@kev-m The regs do make provision I think for the necessity of a 'reliable' system though, noone should be left in Winter having to boil kettles and use electric fan heaters. In fairness to the manufacturer of the pump, I don't think it's their kit that is to blame in my cicrcumstance.

The more I learn about what is actually going on in this sector though, in terms of design spec, install and follow up, lack of transparency re actual running costs etc. (or passing unnecessarily high running costs on to the end user for various reasons) the more dismayed I get. I love the green credentials of heatpumps, but sadly some of the behaviours I am witnessing are so very unethical (imo). The whole sorry saga has had a dramatic and negative effect on my health and quality of life. It makes me fear for the potentially thousands of oblivious, tenants especially, but also homebuyers/owners about to experience much of the same.

Thankfully hubs like this exist though, so that both good and not so good experiences can be shared and much can be learned. No doubt membership will grow exponetially soon @editor! There is nothing worse than not having a voice, being too fearful of saying anything or that voice being crushed. I'm not even sure it's as cut and dried as a bad versus good design/install, there are so many grey areas and variables that make parts of the total experience good, yet some parts very bad (for me anyway).

The problem in this industry is that the people who run it don’t really appreciate it! Graham Hendra who runs a heat pump manufacturer  supplier poo-pooing weather compensation is a prime example. Multiply that by all the suppliers and you have a disaster.

And when Mars interviewed the President of the Heat Pump manufacturer he didn’t ask him about the role of weather compensation  and why it’s important either.

The people who write the regs are not engineers but young civil servants. 

Here the the thing though ultimately it is the controls and how they interreact with system components which  define the user experience, energy used and service life. 

Trivialise them at your peril , and you do that every time an on off Thermostat is used on a heat pump.

No offence meant to any one, but this industry is the blind leading the blind, and the worst part is that no one is beginning to ask the right questions.

I'd def like to find out more about weather compensation and if it could help to improve my experience and bills?

@saz speak to the manufacturer of your heat pump.

(let us know your experience)

Posted by: @saz

@kev-m The regs do make provision I think for the necessity of a 'reliable' system though, noone should be left in Winter having to boil kettles and use electric fan heaters. In fairness to the manufacturer of the pump, I don't think it's their kit that is to blame in my cicrcumstance.

The more I learn about what is actually going on in this sector though, in terms of design spec, install and follow up, lack of transparency re actual running costs etc. (or passing unnecessarily high running costs on to the end user for various reasons) the more dismayed I get. I love the green credentials of heatpumps, but sadly some of the behaviours I am witnessing are so very unethical (imo). The whole sorry saga has had a dramatic and negative effect on my health and quality of life. It makes me fear for the potentially thousands of oblivious, tenants especially, but also homebuyers/owners about to experience much of the same.

Thankfully hubs like this exist though, so that both good and not so good experiences can be shared and much can be learned. No doubt membership will grow exponetially soon @editor! There is nothing worse than not having a voice, being too fearful of saying anything or that voice being crushed. I'm not even sure it's as cut and dried as a bad versus good design/install, there are so many grey areas and variables that make parts of the total experience good, yet some parts very bad (for me anyway).

@saz,

of course you are right, you should have a heating system that works as well as one you can control yourself.  As a user and tenant, it shouldn't be you that is having to sort this out, contact manufacturers, independent engineers,etc.  Have you tried going through the usual channels for tenancy problems; the Housing Ombudsman (if your landlord is a housing association) or Citizen's Advice if private? 

I agree about the state of the industry.  I count myself lucky that my installer was a good one and it shouldn't be like that.

There are plenty of articles on weather compensation if you search.  It's not a panacea but if done properly it saves a significant amount of money; between 10 and 20 percent depending on who you listen to.  In my case it was 20%.  With energy prices as they are that's a lot of money (and C02!)

Kev    

I agree with the views being expressed here about the chaotic nature of this industry and the volume of ignorant and/or bad practice, made worse by toothless and probably none too competent regulators (junior clerks pushing papers round their desks or more like kitchen table these days).

I like most on this forum have been relatively involved in my installation. I designed and installed my first central heating in the 1980s (what wonderful days they were, we just did things), and so the general principles and how to do heat loss calcs, size radiators etc. I'm not a total idiot when it comes to dealing with red tape. And yet I faced the following obstacles:

1. Nearly stalled at the planning stage (planners wanted a bat survey when one wasn't needed). I could have given up then

2. Four quotes, all (very) different designs despite working from the same data etc (same property, same MCS comedy rules). Are any of them right? How is the average consumer to chose which one to go for? Price (=> cheaper, inadequate system?). Mr Nice Guy? Mr Smooth Talking Guy (££,£££)?

3. Byzantine grant system. Grant aid is absolutely essential if there is to be significant uptake of ASHPs. At a minimum, it needs to work out such that the home owner spends no more than they would on a fossil fuel alternative. Otherwise the normal rules of economy mean people will not chose ASHPs. The whole grant process was so slow and so arduous that I could have (some even said I should have, the strain was getting to me) given up many times over.

4. Suppliers of ASHPs using dodgy marketing. How is the average consumer to know that a heat pump designated as a 14kW heat pump is only 14kW on days when they don't need 14kWs, and will be significantly less (eg 11kW or less) on the days when they do need 14kWs. This is like dieselgate, perhaps we should call it pumpgate. This is a regulatory failure, eg MCS, for focusing too much on SCOPs and ignoring actual output. The government could also make it a requirement that actual real world output output is used to describe units. Calling a unit a 11-14kW unit rather than a 14kW unit is such a simple change and yet it immediately alerts everyone to the real world output. Or maybe it should even more simply be called an 11kW unit, because that is it's output when it matters.   

5. Installers who aren't experts, and who not unreasonably rely on suppliers who the installers believe are experts, only they are not, they are businesses shifting boxes. My installer was a decent and conscientious bloke, not a rocket scientist. How was he to know the suppliers had misled him? 

6. Contradictory stuff from the suppliers that ends causing untold confusion. Weather compensation anyone? Do Midea heat pumps have to have a heat exchanger or not? The suppliers (Freedom) don't apear to know (one of their manuals says you do, the other includes an exchanger, but doesn't say it is mandatory)? Why do the suppliers appear to know so little about the units they sell? We as relatively informed consumers might be able to make some decisions/take some action, if we are lucky, but what about Mrs and Mrs Average? Under BUS, they stand to spend ££££ and get a dodgy system, with at the end of the day little or no no redress.

7. The whole rental/tenant mess. I have a neighbour who has been a tenant for ever, and still burns coal in a Rayburn as his main heating source. He does better than the rest of us in power cuts, but he is not in a hurry to have his landlord do anything to upgrade the heating just yet, because among other things (like it won't work), what will happen to his rent??? 

8. The delusional aspirations of politicians don't help either... Back in the real world, neither my MP not my local councillor were a single jot of use in helping to get my system installed.  

My point is that I needed considerable reserves of stubborness and some degree of understanding of how ASHP systems work to get a system that still isn't perfect, ie cosy by my standards, nor is it MCS compliant (rooms at design temps when -2 outside). Without my intervention, for example, the heat exchanger would still be plumbed in with same direction flow rather than contraflow. Every stage of the process, which took over a year, involved obstacles, and needed determination and some understanding to solve the problems. How will Mr and Mrs Average, who under the BUS scheme will have to stump up thousands of pounds, fare in this jungle?