Posted by: @ian33a

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...would I have accepted the findings of a third party and blindly installed based upon what they quoted while accepting all of the during and post installation risk? I would have been insane to do that and never would !

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And yet we almost all of us do exactly that when buying a house. A surveyor comes in and provides a report that forms the basis not only of the decision to buy but also the bank's decision to lend.

Of course, the surveyor does have to accept some liability if the report turns out to be wrong, hence all the gluteus-covering language used. Nonetheless, it does provide a framework whereby a surveying company could be commissioned to do a heat loss report and be required to accept liability for unacceptable or foreseeable inaccuracies beyond a reasonable threshold. That would allow an installer to design based on an already defined set of figures without having to shoulder the portion of risk you were outlining.

I'm not saying the industry is in a state where that could be implemented in practice, of course. Whilst we have a set of industry custodians who themselves can't be trusted any attempts to regulate a surveying service will quite likely suffer from the same issues as the "regulation" of the installation service that we're presently seeing i.e. the good do a good job and the cowboys too frequently get away with shoddy work. Once that can be fixed, I'd be all for an independent surveying service.

Posted by: @ian33a

In the HP segment, the majority of the residential customers have little or no knowledge of what they want to buy and what is important, so the market is a viable proposition for consultants who appear to be experts. Trouble is, if those consultants come up against people (be they customers or installers) with knowledge, understanding or can apply practicality, the house of cards can quickly come tumbling down.

I am not sure I agree that most HP buyers do not know much. And nothing tells me they are less likely to know what they want to buy than someone buying a gas boiler. My sense is there was enough bad press about heat pumps that most buyers have looked into it. Most people that I talk to about having a heatpump (even when they may have never been interested), do know the rads are not scalding, that electricity bills can be an issue, etc

@batpred I take your point and, perhaps, your experiences are different to mine:

I have a couple of friends, both with an engineering background, who have taken on blind faith what installers and consultants have told them. One is paying massively because his HP is probably twice the energy output it needs to be and he is afraid to turn it on. The other is in the throws of a purchase and has taken just one quote and "it seems reasonable".

Equally, I suspect that plenty of people when offered £7,500 or £9,000 of Government money see it as an opportunity to get something back against their taxes and, because their boiler is old, just jump at a heat pump (that's how I started). That they have very little understanding of how a small amount of inefficiency in a system design has massive implications over the next ten or fifteen years is an alien concept.

Three months ago, and as an engineer all my life, my understanding of heat pumps was minimal. If anything, they were the work of the devil. However, I took the time and opportunity to research them, almost to death, and I think I have a reasonable understanding of what they are all about now (many on here may disagree). I doubt that a typical heat pump adopter of late as the time, the technical background, or the inclination to research sufficiently, and be in a position to properly understand the long term costs or benefits. 

It's something of an educated guess for many, certainly me until time proves otherwise, and I suspect that most people who frequent this website are not examples of the majority of current heat pump purchasers.

I agree with @majordennisbloodnok that independent surveyors should take responsibility / liability for the accuracy of their heat loss surveys. Then the surveys could form a trusted basis for further work.

A major problem with heat loss surveys at present is that they come back with different numbers without any indication as to why. They are operating a standard MCS model, so give or take insignificant differences they should produce the same output for the same inputs.

As a minimum, the customer should receive an appendix listing all the input data and highlighting any assumptions made as opposed to measurements and things seen by the surveyor. One might assume no cavity wall insulation, per room ACH values of around 1.5, and 21C for all rooms. Another cavity wall insulation present, ACH 0.5 throughout, and 18C to 22C based on room type. These apparently small differences make multiple kWs difference to the calculated heat loss.

With the detailed input data, customers can see the cause of any difference and question them. They can also sanity check the inputs are correct to the best of their knowledge.

Trustworthy heat loss calculations are the fundamental basis for the remainder of the process. They need to be accurate and provably so, i.e. capable of been checked / audited.

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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I completely agree with @majordennisbloodnok that independent surveyors should take responsibility / liability for the accuracy of their heat loss surveys. Then the surveys could form a trusted basis for further work.

