@mrkfm Once I had decided to purchase a heatpump it became clear that the two main aspects to success was the design and then the installation. The type of heatpump and other kit just seems to be personal choice. 

Based on this and hours of further research, including 3 surveys and quotes. I eventually settled on Urban Plumbers, he has lots and lots of videos on you tube including problem solving other installers work in partnership with Heat Geek. 

Urban Plumbers brought reviews to life and you could see fir yourself exactly the quality and success of his installations. Obviously you may not live within his area but if you do i would certainly recommend, and if you don't,  then ensure you prioritise design and Installation as your two most critical criteria.

Big is not always best!

@editor Aargh - Trustpilot.

On my journey, Ì contacted a local installer who came out to my property. He looked around and said £10k for a heat pump; buffer and cylinder. When I asked about a heat loss survey, he said that he would send me an Excel file so that I could do it myself.

He candidly admitted that most of his clients comprised - as he put it - ‘the thick and the rich of Cheshire who didn’t worry about running costs’.

His company has excellent Trustpilot ratings.

@l8again lol, not sure your wealth is the point of a heat loss survey. It is key to the design, for me it would be a red flag.

@editor firstly i want a heat pump but tbh you've put me off them with all the scare stories about bad installs. 

that makes me look at anyone that has consistently high reviews as this is the only way someone like me with little knowledge can manage the risks.  they are less likely to go out of business which means they should be around to honour the guarantees.  if they respond to reviews in details this is a good sign as it shows they are willing to listen if things go wrong.  

i did an online rough quote on the Daikin website which recommended small local installers and when I looked them up a number of people were complaining about the installation/communication etc which put me off even more.

there is one local company in Devon recommended by your site which I may get a quote from but it isn't even clear on their website that they do air to water heat pumps which doesn't inspire confidence! they do seem to get good reviews so will consider them.

@mrkfm I  also went through all the doubts and uncertainty, it seems like a bit of mine field with so many negative stories around. My situation is very typical to most people, im not an enthusiast or anti, I just tried to have an open mind. My advice would be to watch quite a lot of videos on YT, at least enough to help you understand the function of a heat pump compared to a gas boiler. Then keep on watching to understand the process of design and installation. Then you can begin connecting with installers with some knowledge of what to expect and what questions to ask. Try a national supplier like Octopus where you will get your survey cost back if you dont proceed, also invite someone like Heatgeek and a local installer. Compare and select, just don't allow your only selection criteria to be price.

@mrkfm

There are some bad installers out there, both of heat pumps and boilers, just as there are bad builders, bad electricians ....  The whole construction industry has many good people, and unfortunately a few chancers.  Most of us have put up with paying 10% more than necessary to heat our houses since we got that flashy 'condensing' boiler installed,  because most boilers are badly commissioned!  Im not defending our heating industry, just telling it as it is.  Also dont forget that people rarely talk about things that go well, but love to complain.  Also there is a massively well funded industry dedicated to rubbishing heat pumps, so the negative is amplified and the positive attenuated and its nothing like as bad as the scare stories would have you believe.

The good news is that the design of a heat pump system for most houses is actually very simple, most of the problems arise because some in the industry (and some customers) make it unnecessarily complex.  Fortunately it has become clear from this forum that the chancers nearly all make the exact same mistakes, which are easy to spot.  Thus there are some simple checks you can do to weed them out.  Its well worth the effort because a well designed and competently installed heat pump system should be cheaper to run and far more comfortable than most boiler based systems, as well as 'greener'.  

Here is my advice:

Before you purchase:

• Check the proposed heat pump capacity vs your current gas/oil consumption.  It should lie between annual consumption (kWh)/2000 and annual consumption/3000.  If it doesnt, investigate.  So if your annual consumption is say 15000kWh, your heat pump should be between 5 and 7.5kW capacity
• Ask if they intend to install a buffer between heat pump and emitters (by which I mean a vessel connected to both flow and return).  If they do show them the door.  A vessel connected only to the flow or only to the return ('usually called a volumiser) is OK.
• Ask if they intend to install or reuse third party controls, particularly smart thermostats like Hive etc.  If they do, show them the door.  The exception to this is if they intend to install heat pump specific third party controls (currently Passiv, Homely, Adia, Havenwise only) which are sensible in combination with a heat pump that has relatively crude native controls (eg Samsung).
• Check the design flow temperature.  If they dont specify it or its above 50 then be suspicious, unless like Heat Geek they guarantee a SCOP (which in many ways is better)
• Check that you are visually happy with proposed radiator upgrades.  If there are major differences between different quotes in this area they may well be worth investigating, but in truth its an inexact science so dont expect or be worried if they are not all the same.
• There are a few other questions that you can ask but these are the ones that will weed out most if not all of the chancers.

