@louise-howlett the podcast was made to raise awareness about the negative PR that’s been directed at heat pumps. As you say, it’s been largely perpetrated by fossil fuels lobbies and the media has latched on it and started labeling heat pumps as “hated”. We need to start amping up the volume and start showing that heat pumps are the future and that they do work, but work much more efficiently when installed properly. We have a lot of content that we are going to run in the months ahead to address some of the industry’s shortcomings because they the need to be fixed, while convincing people to make the shift in a sensible way that protects them. 

Thanks for listening, and more than happy to address questions or concerns publicly.

Posted by: @mike-patrick

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@jamespa Equally, to continue the car analogy, it is valid to ask, would you buy a car that doesn't give you a continuous MPG  (L/100km if you are metric) readout or buries the adjustment of key variables in complex installer-only menus? The long term strategy of heat pumps is correct but the short term implementation frequently leaves much room for improvement. Horseless carriages wouldn't have become as popular as they have if the law still required someone to walk in front waving a warning flag.

Mike

Well probably I would (it's inevitable that some things are several layers down in menus because there are so many things you can change these days, ant the manufacturer has to guess which ones you want to change.)  Ever used a digital camera, my experience is that at least one adjustment I want is fairly buried.

Pretty much every complex new product class (ie most new product classes) theses days goes through an early adopter phase where the bugs are sorted out by putting it in the marketplace and seeing what happens.  That's a result of capitalism and the desire of many humans to have the latest tech whilst reserving the right to complain about it.  Heat pumps are no different.  I'm not defending this practice, but it is the norm.

What there should be, but it seems isn't, is better installer accountability.  I have heard many claim we need MCS to ensure installation quality, but yet to see the evidence that it makes a difference.  Most of the problems we hear of on this forum and others seem to be down to poor whole-system desigh/installation/commissioning, usually the first or last.  I do wonder if splitting the whole thing into design/commission (trade 1) and install (trade 2) is an option.  MCS bundle commissioning with instal and separate out design, but really commissioning and design are more closely related in terms of skills than instal and commissioning.

The separation of first and second fix is well established in the electrical trade, its essentially the same thing.

Seeing as it’s the controls that deliver the comfort, not the heat pump, or boiler, it’s all a bit “British” to blame the heat pump or boiler.

we have been doing heating to low standards for a long time, so people have low expectations when it comes to heating, and this is the root of the problem

i mean who cares about radiator temperature if rooms and you  are warm, but brits love a hot radiator..

im afraid dislike of heat pumps and the resistance to change  is just another way we have lost our way as a country…

Alec hit the nail on the head right there I think. Most heat pump controls are a bit pants, or a cryptic to use (that’s why GH is always championing the use of a room stat). 

The fact that only the Mitsubishi will do load compensation is also shocking. People expect to be able to turn the thermostat up and the radiators get hotter (despite the fact that’s not what a thermostat is, people still expect it to work like that).

I’ve long argued that we need an opentherm to modbus temperature controller, so that a Google Nest (the finest thermostat you can buy, from a user interface perspective) can be hooked up to any heat pump so the flow temperature can be properly adjusted based on room temperature.

If you have a low enough system volume, and a good enough heat pump where you can adjust the PID for the compressor, the response times are fast enough (I know, I have a bufferless system with moderate to low system volume) to make them responsive.

I was hoping that we’d be in controls nirvana when Homely was launched but they’ve screwed that up by making it app only for the user interface. Thats totally not OK in my book, they should have added opentherm to the unit and allowed any opentherm thermostat to be connected. I’m going to rant at them when I see them at installer this year.

Anyway, rant over for today.

Posted by: @mphb

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In my experience, many of the negative messaging comes from the traditional heating industry/installers. 

OK. I appreciate that...

... but in my experience there are widespread negative messages being relayed between members of the general public.

Yes, they give a plethora of reasons as to why their own HP installation fails to live up to expectations, but in essence these boil down to lack of quality.

Observations of poor quality aren't just due to the heat-pump itself:

• inadequate pipe insulation, or incorrectly applied
• inadequate documentation and/or insufficient instruction from the installer on how to operate the system
• incorrect control settings, configured at a point of time, disregarding future demand and weather fluctuations
• unexpected high electricity bills due to the system falling short of the calculated efficiency (COP) in the pre-installation survey
• precious indoor storage space being occupied by large storage vessels (of unknown benefit)
• installers failing to reconnect pre-existing solar inputs, despite prior assurances that they can be accommodated

Knowledge of how HPs work also adds to the confusion.

