To the anti heat pump mob. I need to thank you! Any interaction with a video (comment/like/dislike) tells UA-cam it's interesting and to push it onto more people. So by telling me how much of a scam these Heat Pumps are, you're making more people watch it. So 🤗👍
Need to start having a bingo card for the youtube comments... I asked ChatGPT for suggestions and I think it hit the nail on the head 😂: ❒ "Heat pumps don't work in cold climates." ❒ "They’re way too expensive to run." ❒ "Gas heating is just better and cheaper." ❒ "You need a giant garden for the outdoor unit." ❒ "They don’t work when it’s freezing outside." ❒ "They’re noisy and annoying." ❒ "Heat pumps need constant maintenance." ❒ "You can’t use them for hot water." ❒ "They can’t keep your house warm enough." ❒ "You need to replace your entire heating system." ❒ "They're only good for new builds." ❒ "They’re bad for the environment." ❒ "They take up too much space indoors." ❒ "You’ll need underfloor heating." ❒ "They’re unreliable." ❒ "The government just wants to make us buy them." ❒ "They only last 5-10 years." ❒ "They’re ugly and ruin curb appeal." ❒ "They’re bad for people with allergies." ❒ "My neighbor’s heat pump is always breaking."
I am willing to be convinced. So far you have not managed to convince me, getting a heat pump is not going to cost me more money than keeping my existing central heating, A lot more money. By the time its paid for itself it will need replacing . Same as buying an EV will cost me a lot more than keeping an existing car. There is not one single argument that replacing something that works, with a new something is going to save you money.
@keithdenton8386 you don't need to replace it if it works. But if it's old and potentially on its way out it's worth considering given the grant is there.
@@keithdenton8386 When did I say that? Not once. Said many times in these vids that we waited until our gas boiler went before replacing it. Same with an EV. Who’s telling you to replace an old car with a new one?
Good informative video, thank you! Regarding noise: I have a 15 year old Aircon system which also works in reverse as a heat pump (very similar tech to whole house heat pumps, just a bit smaller). After 15 year, the fan motor in the outside unit starting making a LOT of noise. As an electronics engineer, changing a fan motor is an easy task. Sadly, nobody would supply me with a replacement, with many wanting to replace the entire system for many 1000s. In the end I tracked down an alternate fan unit, which was slightly different mechanically and electrically (different connector - otherwise exactly the same), and I made it work with a small amount of modification. The system is now almost silent again, and I expect I will get several more years of life out of it. I do hope that in 15 years time, similar minor issues can be fixed (with parts available) with whole house heat pumps rather than forcing consumers to throw out entire systems. I appreciate that other parts will wear out, but I feel legislation needs to be in place to make sure manufacturers make spare parts available for some time to come.
That's a heat pump. AC is literally a heat pump. So is a freezer. So is a fridge. The systems that can hear just have a two way valve. Marketing makes simple things seem complicated. Marketing sucks.
@grahamcollins6810 Therein lies the rub. They're quiet when new but have a lifespan and should be maintained. When these are ubiquitous someone somewhere near you won't look after it, pay to have it installed correctly or take some other shortcut that they think is saving them money.
The only thing that will make spares readily available is demand. Manufacturers always get around legislation. Most customers can't be arsed to fix anything, and fitters want the cash from fitting entire systems. They are the real problems.
I am a Brit but I live in Norway and -20 is not unusual... I can confirm heat pumps work! I recently replaced my old one (probably 20 years old) as it was acting up and blowing -17 into my house without heating... but that was a broken circuit board. My new one is great and I leave it on 20C-24C.. I do have a woodburner for the real cold days but its quite rare and mainly due to the bad insulation in the house...
I’m another Brit living in Norway and have to agree, heat pumps are great. We had temperatures of -33c last winter and it was no problem. They’re not noisy either, inside or out.
Yes. The big thing i didnt get, because I'm thick ... was that they do still work in cold conditions. As warm blooded mammals we're instinctively programmed to think everything stops at 0'c, but of course, physics doesn't work like that. There is still *theoretically* energy available all the way down to absolute zero. Once i grasped that, i got it.
stop right there it can go high temperature, BUT, if you run it at high temperature it is pointless changing your boiler. It is completely inefficient. So don’t sell it as a high temperature device that is so wrong. Heat Pumps are CO2 saving devices not money saving. Run them at high temperatures and it is costly and pointless. Great promo for vaillant anyway.
