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Starting Our Heat Pump Journey: 1962 build 3 bed detached house
Hi
We are just starting our heat pump journey, we have a 1962 build 3 bed detached house which has the usual large windows. We did a fair amount of upgrades done when we moved in 15 years ago, re wire, replacing an old floor standing gas boiler with numerous radiator changed from poor performing ones new hot water cylinder and moving to a sealed system, A classified double glazing etc. We have solar and 10kW battery storage and run 2 ev’s.
We have had someone from ARIA to do the initial pitch, lots of videos, slideshows etc and an initial estimate subject to survey. Main concern is their design includes a buffer tank which seems a bit overkill and watching numerous YT videos question their use. Current recommendation is a 6kw outdoor unit and 250l cylinder.
Heat Geek certified installer coming on Monday to do a survey so should get an idea of heat loss and a better idea on cost over initial online estimate.
Did the initial online quote with Octopus, energy provider, requested a call but currently finding it impossible to get anyone to talk to me. Was hoping to get a rough idea of amount of energy used by their heat pumps to get an idea if it is worth increasing my solar battery storage.
Looking for any recommendations for the Reading area for us to consider as it looks like we won’t be having Octopus through the door now.
Sorry for the long intro.
Cheers
Ian
Posted by: @ian-sDid the initial online quote with Octopus, energy provider, requested a call but currently finding it impossible to get anyone to talk to me. Was hoping to get a rough idea of amount of energy used by their heat pumps to get an idea if it is worth increasing my solar battery storage.
Depending on your flow temperature you should get a SCOP (seasonal coefficient of performance - energy out/energy in averaged over the whole heating season) of around 4 with a good system, so on average the energy use is likely to be very roughly one quarter your gas use. This assumes that you currently heat your house and it doesn't cool too much at any time eg overnight (a modest cooling of a degree or so because you have switched the heating off for a few hours doesn't actually make much difference to energy consumption). If your house cools a lot for substantial parts of the day the consumption may be more than this because you usually try to operate heat pumps on 24x7 or thereabouts.
However during the depths of winter your COP will drop as low as 3 when its very cold outside. So if your house loss really has a loss of 6kW it will need 6kW*24h to heat =144kWh on a day when its at design temperature all day, which means you will consume about 48kWh of electricity. A more typical mid season day will be less than half that because you will be running at a higher COP and higher outdoor temperature.
If you have even annual gas readings you can do a sense check on loss calculations and also inspect your max gas use which will tell you about likely electricity use. If you have half hourly meter readings you can do a more sophisticated analysis by plotting against average OAT, which can, with the right conditions, give a pretty accurate readout of house loss. The challenge with older houses that have been upgraded is that surveyors dont always take into account the upgrades and/or the u-values of the materials are not necessarily accurately known. Also estimating the loss due to air changes can be a challenge with older houses. This generally leads to an overestimated loss, sometimes by a factor of 2, which causes issues. That said you aren't going to get a heat pump much smaller than 6kW anyway and if your rads are oversized it doesnt matter, you just run at a lower FT and higher COP. The real problems come when a (say) 6kW house is estimated at (say) twice that figure and since yours is coming out at 6kW you are hopefully not in that territory.
Feel free to most more questions/ask for further explanation.
4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.
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