@johnmo Yes, I know.  I'm fairly clear where the issues are.  It's the 'Heath Robinson' dogs-legs on show that my wife worries about.

'Getting tradesmen in' is always a recipe for disappointment in my experience as they always take shortcuts and don't take care.  I had solar and battery installed this year which I couldn't do myself as I'm not MCS registered and not qualified to sign-off for building regs (although I am a retired ex chartered electrical engineer). There were 5 people on the job at one point so I couldn't keep an eye on them all.  The equipment works (nothing to go wrong after installation that I can't fix) but it's not a great installation and there were some issues, including one that I considered to be unsafe that I resolved myself. An ASHP heating system upgrade will be a completely different kettle of fish.  I will be relying on someone that I hope knows what they are doing but I should at least be able to avoid having the wool pulled over my eyes and be able to ask probing questions. Not only do I need to be sure that I find  someone knowledgeable to design an efficient heating system to meet my needs, but they must also be fastidious in its installation (e.g. pipe insulation integrity, vibration/flow/pump noise, etc) and offer aesthetic practical solutions to issues such as I mention. If anyone can recommend such a person 😉 ......

@ianmk13 ‘Ere, ‘ave this ‘en’s teeth to be getting on with…😄 Toodles.

@ianmk13 

Where are you located?  With this info maybe someone here can provide.a recommendation 

Sadly the industry appears to be riddled with grant chasers who will sell you the wrong system badly installed for shedloads of money.  You may have to rely on asking loads of questions to weed out the cowboys; with your background and help from this forum that will be possible.  

I'm two years into my journey and dont yet have a heat pump.  I did an initial trawl for potential installers and found only one, that I could get on with (ie that didn't try to BS me or force me into unnecessary and disruptive 'upgrades').  Along the way had two three hour heat loss surveys, one of which I paid £300 for (watch the video on sizing on this forum if you want to know more).    The floorplan one produced is useful, the heating calculations are pure fantasy, yet the GIGO spreadsheet they produced is what they would have insisted on relying on to design the system, had I proceeded.

Sadly planning problems then intervened for a year and am only now, having won a planning appeal, back onto playing 'hunt the installer'.  Im already sensing some of the same BS as I got 2 years ago, but this time I'm asking pointed questions up front so I don't waste my time (and theirs - not that I care much about wasting the time of the bs merchants). 

I, like you, have a background in engineering followed by a period in local government.  It's  been really frustrating TBH.  Part of the reason I embarked on getting planning approval was so I had the fall back of doing the job myself without the MCS malarkey, a fall back I now have but don't want to use.

I'm still hopeful that my original installer will do the job for me even though I'm  out of their area and haven't yet responded to my email.  If they won't for any reason then at least this time I know the questions to ask to weed out the bs merchants from the start.

@jamespa And there was me thinking I had more than carried out due diligence, caution and research when I took over a year and 20 + installers! Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @toodles

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@jamespa And there was me thinking I had more than carried out due diligence, caution and research when I took over a year and 20 + installers! Regards, Toodles

In fairness a year of my 2 year journey is the planning nightmare, during which I suspended looking for installers.  I havent yet reached 20 installers investigated, although expect to be at that number by the time I'm finished.  So currently I think your due diligence ranks above mine!

If I had known 2 years ago what I know now I would have done things very differently, although the shifting sands of my local planning authority still would have been an issue.  In terms of noise at the most affected assessment point they have gone from requiring '10dB below background' to 'meets MCS requirements is OK even though it doesn't meet our planning guidelines' back to requiring the noise pressure at the most affected assessment point to be 20dB(A) or less,  The last of these, which is their current published position, is probably now unsustainable following my appeal.

@jamespa That sounds totally impossible, unreasonable and daft to me! 😒 At least mine was PD and no quibbling, Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @toodles

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@jamespa That sounds totally impossible, unreasonable and daft to me! 😒 At least mine was PD and no quibbling, Regards, Toodles.

I think the planning inspector probably came to the same conclusion, but obviously he had to express it in legal terms!

In fact mine could possibly have been PD apart from a screen >2m high which needs permission.  Had I know back then what I know now I would probably have applied for the screen alone, then once permission was granted for that, fitted the heat pump under PD.

That said, given the strong antipathy (and ignorance) that I have now discovered my LPA has to heat pumps, I would be worrying, if installing under PD, that they would invoke conditions G3 (b) and (c) should the need arise, and claiming that these were not met.  Since a breach of condition notice can only be appealed through the High Court, not to the planning inspectorate, the risk of this (given the level of antipathy) is too high IMHO.

@johnmo we could but I think they look a bit ugly

I’d recommend getting a smart meter, and asking for daily or finer data.  The highest daily gas use in kWh, divided by 24, will be the smallest heatpump you could get away with.  

If you do get a heatpump, try and get a mid-certified inline electricity meter fitted to it, so that you can monitor its behaviour.  They’re only £50.  Appreciate there will be something inside the box, but it will be of unknown accuracy.

@jamespa I started out researching the whole heat pump project some months before Octopus Energy announced that they were going to start installing heat pumps; in fact they were the first installers to visit and carry out a very thorough survey with 2 engineers spending three hours ‘fine toothcombing’ the house, inside and out. They were very helpful and friendly, I followed them around and asked many questions which they seemed only too pleased to answer in full and explain aspects I was unaware of. (At the time, their pump of choice was Daikin as they had not even announced the Ireland based Red buy-out). Their calculations were being based on 50 degrees C flow temperature as everyone elses were later.

I will be ever grateful to that plumber and that electrician even though my installation transpired as ‘out of their scope’ for I had rather unusual wants and restrictions on siting of the components required. Many of the prospective installers were BS merchants, some were ‘no-shows’ and at least one carried out an initial on-line survey and quote, then wrote to cry off as my location was outside their working area! Another did a five minute walk around the house and gave me a price with no details at all - he was shown the door! Such is life! Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @robl

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I’d recommend getting a smart meter, and asking for daily or finer data.  The highest daily gas use in kWh, divided by 24, will be the smallest heatpump you could get away with.  

Absolutely, with one caveat, if you have a condensing boiler which condenses all the time, ie is set up properly to run at low flow temp, then the loss could be 10% higher than gas consumption indicates because of the gains from condensation.  However the probability your condensing boiler is set up this way is small, unless you did it yourself!

The real problem is getting anyone in the industry to take account of actual measured consumption.  The stock response is that MCS require them to use their GIGO spreadsheet (not strictly true) to do the sizing, so any actual measurements are irrelevant. Obviously they don't tell you about the GIGO bit. 

Only a very few, it seems, have the imagination to take actual measurements  into account!  Why? because the GIGO spreadsheet guarantees that they can't be challenged and indeed that MCS will defend them, whereas any method more rooted in fact isn't.

MCS know that the current method is inadequate (I have an email from them admitting so) but refuse, so far, to change.

@jamespa i.e ‘We know it is flawed, but we are covering our @rses’. Regards, Toodles.