@bontwoody Well said, I feel that enough ‘heat’ has been generated on this matter -let’s return to normal, friendly and informative tolerance please. Regards, Toodles.

@marvinator80 - apologies accepted, thank you, think no more of it. I agree planning and installing a heat pump, and more in your case, can be a very time consuming and exhausting process, and at times perhaps we are not at our best. I also had a seriously incompetent heat pump installer thrown into the mix, as the preferred installer for the local authority grant administrators, who drove me to distraction and beyond. In the end, I had to insist they were dismissed, and I had the administrators agree to let my preferred installer do the installation. 

@bontwoody - thank you too, for bringing us to our senses. 

Posted by: @marvinator80

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the ASHP is not silent when it is running but nothing like the oil boiler was and with it being outside the house we don’t hear it at all.

Yet you can install an oil boiler without planning consent but have to jump through loads of hoops to install a heat pump

@cathoderay I wonder if your installer is related to an electrician we employed some years ago (at Father-in-law’s insistence as he had done a good job of his wiring); in the intervening time, his marriage and fallen apart and so had his quality of work. The electrician would come and work for about 2 hours at a time and leave it for days before returning; his memory was no better as he even ripped out some of his own new wiring at one point thinking it was the old! (Sorry Mars, this is going very off-topic now!) Regards, Toodles.

@jamespa Is this perhaps a case of legislation lagging behind as and when ‘newer technology’ appears (yes, I realise heat pumps have been around for quite some years but are still relatively ‘new kids on the block’ for many people and installers in the UK. The legislation pertaining to oil burning systems has probably been based on experience and previous legislation from decades back I suspect. The old adage of ‘leave well alone’ probably applies and after all, look at the standard of work applied to the installation of gas boilers and design and specifying boiler capacity etc. From my own experience I know that British Gas had staff carrying out surveys who sold us a system of at least three times the capacity we needed and that surveyor must have been happy for the installation team to leave the power setting on the default and we must have paid for much wasted energy during that time. But…. What the hell? ‘We have North Sea Gas - and enough for centuries - who cares?’ I think some things have changed for the better - even if the MCS have been provided with too many teeth in some respects. Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @toodles

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I wonder if your installer is related to an electrician we employed some years

Possibly, but unlikely. The grant administrator's preferred installer was a dedicated renewables firm. The main problems were a worse than useless room survey (they got all the room heat loss calculations all wrong, and were going to fit smaller rads in the bigger larger heat loss rooms, and larger rads in the smaller lower heat loss rooms, and in places proposed to fit rads where there wasn't space to fit them eg rad taller than floor to window sill height), repeated assurances over several months that at last everything was set up and ready to go when it wasn't (I was given three start dates that came and went without anything happening), and the final straw (and cause of the third and final delay/cancellation), a hot water tank that was physically too large for the available space. At that point I decided the 'preferred' installer couldn't be trusted to install a pencil in a pencil sharpener, and they had to go.

I was lucky, in that I had done my own heat loss calcs, and had the good fortune to be able to spot the errors. I hate to think what would have happened had I not been in such a position.

It was never clear how or why they were the grant administrators preferred installer. They weren't even local to the local authority area. My preferred installer on the other hand, was local, and, despite some initial commissioning problems, managed to get the system up and running.   

Posted by: @toodles

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@jamespa Is this perhaps a case of legislation lagging behind as and when ‘newer technology’ appears (yes, I realise heat pumps have been around for quite some years but are still relatively ‘new kids on the block’ for many people and installers in the UK. The legislation pertaining to oil burning systems has probably been based on experience and previous legislation from decades back I suspect. .... Regards, Toodles.

Possibly, but this time we can't afford the luxury of waiting for experience etc.  

@cathoderay

Could you please explain more about what you term the 'Grant Administrator'?

If I understand correctly what you have stated, then one person or possibly company, can manipulate the flow of work to a specific company, with which they may have some financial interest, in the process known as 'Grant Harvesting'. 🙄 

@cathoderay Nepotism maybe? Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @derek-m

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Could you please explain more about what you term the 'Grant Administrator'?

I was a beneficiary of the so-called LAD or local authority delivery version of the Green Homes (or whatever it was called) grant system. Delivery of the grants was devolved to local authorities, who sometimes got together as consortia, and then appointed a (private) firm to administer the grants. My application went to, and was administered, by that company, which I called the 'Grant Administrator', though the installation (and the administration) was paid for by the local authority, who in turn got the money from the government, who in turn got the money from us (taxpayers).

I have to say the LAD sceme delivered, at least for me, I have a heat pump paid for by the grant, though I think by and large the scheme wasn't that successful, in that it got nowhere near its intended delivery rate (in that, it is not alone among grant schemes). As I have said before, the grant was a key factor in my getting the heat pump, without it I would almost certainly simply have replaced the old and could start leaking at any point oil tank and kept on using oil until the boiler packed up. I should also add that getting a successful completed installation required a lot of tenacity on my part, there were many hurdles to get over (most chronicled here and there on the forum) and I am sure many applicants fall along the way on a life's too short basis. Even as it was, with the delays caused by the LAD preferred installer, I got painfully close to the deadline for completed systems to qualify for a grant, and I remain very grateful to my installer for pulling out all the stops to get there.

There certainly was some what we may politely call joined up teamwork going on, eg the preferred installer used a subsidiary to do the EPC, but despite looking (part of my 'due diligence') I couldn't smell anything fishy about the relationship between the grant administrator and the preferred installer, although it always seemed odd to use a firm based the other side of Oxford for a south coast based LA consortium. The stated reason (I asked) was they ticked all the boxes and went the extra mile (and boy oh boy did they go the extra mile, round and round the houses and back again, without actually achieving anything).

The other thing is the grant administrator did allow me to fire their preferred installer, and use my preferred installer (albeit after what I believe is now called 'on-boarding'), who was local, and, I felt, helpful and willing to listen to what the customer wanted (often not the case - installers use MCS requirements as a brickbat to beat tiresome customers into submission), and just as importantly could do the installation, based on our joint discussions. This means that at least in my case, if there was anything fishy going on, the smell went away once the preferred installer was sent packing.