A major problem with heat loss surveys at present is that they come back with different numbers without any indication as to why. They are operating a standard MCS model, so give or take insignificant differences they should produce the same output for the same inputs.

As a minimum, the customer should receive an appendix listing all the input data and highlighting any assumptions made as opposed to measurements made and things seen by the surveyor. One might assume no cavity wall insulation, per room ACH values of around 1.5, and 21C for all rooms. Another cavity wall insulation present, ACH 0.5 throughout, and 18C to 22C based on room type. These apparently small differences make multiple kWs difference to the calculated heat loss.

With the detailed input data, customers can see the cause of any difference and question them. They can also sanity check the inputs are correct to the best of their knowledge.

Trustworthy heat loss calculations are the fundamental basis for the remainder of the process. They need to be accurate and provably so, i.e. capable of been checked / audited.

I agree but I dont think providing the underlying assumptions goes far enough, as most people cant really be expected to interrogate them - most people are neither engineers nor scientists and have no interest other than to have a warm house)

I return to my broken record of doing a sanity check.  For a tolerably well heated house comparing the actual consumption with the surveyed result provides an independent verification of the heat loss.  I know that there are some 'gotchas', but these can generally be calibrated out or excluded altogether.  Its just common sense in my mind that this should be done and be mandatory, and installers should have to document their any discrepancy more than say 20% with explanation.

Of course it is unlikely to happen at present because it undermines the principal purpose of the survey process, which is to provide bullet proof protection for the installer.

Of course, @jamespa, there’s no theoretical or even practical reason why an independent survey couldn’t be required to give evidence of corroborative cross checking. Where there is good relevant historic data, the surveyor could then claim a higher degree of confidence in the heat loss estimate. To my mind, that’s another confirmation a single skilled survey is the right way to go.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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Of course, @jamespa, there’s no theoretical or even practical reason why an independent survey couldn’t be required to give evidence of corroborative cross checking. Where there is good relevant historic data, the surveyor could then claim a higher degree of confidence in the heat loss estimate. To my mind, that’s another confirmation a single skilled survey is the right way to go.

None at all.

There are apparently cases where one person's survey is accepted by others, in fact I will be speaking to someone tomorrow about just that in the context of the 'failed boiler' scenario.  However it seems to be rare, for obvious liability reasons.

I think it would be more comfortable for all if automation and other techniques could reduce the survey to the point where it could be done by the eventual installer, but at a much reduced cost.  If it could be done in  say a 15min walk around with a bit of data entry on construction, and backed up by the consumption, then the survey and quote could be simultaneous.  That does not feel impossible to me with the right tooling

Interesting topic.  I do think that installs are overpriced because of the grant and it is coupled to homeowner naivety (forum members don’t fall into that but are a minority) and a general expectation that heat pump installs are expensive.  Some things are easy to spot - £10k to replace 13 radiators in-situ with no new pipework in my case for example - but for most people they don’t have any experience to fall back on, unlike, say, a replacement boiler.

As an installer, I wouldn’t take a third-party survey as part of the deal.  To base a design on something that I had no input to and yet have to take all the risks on would be unacceptable.  Inevitably the third-party and myself would end up with a bunch of assumptions in the reports that amounted to “I assume the survey/design is correct and if it isn’t more work, at additional cost, would be needed.”

There is a gap in the market for a sanity-check and review service whereby a third-party can take a survey and design and validate it and take a considered position on the 5kW vs 9kW vs 12kW surveys.  A homeowner’s knowledgeable buddy.  As an aside, that service could extend to post install setup and tweaking to get the best out of it and ensure that (a) the installation is sound; and (b) meets the signed-off design.

Posted by: @andrewj

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There is a gap in the market for a sanity-check and review service whereby a third-party can take a survey and design and validate it and take a considered position on the 5kW vs 9kW vs 12kW surveys.  A homeowner’s knowledgeable buddy.  As an aside, that service could extend to post install setup and tweaking to get the best out of it and ensure that (a) the installation is sound; and (b) meets the signed-off design.

