My other half’s mum n dad have one,cost a fortune to have,one or two teething problems,the jury’s still out.
Yes mate,had one installed when I built my house, works from ground source heating - would recommend - we receive renewable heat incentive from the govt over 7 years so it has paid for itself . Eats a lot of electricity but it’s worth it
We’re installing a lot in Lincolnshire/Leeds at the minute. Most issues with them are due to people using it like a gas boiler. You can’t, it will cost a fortune. The idea is that you get your house to temperature and then keep it there. If you let your house keep going cold and heating it up they’re very expensive. Think of it like a water boiler. If you let it get cold it takes a lot of energy to heat up, but if you keep it ticking over and just top the heat up a couple of degrees every 15 minutes, it’s a lot more efficient.
I'm no expert but I thought that the myth of keeping the boiler topped up being cheaper has been disproved many times
Not sure about that, but it’s definitely the way to get efficiency out of a heat pump. Used correctly, the air source heat pumps we are installing give 3.4kW of heat for every 1kW of electricity.
I did look into it when I had an extension done. I came to the conclusion for them to be cost-effective you need underfloor heating. This is because the lower temperature you can run the heat pump, the less it costs. Under-floor heating tends to run cooler since there's a much larger surface area to heat your room. I read plenty of horror stories where people had simply replaced a conventional boiler with a heat pump and costs had gone through the roof. I think you have to increase the surface area of your radiators to make a conventional system work well with a heat pump.
We had air source in a new housing association flat they ended up taking them out and replacing with gas combi boilers at great expense to them. I agree you need to understand them and not use them like a traditional boiler, I did much research into how to get the best out of it never had massive Bill's but most tenants didn't or couldn't understand and had horrendous electric Bill's. That was 8yrs ago I am sure they will have come on in that time but I would take some convincing to to install one myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I see no reason to replace a gas heating system with a heat pump, unless you have solar panels, but if you have storage heaters, solid fuel or oil heating a heat pump is both more economical and environmentally friendly.
Talking to a heating engineer recently who said it shouldn't be long before Hydrogen becomes a viable option in the energy market. I thought he meant bottled like LPG, but no, initially it may be mixed with North sea gas and iped in the usual manner . Apparently heat pumps require very well insulated homes to be effective.
I’m a heating engineer by trade so have a good understanding, I was keen to see what people’s views were especially people who had them installed too, I’m looking at a Bivalent system we’re I can still utilise my gas boiler if the cost of the heat pump goes past what it would to being the boiler on, I’ve recently installed a 4kw PV system so my thoughts are I could hopefully heat the house a low cost, the £5000 voucher due to come out in the next few months will be a big help too