Posted by: @jswhite

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There should be a category below the lowest one that says 'Criminal rip-off'.
We have just huddled round an oil filled radiator in one room during the last two weeks of cold. The heat pump we have has not been switched on since last April.

I have had three plumbers other than the installers, all tutted at the design (210 litre hot water tank to supply one tap. Worse, the heat exchanger feeds heat into the tank, which is not a thermal store, before it goes to central heating.) Only the last plumber told me this was ridiculous waste of heat and therefore money.

I have quotes of £7K and £4K to remove the hot water tank and adjust the pipes. The last plumber said that ASHP should not have been fitted to a leaky old house like this because it had no chance of keeping us warm at an affordable price (even before the costs went up). He has recommended ripping it out and selling to someone who has a properly insulated new build where it might work.

The complaints procedure through HIES and NEICIE was pathetic and my request to refer to the Ombudsman got the response from HIES that 'we wont refer to the Ombudsman because we don't want you to be disappointed when you lose' Prejuded or what?

I have tried to discover an email address so I can correspond with the Ombudsman directly. They seem to be transparent. Much is made of their presence in the brochures but once needed they disappear.

Has anyone on this forum got an email address for the heat pump Ombudsman?
Has anyone ever been referred to the Ombudsman?

What manufacture of heat pump do you have? Whilst heating DHW first is normally set as default, it can often be changed. Do whatever you can to improve insulation, it will pay dividends now and in the future.

Who was your installer and were they MCS accredited?

You could try e-mailing the BBC's Rip off Britain team, they may be interested in your situation, also try the national newspapers.

If you provide details of your system and the problems you are experiencing, the forum members may be able to help improve the system operation.

The link is to one of my earlier posts: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/renewable-heating-air-source-heap-pumps-ashps/diy-remove-dhw

The house is measured at 120 square meters but I kept pointing out that we only ever heat about half of that.

A 16Kw Samsung ASHP with 210 DHW tank was installed to supply hot water to one kitchen tap, electric shower.  and the central heating in the form of UFH in two rooms and slow flow radiators in another. We were told to heat everywhere to make the heat pump run efficiently but that lasted only a few days because cost of running did not come down and it was not particularly cold outside.

The latest plumber points out that by removing the tank and replacing with a smaller one it is hardly likely to cost less to run. The heat loss totals were supplied but not the calculations that they used to arrive at those totals. After I repeated the heat loss exercise use MCS spreadsheet I realised that the totals were very easily tweeked to provide any result that was required. Even the local weather station moved around the country to prodice a base line for heat loss differences.

The culprits were Evergreen Energy and they are MCS registered but that hardly matters because there is no comeback from those who are supposed to be checking on their work. 

Regarding Rip Off on the BBC, I'm not attracted to publicity of my victim status or stupidity - as HIES so diplomatically put it 'you signed the contract so its your own fault'. I signed the contract under pressure from the deadline of grants coming to end, did not understand the technology and had the impression that there were three different organisation that could help rectify anything that went wrong (HIES NEICIE OMBUDSMAN - first two useless last one invisible).

The vocabulary surrounding heat pumps is all about saving, but it became clear that they are more expensive to run. They are probably good in a passive house, or if you you have secondary heating in a house and with solar panels. We have none of those advantages.

Posted by: @jswhite

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as HIES so diplomatically put it 'you signed the contract so its your own fault'. I signed the contract under pressure from the deadline of grants coming to end, did not understand the technology and had the impression that there were three different organisation that could help rectify anything that went wrong (HIES NEICIE OMBUDSMAN - first two useless last one invisible).

Just so that I'm clear, you raised your complaint with HIES NEICIE and the ombudsman – which ombudsman did you flag this with? 

When you flagged your issues with HIES and they replied it was your fault, where did they assign this fault? In your selection of the installer?

Really sorry to read this @jswhite. 16kW is a large unit for 120m2 heated area, especially if you usually have diversity and only some rooms heated. You lose heat energy from heated to unheated space, so emitters in the heated spaces need to be larger and/or set to a higher setting or higher WC flow temperature to offset that, but that's still cheaper than heating space you are not using.

What was your former heating system and have you any idea of the energy requirement to heat it in kWh per year? That won't change regardless of what type of heating system you have. It only changes if you make some energy efficiency improvement in the building insulation and/or heat to a lower inside temperature. A 16kW unit implies very poor insulation levels, or the unit is oversized. Oversizing can be an issue if the minimum turn down means the ASHP ends up cycling on and off a lot in milder weather with lower heating load. Common misconception with installers is "if the ASHP is bigger than required it doesn't matter as it's inverter driven" That's true only within the min and max operating envelope of the unit chosen. ASHPs can turn down to 20-30% typically, but each time they start up they draw higher power for a while to catch up and offset the loss of temperature in the water circuit when they were off.

