Posted by: @springswood

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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...

Its not really the survey, there was a fairly complete list further up the thread

Posted by: @springswood

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My impression is that it's very variable. But I don't know what makes the difference

It is and what makes the difference is presumably overheads, workload, supurfluous work/components and 'rip off' factor.  In every construction project I have been involved in (a fair few, mostly in  a professional capacity thankfully) there is a factor of 2 at least between cheapest and most expensive quotes.  Often, by no means always, the cheapest dont know what they are doing and the most expensive don't really want the work because they have plenty on, but are willing to do it if the margins are high.  And there are always a few chancers who put in a high price playing the numbers game.  This is no different and the message is work out what you want and SHOP AROUND

To give a concrete example my install cost £4950 after (7.5K) BUS just under 2 years ago.  As it happens this was one of the cheapest quotes I received although there was one only very marginally more expensive from someone equally competent and it was a close call which I went with! I also received quotes as high as 15K+ BUS. 

The install consisted of Heat pump, 4 rads one of which was a fancoil (so ~500), DHW cylinder and the usual peripherals.  The electrical circuit had already been fitted by an electrician (£200) and I did the exposure of the voids through which the primaries were to run, and making good.  Total cost of parts probably 7-8K.  

The single installer (it was literally a one man band) worked 6 days in total, almost all of which were 8am-6pm without a break, and one of which was 8-9pm.  Throughout that time he was working diligently and continuously, except on a couple of occasions where he had to go to the shop to get some bits.  

I would say thats a fair price for a fair job.

Posted by: @springswood

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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.

Look elsewhere!

@springswood 

Your real world quotes leave me completely puzzled as to how the prices are justified in cost terms.

Assuming refundable deposits, then that's potentially quite some cost to be covered by those that go through to an actual installation. If only 25% do, then that £250 per survey is turning into a £1000 cost to the customer.

This again brings us back to the concept of a single trusted survey, where the surveyor has liability for the accuracy.

Can anyone comment on what happens with new builds? Does the installer do their own heat loss survey (I think not) or do they rely on detailed figures from the SAP assessment?

If they are fine to rely on SAP, then they should be fine with an independent survey. It's all about who has liability for the cost of fixing things if the heat loss calculation turns out to be an underestimate.

At present the diligent consumer, one way or another, ends up paying multiple times for heat loss surveys, which is just plain wrong in my view.

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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Your real world quotes leave me completely puzzled as to how the prices are justified in cost terms.

They dont have to justify in cost terms, thats how competition works.  Are the prices of Apple products justifiable in cost terms, of course not, but people still buy them, and those who, like me, dont want to pay their ridiculous prices can look elsewhere.

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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At present the diligent consumer, one way or another, ends up paying multiple times for heat loss surveys, which is just plain wrong in my view.

You can avoid this by knowing what your house loss either from a single survey or your gas consumption, and roughly how many rad changes you need (which would be from a survey) and specifying it in your RFQ.  They can then quote against that subject to verification.  Also some installers now offer surveys for free and many will quote against an estimated loss anyway, so you can rule out the jokers.

I'm not arguing that the system is perfect, that is far from the case, but as a consumer you don't have to be a victim if you don't want to be and are prepared to take a bit of control. 

Its not particularly satisfactory, but almost nothing in the construction industry is.  Thats not a defence, just a fact.

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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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.

Thanks.  I am personally on the page of measuring house loss (and I did it myself).  We are not yet at the stage of creating 'content' (but we are getting there), I fully intend there to be strong encouragement to sense check those calculations by some means.  As it happens I also run  a free thermal camera loan scheme with two cameras!

Thanks for all the interesting responses. 

I managed to find that YouTube clip I mentioned (Everything Home - Why I snubbed an Octopus heat pump install) where he has at least twice as many bedrooms and radiators as my house but Heat Geek came in around £10k, £2.5k after BUS. Of course it is just another anecdote, like my own.

On reflection I think a lot of it comes down to the way it just is very expensive to do the kind of bespoke and sophisticated engineering needed to fit a heat pump to a heating system designed for something else in a way that achieves the high efficiencies needed to make up for the high price of electricity.

Posted by: @jamespa 

You can avoid this by knowing what your house loss either from a single survey or your gas consumption, and roughly how many rad changes you need (which would be from a survey) and specifying it in your RFQ.  They can then quote against that subject to verification.

This is definitely the way forward for me as I am confident in the theoretically and practically derived heat loss calculation that I have already.

Your experience with a heat pump install and the hourly labour charge that is implied seems reasonable.