Nobody is worried about the sound from their own heat pump, it's more a concern about the neighbours installing a shitty noisy one pointing at your house. Which is a concern when you live near to other people.
Yes, & over time they don't get quieter, we're also in an era where 50% dislike their neighbours, so opportunities to site them well away from their own bedrooms & close to their neighbours would be of interest, an eco noise weapon. Who will be the judge as to whether the noise is a nuisance, disturbing sleep etc? environmental health dept, the owner, or the neighbour ? got to be the neighbour, surely, & the neighbour has to have the power to insist that the HP is quietened to his/her satisfaction, promptly, could mean turning it OFF between say 11pm & 6am, that would be a reasonable request, that I would grant, if I had one, to respect my neighbours wishes.
Its important to get a proper heat loss survey before choosing the system. We have a new build that came with a panasonic 5kw heat pump that always felt cold in winter. After a few years the heat pump failed leaking the refrigerant gasses into the water side. The new company who dealt with the replacement did a routine survey and discovered that our house looses about 7KW at -2C outside temp which explains why house felt cold as 5 KW heat pump was never going to keep the house warm in cold temps. The replacement heat pump was a 10KW Grant heat pump that could provide the needed 7KW of heat at -2C. The house has felt much cosier in the winter and as an added bonus our electricity bill has gone down by ~1500 kWh a year as the larger heat pump works more efficiently.
You will never heat a house with 5kW, just get a good modern gas boiler, super reliable get some decent controls it's worth the extra few hundred quid. Once you tune it you will have a lovely comfortable home... Heat pumps are total BS
@@coyote5735 Your grasp of Heat Pumps is what's BS. My 5KW Arotherm has been flawless over the last 3 years. Comfort level is amazing. Cheap to run too. Heat loss calcution is key...and an installer who knows what he's doing. Plus, the operator of the system needs to understand the controls..!
@@coyote5735 My badly insulated house uses ~6kW @-15C. This is quite precise calculation based on hot water usage (too long to explain). So in British climate 5kW @-5 would be OK. Power curve is more important than rated power though. I have my "total BS" 11.2 kW Mitsubishi Zubadan working for 10 years with no problems and haven't fired up my boiler since. As I have old house and battery-, not floor heating, it works with too hot output (i.e. sub-optimal). But I lose may-be 100€ a year due to reduced COP.
I have a heat pump, had it since March, no gas in house so everything electric, n my monthly payments are surprisingly alot lower, I am impressed that it works so well, also have solar panals n batteries, just had problems with sorting out charging my batteries over night on cheaper rates with my supplier.
Did I miss the cost of that installation with battery etc ? The UK is surrounded by North Sea Gas, North Sea Oil, we have a long-term, proven safe nuclear power industry, only a politician could sit down and arrange an energy crisis for the UK. As for the 'climate crisis'.. the UK's contribution to global emissions is less than 1 %.. yes, Less than 1 %. If the UK sank beneath the waves tomorrow it would have zero effect on climate change.. The big hitters, China, India, Russia, South America etc have no interest in climate change, they're far more concerned with feeding their hungry billions of population. Recently the closure of the UK's last remaining coal power station was highly publicised.. how wonderful !! China is building 800 New coal-fired power stations every year ! Putting yet more financial hardship on struggling families is not going to be a vote winner.. and it's totally unnecessary.
That 1% figure is misleading though isn't it? When one factors historical carbon emissions the West is responsible for the vast majority of emissions over time with the USA by far the highest but the UK being much higher than 1%. You also need to factor in that a lot of the emissions we are responsible for through products we buy and feed for animals doesn't come under our domestic consumption and so it would be higher than 1%. A much more useful measure is carbon per capita and then the UK is pretty bad, although not as bad as the USA and the middle East, neither of which you mentioned. I also think it's worth mentioning that China is building renewables at a far faster rate than the UK or West in general. You're right about one thing though, it is a political decision that costs the average person. The UK subsidises fossil fuels massively whilst not supporting renewables at all and so with the right political situation we could have low carbon and low cost. Thanks for reading.