During install there are also a few things to check/ask, if you proceed please let us know and we can advise.  

You may find it less stressful to go about it systematically by issuing a mini request for quotation, just a couple of paragraphs, to more or less all installers in a given radius (list on the MCS website).  I did that once I had a reasonable idea of my requirements.  I specified what I wanted (including the maximum capacity of the heat pump because I had good evidence of my actual house loss) and what I would not accept (buffer tank, external controls, replumbing of primaries etc, which some had suggested).  Some didn't reply, some tried to tell me I wanted something else, and a proportion were compliant.  Only the compliant ones were considered.  Its not necessary to follow this approach but it can be a good one once you have formulated a view of what you want based on the first couple.

Finally feel free to post any quotes here (with a bit of info about your house) if you want a comment.  

Hope that helps

@jamespa Thanks. this is very helpful.  It's actually the guy who runs this who has put me off! Which isn't a criticism as I think he's quite objective on the subject but he recently did a few videos about the number of people who are complaining about bad installs. Your advice is extremely useful and I really appreciate such as detailed description.  in the meantime I still need to persuade my wife but i think im nearly there!

@mrkfm 

In fairness @editor has had a particularly bad experience, a botched install followed (several years later) by a botched attempt at fixing it.  He also has a difficult house.  As a consequence he is something of a campaigner, and rightly so IMHO.  People with quite ordinary houses also sometimes have bad experiences which they absolutely do not deserve.  He is absolutely right to campaign for them, but that doesn't mean that they are the majority.

The key if you want to avoid relying on luck is asking the right questions.  You have come to the right place.  I could easily have had a bad experience, early quotes claimed (amongst other fictions) that I needed a heat pump with over twice the capacity of that with which I ended up, but fortunately I was suspicious.  This forum, plus a bit of logical thinking, made the difference*.   The market has matured somewhat, but there are still chancers out there.

Having gone through the heat pump journey and watched this forum the pattern is very clear.  Of course there is no absolute guarantee, but if you want that then best thing is never to do anything.  However the people here have a lot of experience that they are keen to share, and a lot of common sense.  I haven't, in over two years, seen a case where someone has listened to the pre-contract advice here and been disappointed afterwards.

My wife was also doubtful and now agrees that it was a good move.  We also had an upgrade to our DHW (because we previously had a vented cylinder) which helped, but the heating upgrade is the most notable.  A house that is comfortable throughout, 24x7, even in the depths of winter, for the same or less running cost** is a major improvement on our boiler, even when we ran it as close to 'heat pump' mode as we could.  In fairness you can operate modern boilers this way (low temperature, weather compensation, on most or all of the time), but doing so requires more or less exactly the same changes and design as those you need to fit a heat pump!

* Unfortunately it didn't make the difference for a flat roof replacement (on which I lost £K5 and very nearly caused a major flood on Boxing Day), but that's a whole other story about another incompetent chancer in the construction industry!

** depending on gas/electric price ratio - which does vary - its currently very much tilted in favour of electric

@mrkfm, I’m definitely not trying to put anyone off getting a heat pump… quite the opposite. I think we all need to move away from burning fossil fuels, and for most homes a heat pump is going to be a big part of that transition.

What I am trying to do is make sure homeowners go into the process properly prepared, with enough understanding to ask the right questions, challenge anything that doesn’t make sense and recognise the difference between an installer who is simply selling a heat pump and one who is designing a good heating system around the house. The better informed you are before you sign anything, the better your chances of ending up with an excellent installation rather than an average one.

Our own system was badly botched, but it was also a large and difficult house with a complicated heating system, so I don’t use our experience as an argument against heat pumps at all. If anything, it reinforced the point that the technology itself is rarely the problem; design, installation and commissioning quality are what make or break the outcome.

So please don’t read the videos as “don’t get a heat pump”. Read them as “get one, but do your homework first”. Learn the basics, understand your heat loss, ask about flow temperatures, sizing, emitters, controls, pipework and commissioning.

@mrkfm, I'd also suggest that whenever you're ready, start up a thread dedicated to your journey.