Heat pump installs are materials (heat pump, ancillaries, pipes etc.) and labour, plus some other things (guarantee, heat loss survey etc.) By a cost breakdown, I mean hours and charges for the major activities such as radiator install, HP install, pipework changes etc. And the materials cost, how much is being charged for the heat pump, radiators etc.

I recently got some quotes for a bathroom refurb and they were broken down like this.

Any detailed quotes that I get for a heat pump install will need to do this or they simply won't get the work. (Requirement in the RFQ).

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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Heat pump installs are materials (heat pump, ancillaries, pipes etc.) and labour, plus some other things (guarantee, heat loss survey etc.) By a cost breakdown, I mean hours and charges for the major activities such as radiator install, HP install, pipework changes etc. And the materials cost, how much is being charged for the heat pump, radiators etc.

I recently got some quotes for a bathroom refurb and they were broken down like this.

Any detailed quotes that I get for a heat pump install will need to do this or they simply won't get the work. (Requirement in the RFQ).

For some reason that type of breakdown seems rare.  I asked for some early (high price) ones to be broken down and, surprise, surprise, they refused.  With later ones, I didn't bother on the grounds that my requirements were better specified and so I know what was included and didn't mind much how they chose to allocate it provided the overall total was acceptable.  

I do suspect that there is a fair amount of guesswork going on as regards time taken, which averages out over the whole job.  My installer encountered endless problems with minor leaks particularly around the cylinder where there were joints to old pipework, which drove him mad until 9pm at night.  On the other hand there were parts of the process, such as the commissioning, which were a breeze.  It could equally have been the other way round and in fairness to him I don't think that is predictable in advance.  He also had to return a week later at least in part because one of the rads wasn't available (the delivery guy dropped it en route).  That sort of thing just happens.

@rob-of-york I’m firmly with you on this, and it’s a conversation I’ve had repeatedly with installers as well as watched play out online.

Whenever we’ve had work done at home outside the heat pump world (plumbing, carpentry, general building work, electrical jobs) the model has often been simple. This is what my time and expertise will cost, I’ll buy the materials we need, and you’ll see the invoices, and settle up on completion. I’ve always liked that because there’s nothing mysterious about it. I know what I’m paying the tradesperson for, I know roughly what the materials cost and everybody starts from a position of trust.

Heat pump quotes, in my experience, are very different.

I get probably four or five quotes a month sent to me by homeowners asking for a very top line sanity check. I'm just helping to identify to red flags and give them things to ask the installer, but the pattern is incredibly consistent. The heat pump itself is listed. The cylinder is listed. Sometimes the radiators are listed. Then virtually everything else gets swept into a large catch-all line for installation or something equally vague, and that is usually several thousand pounds.

If there is £6,000 or £8,000 sitting in a miscellaneous bucket, I don’t think it is remotely unreasonable for the person paying the bill to ask what is actually inside it. How many days are being allowed for the job? How many people? What pipework is being changed? What electrical work is included? What is being charged for design, commissioning, MCS, BUS administration, warranty provision, sundries and so on? Nobody is asking the installer to reveal their bank statements or justify why they earn a profit. They’re asking what they are buying. 

What I find even more extraordinary is the hostility that question sometimes attracts.

I’ve seen numerous conversations on LinkedIn where an installer has proudly recounted that a homeowner asked for an itemised quotation or a breakdown of costs, and the response has effectively been: "That’s the price, mate. Take it or leave it." Sometimes considerably less politely than that. And other installers then pile in applauding it.

I find that astonishing.

If I’m being asked to spend £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 on a heating system, why on earth would asking how that number was constructed make me a difficult customer? In almost every other area of significant expenditure, understanding what you are paying for is considered normal due diligence. Somehow, in parts of the heating industry, it can be treated as a personal affront.

And I actually think greater transparency would help the good installers more than anybody else. If somebody is charging £1,500 for survey, design and commissioning because they are spending serious time doing it properly, show me. If the installation needs two engineers for four days, show me. If there is £1,200 of valves, pumps, pipework, fittings and electrical gear that the homeowner never sees advertised online, show me. Suddenly the quote that initially looked expensive might make complete sense.

The current opaque model does the opposite. It leaves homeowners looking at the price of the heat pump, subtracting it from the quotation and wondering how several thousand pounds disappeared into the space between the two.

And to be clear, I don’t think installers should be working on tiny margins or apologising for charging for expertise. Good heat pump designers and installers should be paid properly because good system design is valuable. 