@@klang180 The climate IS changing.. I'm probably more aware of that than most having spent a good portion of my career travelling in and out of the arctic and witnessed the changing 'Ice-scape'.. However, accepting that greenhouse emissions exacerbate that change, 'experts' cannot agree as to the extent of that influence. People in this country on low incomes, families, those now retired, are struggling to keep pace with expenditure, a high proportion of this is related to energy costs. That is unacceptable when we're surrounded by energy and have an effective nuclear industry. Land-based windfarms are a sad joke yet governments continue to subsidise them. Our farms are being given over to solar panels, like windfarms, a blot on the landscape. Families needing a new boiler should always be offered the choice, not forced to outlay £14000 instead of £4000. EVs are a miserable failure in the UK, nobody should be forced to own one at the current level of technology, heat pumps fall into that same category. Putting ourselves at the mercy of our 'enemies' with regard to energy is another major factor in keeping our options fluid.
The UK may be 1% of global emissions, but over 55% of global emissions come from countries producing 1% or less. So it is just as important for those countries to reduce their CO2 as the big emitters.
@@ianmcairns No, it isn't, not when it's creating major problems for struggling families.. The extent of the additional effect on global warming is far from being proven. If it's that important then let the government find ways to subsidise alternative energy for households, ensure that it costs no more than the energy resources we currently depend on. No silly subsidies for 'third-world rip-off merchants. EVs will never become a practical alternative in the UK.. we lack the space for household home charging. Heat pumps require more space than the majority of households have available. This country is in dire trouble economically with a million new low-achieving immigrants likely to arrive during this government's tenure.. we have far bigger problems on the horizon.
@jamesgraham6122 depends which 'experts' you listen to. My understanding is that virtually all the credible science backs man-man influence on abnormal heating of the earth's atmosphere. I dont care what china does or doesn't do. I live in the UK and i can only vote in the uk. I want our politicians to act responsibility. My reading of the science is that if we don't act now, then our kids kids will have disaster unfurled upon them.
Thnx Andy. We've had our heatpump for nearly a year. Would I return to gas boiler... never! I've never lived in such comfort! Always hot water and pleasantly warm home everywhere at such low cost, bc the power I've sold to the grid has more than paid for our winter needs! My advice to anyone thinking of going this route is to make sure you thoroughly do the research. M
Replacing a gas boiler is reasonably affordable for most households on mains gas and will guarantee a warm house at a known cost. The reason heat pumps are not popular is because over 70% of households in the UK have access to mains gas and cannot afford a heat pump system, even with a government grant; the same reason most people cannot afford to buy electric cars. Why would consumers spend more money to change to a heat pump system with no guarantee that your house will be correctly surveyed, installed properly or that energy savings will cover the cost.
Same was said with mobile phones. They don't work, the signal is rubbish outside of towns, no one wasnts to type on a screen or talk over a video call. Now look. No one has said they're for every house or even affordable. But they do work for a lot.
@@ElectricVehicleMan Your earlier video explained that the cost was £17,500 above the cost of replacing the gas boiler and would take about ten years to recoup the cost; providing you remain in the same house. However, you failed to take account the investment or loan of the capital. If you were fortunate to have £17,500 in cash and chose to invest the money over ten years at 4.5% you would gain £7000. Choosing to borrow the capital over ten years would cost you £204 a month. Taking account of my previous comment until the issue of consumer confidence and cost are addressed people currently on mains gas will replace their current gas boiler to a more efficient new one.
Neighbour had a heat pump fitted around 2 years ago and points at our house, maybe 8 feet pump to wall. No noise in warm weather but it's starting to wind up in noise levels now it's getting cold. Sure you can hear it outside and not indoors. However last winter when it got really cold, we could hear it in bed at night. Not loud, but loud enough that you could hear it over our own heating. So, no, they are not silent. So should we ever get one, it will be fitted in a way that it doesn't have detrimental effects on neighbours
Here in Finland I've used two air-to-air heat pumps for 14 years to keep my house warm in the winter & cool in the summer. So far I've saved thousands of Euros in electricity bills.
Lucky you! I live in southern England. Ive had an air to air 8 KW Mitsubishi heat pump with eco dan fitted to my small 1936 house for about 10 years now, and trouble to find anything good to say about it. First of all it's quite noisy, my next door neighbour mentions the noise. Secondly the radiators never get more than lukewarm and on days like today [snow] I actually have to turn it off because it's on 24/7 and still only heats the house to 15c. So I use an old wood burner . When the government cancels gas and oil in the future I guess a good old fashioned fire is the only thing that will heat the house properly.
@@denzilpenbirthy5028 Your heat pump is clearly faulty or you were tricked into buying something very old. If it works in the Nordics, and they definitely do, they work in England as well. I only keep wood to burn as a backup. It is so much more expensive to to burn wood than just running the heat pump. Mine gives enough heat down to -30 C and they are not even expensive.
