Choosing a heat pump shouldn’t feel like a gamble. Now updated for 2027, The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps brings together practical advice from 37 installers, engineers, designers, technical specialists and experienced homeowners to help you make informed decisions and avoid expensive mistakes.
This revised edition includes refreshed chapters, new contributors and additional guidance, building on the real-world experience that made the original book so useful. It’s an honest look at what makes heat pumps work well, where installations can go wrong and what homeowners should expect from the people designing, installing and supporting their systems.
A successful installation involves much more than choosing a brand and replacing a boiler. Accurate heat loss calculations, suitable radiators, correctly sized pipework, sensible controls and thorough commissioning all affect the result. Understanding those fundamentals puts you in a stronger position to assess quotations, question vague promises and recognise whether an installer has genuinely thought through your home’s requirements.
Across more than 200 pages, the contributors explain their specialist subjects in accessible language, sharing lessons from installations, troubleshooting visits and their own homes. The book covers system selection, installer choice, heating design, hot water, controls, commissioning, maintenance and much more, with practical examples showing how decisions on paper translate into comfort and efficiency in the home.
The guide is particularly valuable before you commit to an installation, when asking the right questions can make the biggest difference. It also offers useful context for existing owners trying to understand their systems, investigate disappointing performance or have a more productive conversation with their installer.
There are no miracle promises here. Just practical knowledge, candid experience and a clear message: heat pumps can deliver excellent results, but the quality of the complete installation matters.
The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps is currently out of stock in the Renewable Heating Hub online shop, so we’re unable to take direct orders at present. However, the updated 2027 edition is available through Amazon in print and on Kindle.
Contributors: Paul Arundale, Simon Baseden, Damon Blakemore, Emma Bohan, Laurence Bradbury, Richard Burrows, James Clark, Michael Crook, Nigel Day, Rhiannon de Wreede, Mario Dodić, Ian Edgeworth, Geoff Ellison, Mark Hall, Graham Hendra, Chris Higgs, Sean Hogan, Glyn Hudson, Darren Jones, Quinn Kelly, Liam Knowles, James Lacey, James Law, Dan Loveridge, Mars Mlodzinski, Simon Murray, Rob Nezard, Sune Nightingale, Ricky Prescott, Karl Richardson, Barry Sharp, Simon Smith, Max Waddingham, Simon Wardle, Ben Watts, Patrick Wheeler and Alex Winters.
If you’ve read the book and found it helpful, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below. An honest review on Amazon also helps other homeowners decide whether it’s the right guide for them.
[…] The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps is available to pre-order now, with shipping set to begin in mid-September 2025. Orders can be placed here: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-heat-pumps-a-comprehensive-resource-for-home… […]
[…] This is why we are doubling down on education, case studies and independent advice for homeowners at Renewable Heating Hub. We want people to go into this transition with their eyes open, aware of the pitfalls but also of the extraordinary benefits when it’s done correctly. That’s another reason why we’ve written The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps. […]
Hi When will you be publishing a kindle version of this. Don’t do physical books any more! With kind regards William
The Kindle version is also out: https://amzn.to/4bW4Rhd
A great review from Steve on LinkedIn.
I’ve just read this book (sorry not ordered via Amazon but I don’t have an account). It is very interesting and full of useful pointers for anyone thinking of commissioning a heat pump and looking to educate themselves about the pitfalls.
I had two main takeaways:
i) Even with the extra knowledge, remember that experts still differ in their opinions. One contributor recommended not having multple heating zones, possibly only two. I have multiple heating zones (1 in each room) and believe that I got extra points for this when the EPC assessor visited recently.
ii) I agree that consumers need to educate themselves so that they can ask important questions of their heat pump installers. That this book needed to be written is testament to the lack of sufficient technical knowledge in the industry. Consumers are having to educate themselves to make up for the lack of industry expertise.
If I wrote down all the pointers in the book I would have quite a long list of questions to ask. This is indicative of the lack of assurance you can have that an installer knows what they are talking about. Thankfully we don’t have to do this with a wide range of complex consumer products.
This book and the number of users on the RHH indicate how much the industry has to do to make heat pumps true consumer products. There are approx 37K posts here about heat pumps compared with 17K in total for all other topics. The people posting these are not doing it to swap stories about what fun they had last week with their heat pump compared with that old gas boiler they scrapped recently!
[…] the forums, the platform has grown. We’ve published three homeowner-focused books, launched an award-winning podcast across YouTube and major podcast platforms, and in 2026 we’re […]
[…] Please support us by getting a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Heat Pumps. Order now: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/the-ultimate-guide-to-heat-pumps-a-comprehensive-resource-for-home… […]
Excellent book but it should have an index. Perhaps also short biographies of contributors, so that one may know the basis of their perspectives.