% reconfirm that the amount would be fully refundable) and it was at this stage where I asked about the conservatory with regard to the doubts over the required heat pump sizing.

It was only at this point, that they basically stated that they couldn't include a conservatory within their design, due to 'issues with a potential audit' and thus ruled themselves out of consideration!

Relieved as I am that I managed to discover this prior to having forked over over £4k to them to then discover it at a later date, it's only via a fortuitous correspondence trail with them that this crept out, almost by accident.  Consequently, it has seriously clouded my view of BOXT's entire operating model with regard to heat pumps, which sits as something of an anomaly alongside their main business.  I'm pretty sure that, if someone is facing a standard installation with no huge complications then they will likely come back with one of the cheapest quotes available, and offering a Vaillant solution with full 7 year warranty.  Provided that you go in with eyes wide open in terms of payment expectations, then I suspect they might be a viable option.

The problem is that, if you're a customer who is anything other than this, then they're just too big a risk to consider, given how readily they might pull the plug on you for whatever reason, and then you'll be back to square one, awaiting a refund from them to then commence a process with someone else, which is why I can't honestly recommend them under their current operating model.

Summary
So, at the conclusion of the process, we've ultimately opted for one of the local installers from Block 3 to install a 10kW Mitsubishi Ecodan system with a 250l cylinder with 10 radiator changes, supported by the longest Mitsubishi warranty (7 years) available.  Should anything not go to plan with this route, then there's another option within the local installers that I can re-visit, so we have a fallback option available too.

I hadn't quite expected this post to be quite the 'War and Peace' effort it has turned out to be, but it will hopefully be of some use as a reference point to someone in future, at least in terms of giving them a better initial idea of what to expect from various options available to them.

@sheriff-fatman Thank you for a very detailed review of the process you went through, it is good to see that you got a wide variety of quotations and support to enable you to get a good understanding and set of prices.

It is especially good to see one of us smaller companies were able to provide the best price and solution, we should champion and always offer the smaller companies the opportunity to quote so you get a good cross section of the services and providers available in your local area "especially for carbon footprints, its kind of the point of having an ASHP in the 1st place -to lower carbon", also skilled smaller companies are going to be needed more than ever in the next few years as the market grows and the larger players bite off to much unable to fill the staff shortage, especially when they are using all the smaller companies to do a lot of the work as there is a massive lack of trained engineers and designers. Most highly skilled engineers or designers are self employed and have their own company as you would being a rare and highly skilled, this means a lot of the larger company skill may be in house and freshly trained, the super skilled engineers with 10yrs experience can end up being the managers and not installing. 

I think everything you wrote was very helpful and offered a detailed insight to the process. Perhaps one day we will be able to afford to do the heat losses for free but for now they are to expensive along with the masses of qualifications, insurances, memberships and affiliations we must carry just to legally install and commission a simple heat pump.

Thank you for sharing.

Posted by: @ashp-bobba

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I think everything you wrote was very helpful and offered a detailed insight to the process. Perhaps one day we will be able to afford to do the heat losses for free but for now they are to expensive along with the masses of qualifications, insurances, memberships and affiliations we must carry just to legally install and commission a simple heat pump.

Thank you for the kind feedback.

Perhaps the government should look at making the survey costs recoverable in some way by those carrying them out.  As you've identified, many of the local companies are owner-managed small businesses, and these surveys will have a significant impact without the ability to be paid for them.  However, for someone who is just doing a bit of initial research into the possibility of a heat pump, being faced with a £350 cost, using the standard Heat Geek figure, to get more information is likely to be a significant barrier to them taking the process any further.

There's an element of 'game playing' that a savvy customer can apply, via the refundable deposit options from the bigger providers.  However, this still provides a natural barrier to entry for the smaller, local companies to be involved in the process, albeit I've hopefully demonstrated that it's possible to work proactively with companies to try to assist them in minimising their outlay to provide a guideline price, at least. 

The other aspect to consider is that it's simply not practical for a typical customer to have multiple surveys carried out, due to the time investment required.  I had to take time off work for each of the 3 we had done, plus the shorter 1-hour visits from others, albeit I'm probably at the extreme end of the scale in that regard.  If a customer intends to only have one survey done, the current system will naturally steer them towards one of the bigger providers who can offer this, effectively as a loss-leader service, and the smaller companies will presumably become increasingly reliant on picking up this work via the sub-contract route from one of them.

It's also worth highlighting that the decision to use the contractor we've chosen was greatly influenced by the personal interaction we had with him during his survey, so there's an additional value, in terms of likely conversion rate, available from doing face to face surveys.  However, relative to other quote processes I've gone through, the heat pump process requires a much more significant up-front investment from both customer and provider, which is only fully understood by the customer once they've seen what's involved in one of the surveys.  Suppliers have to protect themselves from the cost exposure of this as much as possible, but it would be beneficial for all concerned if the costs of such could be incorporated into the government's support ecosystem to encourage take-up so that people will be more willing to take that first step to commence the process.

@sherrif-fatman

I don't disagree with your ideas re surveys however there is a practical problem.  The survey protects the installer and indeed is a key part of that protection.  Therefore few installers will be prepared to rely on a survey done by another, which rather limits portability.  Although it's possible to conceive ways to circumvent thus, it's not straightforward.  I suspect that's why the government is content to leave installers to navigate this particular issue.  As installers get more experience they should hopefully become better at reading the house ar quote time so that they can give a solid provisional quote without full survey.

I'm not trying to defend tge system, just to rationalise it.

@jamespa I wasn't necessarily suggesting interchangeability of surveys, as I've seen the impracticality of this from the variation in the surveys I had done.  The intention was more towards making the costs of surveys manageable for both potential customer and installer, beyond relying on them being done via a refundable deposit or free of charge, which only the big energy companies can realistically expect to sustain as a loss-leader in significant volume.

Essentially, the thought was a system where the cost of the survey could be recovered by an installer via a government scheme, rather than them having to pass it on to the customer directly at the quotation stage, and assuming that the customer ultimately didn't purchase a system from them (at which point the charge would be absorbed within the overall installation charge, so becomes payable by the customer at that stage, but as part of a bigger overall cost which most likely benefits from a BUS grant saving).

The cost recovery would only apply where a survey had been done, and it hadn't resulted in a system being purchased, which I can imagine would be a reasonably high proportion of cases, given that the systems are still a fairly significant cost investment, even with the grants in place.

Posted by: @sheriff-fatman

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The cost recovery would only apply where a survey had been done, and it hadn't resulted in a system being purchased, which I can imagine would be a reasonably high proportion of cases, given that the systems are still a fairly significant cost investment, even with the grants in place.

I think therein lies the problem.  Ratio of quotes to installations is anyway high in this field and if tge government pays for pre-installation surveys a perverse incentive is created for installers to offer surveys and then quote high, just to get the profit from the survey.