So I think your RFQ requirement is perfectly reasonable. It doesn’t need to descend into an invoice for every compression fitting and metre of pipe, but major labour, major materials, equipment and professional/design costs should be intelligible.

I have the impression that the design software doesn't, by default, spit out a breakdown of pricing. I did receive one quote which had some detail, but it wasn't much. Most of the others have been a list of what is in the quote and no granularity of what each component is charged at.

Perhaps heat pump design is considered too complicated for typical customers and that what is deemed important is staying warm and how much the bill will be on the final day and a perception of how much it will cost to run. Many of us on here would like reasonable granularity but are we typical? My feeling is that we are probably not (as I have stated earlier in this thread).

In so many ways I too, am reasonably happy to see a bottom line price, and a detailed list of what is being done and what hardware is being installed. I don't really care about their labour rates or how much they have to pay for my warranty. I also don't expect to see the trade price that they paid for my heat pump. That's between them and their supplier.

However, if I saw something like "£4,000 for miscellaneous items" alarm bells would ring very loud. If they want to bury that item in a quote and not list it but just give me an end price then fine, the bottom line figure is what I care about and the £4,000 may naturally exclude them on grounds of too high a bottom line figure.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment.

After the major items have been listed - the ASHP, DHW tank and radiators (all of which were multi £thousand items in my installation), how much level of detail are you expecting for the rest.

Staring from the heat pump end, I need ASHP isolation feet, flexi hoses, lengths of 28mm copper pipe, 28mm elbows and couplers, 28mm ball isolation valves, Primary Pro external insulation and sealant which runs in black external trunking. Then we get to the DHW tank and I need expansion vessels, a volumiser vessel, a circulation pump and 3 way diverter valve. I need a whole bunch of 22mm and 15mm copper pipe and associated elbow bends and couplers, and more insulation. I need a mag filter and Y strainer, a flow meter (probably two, one electronic and one old fashioned sight glass) and a fill flush loop, and yet more isolation level valves. I'll likely need new TRVs and lockshield valves for all new radiators. I'll need the ASHP electronic controller unit (often sold separately to the heat pump itself), electrical and signal cabling, isolation switches and more trunking for the electrics to run in. I may also need an additional consumer unit together with surge protectors, RCDs and MCBs or RCBOs. All of which probably adds up to a few thousand pounds of additional materials cost, and more than any one of the main individually listed items such as the DHW tank.

What level of detailed breakdown of the above materials cost is reasonable?

Posted by: @old_scientist

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Playing devil's advocate for a moment.

After the major items have been listed - the ASHP, DHW tank and radiators (all of which were multi £thousand items in my installation), how much level of detail are you expecting for the rest.

Staring from the heat pump end, I need ASHP isolation feet, flexi hoses, lengths of 28mm copper pipe, 28mm elbows and couplers, 28mm ball isolation valves, Primary Pro external insulation and sealant which runs in black external trunking. Then we get to the DHW tank and I need expansion vessels, a volumiser vessel, a circulation pump and 3 way diverter valve. I need a whole bunch of 22mm and 15mm copper pipe and associated elbow bends and couplers, and more insulation. I need a mag filter and Y strainer, a flow meter (probably two, one electronic and one old fashioned sight glass) and a fill flush loop, and yet more isolation level valves. I'll likely need new TRVs and lockshield valves for all new radiators. I'll need the ASHP electronic controller unit (often sold separately to the heat pump itself), electrical and signal cabling, isolation switches and more trunking for the electrics to run in. I may also need an additional consumer unit together with surge protectors, RCDs and MCBs or RCBOs. All of which probably adds up to a few thousand pounds of additional materials cost, and more than any one of the main individually listed items such as the DHW tank.

What level of detailed breakdown of the above materials cost is reasonable?

Looking at it from the other end, if I were to receive a quote for £10k - £15k then I'd want to burrow into any and all categories that were over about 5% of the total, and I'd want to burrow far enough in to satisfy myself those category totals were reasonable. A category just containing the heat pump is easily justifiable, as is a category detailing the number of radiators and total value. I wouldn't want to drill all the way down to how many tubes of sealant, but if £1,000 has been set aside for copper piping I wouldn't want that hidden under a "miscellaneous" label. It doesn't mean I'd want chapter and verse on it, but an idea of how much pipe is being estimated so I can see if I'm paying for copper or platinum is not unreasonable.

As a result, the level of detail I'd want is enough to demonstrate the installer has priced for the time and materials necessary rather than taking a look at me and my home and priced on what he or she thinks I'll wear.

@old_scientist And the all important anti freeze valves which are not cheap!