Thats very interesting, I am on a Local Authority group which is looking at how to smooth the end to end process for various types of retrofit.  Offering a service like that (and/or advice to the customer so they can do it themselves) is one of the things we are actively considering.

The challenge I see is that the customer will say (quite rightly) "why should I pay to check the work of a professional certified by MCS (and several other organisations)".  In not sure how to answer that question other than with 'its the building trade which, whilst it has a high proportion of competent people, also has a fair proportion of scammers and chancers and ineffective consumer protection, so its in your own interest to do so.' - not exactly an encouraging message!

I would welcome any further comments, seriously as we will probably end up doing this and possibly somehow subsidising it.

Posted by: @jamespa

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The challenge I see is that the customer will say (quite rightly) "why should I pay to check the work of a professional certified by MCS (and several other organisations)". 

A not unreasonable position and it wouldn’t be mandatory of course but the onus is then on the customer to educate themselves, a perfectly reasonable approach and the one we find ourselves in today. MCS etc would always be after the fact when something has gone wrong and the bureaucracy would inevitably be ridiculous - assuming for a moment we’ve seen pigs overhead, it’s more of a safety net to pick up the pieces.  Having someone on side to help get it right from the start is where the benefit lies.  It’s not uncommon: people undertaking major building works often employ the services of an ann an architect and project manager which is a somewhat similar idea.  

I don’t know about you but I always have mild anxiety getting work done on the house because what do we know about the person claiming to have an expertise or the intricacies of the job?  I’d love to have a knowledgeable buddy standing next to me.  It has the beneficial side effect of providing a firebreak between the customer and installer if discussions get fraught.  I’m trying to get some glass panels replaced on a sunroom roof and it’s giving me palpitations because of the aggro just getting someone to quote.

While heat loss is a very important (and fascinating) subject I find it hard to believe that accounts for a high proportion of the cost of an installation. It's a few hours work on site and a few more translating it to a design. Unless a very high proportion of surveys don't lead to a sale...

My experience as a customer is that I was happy to pay a refundable deposit for a survey. The first was through Heat Geek, this was before zero disrupt. I was full of enthusiasm which ended abruptly when the quote came in. My heat loss was about 5kW and they specified a 7kW Vaillant heat pump. Total price around £17,000, so £9,500 after the BUS grant. This for a two bed house with 5 radiators, no groundworks needed and no changes to pipework, just some radiator swaps and a mini store hot water tank. Frankly I was shocked. The quotation appeared online through Heat Geek so I can't view it now. I do recall there wasn't enough detail for me to have any idea what was costing so much.

At the time I seriously wondered if it was because I was outside their usual area and the price was inflated because they didn't want the job. So I got a recommendation here for a highly respected local installer. However, his first impression was that the figure was reasonable so I decided not to waste his time. I'm just not willing to spend that amount.

I also got a quote from Octopus. Much lower, around £12,000 so £4,500 after the grant for a Cosy 6 upgrading all the radiators. Unfortunately they would only put the hot water tank in one place and I didn't want it there. Another refunded deposit.

I think this thread is a great question, because I for one don't understand why it's so expensive.

My impression is that it's very variable. But I don't know what makes the difference. There's a good YouTuber who got a heat geek system (also Vaillant 7kW) for a much bigger house for about £7,000 less. I'll look up who when I have time. Meanwhile, as a potential customer I just don't get it.

Posted by: @jamespa 

Thats very interesting, I am on a Local Authority group which is looking at how to smooth the end to end process for various types of retrofit. 

That's a great initiative. Expert help navigating the process and knowing what questions to ask would be a huge help to many embarking on the heat pump journey.

As a suggestion, perhaps consider contributing towards / providing / encouraging people to get simple inexpensive weather stations that can be used to log indoor and outdoor average daily temperatures over the coming winter. Along with daily gas and electricity usage from smart meter / supply, as we've seen, this can be used to get a high confidence heat loss estimate based on real data.

I'm guessing you've done this already, but a few hundreds of pounds spent on a couple of thermal cameras that you can lend out would be a great way of showing people where their insulation could usefully be improved.