Home-owners will incorrectly assign 'the problem' to some part of their new system, or the way in which the installation was done.
Only when they find a forum like this and present the evidence to us, do they then learn what the real issue is.

If they first approach Citizens' Advice, Trading Standards Dept, or take the installer to the Small Claims Division of the High Court, the outcome is invariably unsatisfactory.

I am looking into a way to overcome the knowledge deficiency... but educating the entire adult population of Britain on energy issues doesn't come cheap!

I wouldn't say they are universally hated.

On top of net zero watch & fossil fuel lobby activity, the pro-heat pump lobby can often work against itself, damaging its own credibility.

One thing that doesn't help is the "everything's a myth". We know there are some issues here and there with heat pumps and the PR form some big hitters about some issues coming to the fore in the UK context has been "its fine, its fine, its a myth, there are no issues" rather than "Right, how do we sort this". Jan Rosenow for one has been driving a very unhelpful campaign based around literally any issue with rollout or tech - individual or emerging as general - being immediately labelled as "myth" and warranting pack-like attacks rather than adopting considered debate & mature, evidence-based positions on the need for adjustments, adaptations etc.

There is quite significant polarisation over heat pumps in part because of a tinge of denialism that rollout needs some care. Polarisation even within the pro-heat pump camp which has moderates and hard-liners - moderates often don't want to speak out, challenging louder figures to say "hey actually there are some issues that we probably need to look at to gain public confidence make rollout sustainable". 

The noise issue is one, the failures of MCS and other regulators/trade bodies is another.

In this environment, whenever there is even a public muttering one way or another about heat pumps it is adopted by NZW or the heat pump lobby and spun into the ether. Joe public left without a balanced take to base  a decision on, other than anecdotal stuff in their (biased) newspaper of from friends/family.

None of this would matter if electricity wasn’t 3 times the price of gas. Rebalance the energy prices and you can get away with sub optimal installs without people complaining.

on/off stats at 50 degree flow temp, no problem if electricity was only twice the price of gas.

Moving from direct electric heating is where we should be targeting installs, but with air-air units imho. Immediate cost savings to be had and considerably better indoor environment and controllability compared to storage or convector heaters.

This is taking the view that literally the only issue is energy prices & if people save a lot all other issues are irrelevant.

Sub-optimal installs can cause health issues, might not contribute anything to decarbonisation, cause noise nuisance, create faults, go wrong when they are most needed etc etc  - all potentially defeating the objective of the rollout and putting folk off buying them.

We need robust standards and for these to be enforced. Right now the standards are a bit iffy - calibrated poorly - and they are not really enforced, allowing a swathe of unchecked botched installs & lowest-common-denominatorism.

Much of that is also true for fossil fuel installs.

What we don't need is to make heat pumps more difficult than a fossil fuel boiler.  So if we have rigid standards for heat pumps we also need equally rigid standards for fossil fuel systems.

@elton the issue is purely energy costs…. When people say ‘my heat pump doesn’t work’ what they really mean is ‘it costs more than the gas boiler did’….

you would have to be an idiot to plumb one of these up so it didn’t heat your house. The sort of person I wouldn’t trust to tie their own shoelaces. Feed them electricity and hot water comes out.

fix the energy price bias and we can get away with just banging them in instead of a boiler on a fixed flow temp, or with factory weather comp set to 38.5/50.

which is precisely what we need to do if we’re going to decarbonise uk housing stock.

Posted by: @hughf

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you would have to be an idiot to plumb one of these up so it didn’t heat your house. The sort of person I wouldn’t trust to tie their own shoelaces. Feed them electricity and hot water comes out.

But if you're actually looking for that sort of heating installer, I have a few I could recommend from the West Country.

Here's one who ran a series of identical ads in a local magazine:

And in case you think that's unfair, these guys fitted a new kitchen sink for an elderly disabled customer, which then flooded the cupboard below.
It took them four visits to still not notice the screwed coupling on the waste pipe wasn't done up at all,
and that final visit was from the boss himself, who pronounced that the cold feed hose was kinked. 🤔