Right sizing the plant is important, but installers from the plumbing and CH trade have a legacy of throwing in 30kW gas combis to any size property. Old habits die hard and oversizing heat pumps because of ignorance or uncertainty about the correct unit capacity can be a costly mistake.

ASHPs don't save energy, heat is heat. But they will consume less energy because they are heat pumps, and systems should be 300-500% efficient on average. Good installers can better that. A lot of variables influence that of course. Less energy consumed does not necessarily mean less cost to run as electricity per kWh is around 34p/kWh on price cap tariff, and 10.3p/kWh mains gas. You'll only save money at current prices if the SCOP averages >3.4. In the longer-term, electricity will get better parity with mains gas on price per kWh, but not for a few years. All energy will be expensive in the new era, that's just the economic reality.

Can anything be done to better insulate the property? Whatever heating system you have, you'll pay a lot less if the fabric of the building can be properly insulated.

Standing losses from a modern well insulated system hot water tank are very low, around 2KWh per day typically at 60degC water storage for a 250litre cylinder, so a larger tank than needed isn't that inefficient.

You said the ASHP feeds into the hot water tank then the heating circuit? That's very strange if so, but easily fixed surely. It's just control valves and copper pipe. I found exactly that in my house when I bought it in 2012. The system boiler had a 2 way not a 3 way valve control between CH and HW, the 2 way valve opened to permit CH flow, but no valve controlled the thermal store flow, so it was charging whenever the CH was on. Water chooses the path of least resistance, which was most flow through the thermal store not the house radiators. Madness!

@editor 
I raised it with HIES and they dismissed it 'out of their remit' and 'my own fault for signing the contract'
The Ombudsman? No I cannot find a contact. When I requested email address from HIES I got the prejudged response that I would lose so not worth referriing my issue.

@jswhite, that’s just crazy that HIES would reply like that. As for the ombudsman, the industry is looking at forming an organization like this, but there’s no formal channel at the moment. MCS and HIES are supposed to be the main “protectors” in the system.

Posted by: @jswhite

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@editor 
I raised it with HIES and they dismissed it 'out of their remit' and 'my own fault for signing the contract'
The Ombudsman? No I cannot find a contact. When I requested email address from HIES I got the prejudged response that I would lose so not worth referriing my issue.

I would suggest that you write to your MP and ask him to request from Grant Shapps who you should contact for help with your predicament.

Posted by: @editor

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@jswhite, that’s just crazy that HIES would reply like that. As for the ombudsman, the industry is looking at forming an organization like this, but there’s no formal channel at the moment. MCS and HIES are supposed to be the main “protectors” in the system.

@editor what about RECC? Are they not a good organisation to raise issues through?

@gemiar, sadly, they too have been ineffective. They’re all toothless and frankly unwilling to ruffle feathers.  

But you have to give it a go… as mentioned in my other reply to you, I’d follow the complaint process. Sooner or later, homeowners must get adequate solutions and remedies to expensive, incompetent, bodged installations. I’ll help raise your case publicly with the powers that be through my channels, but to this point, they’ve remained weak and silent. 

Posted by: @editor

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@gemiar, sadly, they too have been ineffective. They’re all toothless and frankly unwilling to ruffle feathers.  

But you have to give it a go… as mentioned in my other reply to you, I’d follow the complaint process. Sooner or later, homeowners must get adequate solutions and remedies to expensive, incompetent, bodged installations. I’ll help raise your case publicly with the powers that be through my channels, but to this point, they’ve remained weak and silent. 

Maybe we should all write to our MP's and ask for an explanation as to why MCS and RECC are failing to protect consumers with regard to heat pump installations. I for one am quite willing to do so.

@editor thanks. I will definitely start the complaint and see where that leads.

it is very sad though that all the bodies that claim to provide protection for consumers can’t do so effectively when it comes to it. Perhaps they also need to be held accountable somehow.

Posted by: @derek-m

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Posted by: @editor

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@gemiar, sadly, they too have been ineffective. They’re all toothless and frankly unwilling to ruffle feathers.  

But you have to give it a go… as mentioned in my other reply to you, I’d follow the complaint process. Sooner or later, homeowners must get adequate solutions and remedies to expensive, incompetent, bodged installations. I’ll help raise your case publicly with the powers that be through my channels, but to this point, they’ve remained weak and silent. 

Maybe we should all write to our MP's and ask for an explanation as to why MCS and RECC are failing to protect consumers with regard to heat pump installations. I for one am quite willing to do so.

 

Absolutely- I think this is a great idea. I am willing to do this too! The organisations who provide guarantees or accreditation to the poor installers should also be held accountable.