@@quadcopter Ive finally managed to get a genuine specialist to have a look at it next month. Having said that I think the problem is caused by damp and cold environments, as opposed to dry and cold. I live on the North side of a hill, it is very damp and moss grows everywhere. It's the high moisture content that causes the vanes to freeze up. So its very possible the defrost function is working fine. Wood is a good option for me because its free👍🏻
If your rads only get luke warm you get no stack effect so the heat, however minimal, isn’t distributed beyond the radiator. Try checking the temperature of the flow pipe from the heat pump if that’s also Luke warm it’s the heat pump that’s the problem, if it’s hot then your rads may need flushing.
Here in Eastern Canada heat pumps have become very popular, but they are almost always heating the air, not water. It is mostly mini splits, but some people have whole home systems with duct work similar to a forced air furnace. The only one I know with a water system has a ground source heat pump and in-floor heating. Of course not that many people have hot water heating system in their houses. Most have forced air or electric baseboards, so there aren't that many systems to retro-fit.
I honestly think mini splits are way better than ASHP's as they currently exist in the UK. Much cheaper, can install yourself, can be AC too which his getting handy in the UK summers, you can have a few totally separate' systems in a house so nice level of redundancy if one breaks.
@@asdreww Problem is planning in the UK which you need to get planning permission for putting in AC, the idea being that having AC would increase power usage, but really given that home batteries and solar exist I don't see that being valid if you have a power rating on your solar and inverter that matches the maximum power draw of the heatpump. Because there is plenty of sun on hot days surprisingly and given that your house is relatively well insulated you shouldn't need to use anywhere near your maximum power rating even in the middle of the day. And someone who has went through the effort of putting in solar, a battery and a heat pump their first concern would have likely have been improving the insolation so someone that has solar, a battery and heatpump almost certainly already has at least decent insolation.
Air to air in the UK doesn't get a government subsidy (it seems because it can also be used for air con) which is why it is not the usual choice. As always, subsidies distort unhelpfully.
I have mini split downstairs and ducted system upstairs. It does work quite nicely but the gas boiler is cheaper to run due to the higher electricity costs. But the air-conditioning side is great in the summer. Maybe a modern system would be scheaper to run, as i have had mine for 20 years now.
Absolutely agree but there is for me, and others I introduced to heat pumps to, one of the big plus points is the COMFORT of heat pump heating. unlike heating with gas which is an on or off affair Heat pump heating when you set it up for a low flow temperature runs long and gentle so the walls of the house warm up and the warmth is all-around heat so that you feel more comfortably warm.
I am planning to install heat pump, but, nobody stops you putting your radiator temp to 45 degrees on gas boiler, I did it and very happy with comfort. It will make it work similarly and more efficiently and better for system longevity overall
What a load of TWADDLE . Gas Boiler comes ON/ OFF CYCLING MATCHING DEMAND FOR HEAT INSTANT. What is this " COMFORT CRAP". You are obviously not from Electrical / Mechanical background. Same B/S about Heat Pumps as Electric cars. Total Expensive Disaster.
A gas system can be made to work in a similar way by reducing the radiator temperature, ours is set to 50C so the radiators aren't so hot but are on most of the time, also means the boiler is operating at a more efficient level and the overall cost works out a bit cheaper, but it definitely feels more comfortable than when it was 60C when we got the house.
It's OK of you are an old gager dying in your house..😂😂😂😂😂 but of you travel and ejoy yourself then it is useless as it has long start up and is inflexible. Gas boiler is flexible and superior .
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr agreed. I don't get why there are so many positive comments about air source heat pumps. As soon as it drops below 55F outside it seems like your getting fuck all for heat out of the vents. THEN, speaking of comfort, I love how it has to reverse once an hour when its colder out and blow 40f air through the vents for 3 minutes.Barely heats the house and it feels breezy inside. Not my first heat pump. It seems like your just getting the waste heat from the compressor below 45f. One solid oak log and a fan blowing on the stove can heat the house more than the heat pump running all night long.
Straight swap IF you had mains gas, might work out at roughly the same cost that's true. BUT if weren't on mains gas, it 100% works out cheaper. I was on LPG, and when I was offered solar, heat pump and solid wall insulation under an ECO4 scheme, I agreed to it. I worked out that as long as the running cost was below £250 a month, I would be saving money. It was installed in Novermber last year, it's a 12kW Samsung unit. Although January cost me £281 my monthly average is still sitting at £127 for the whole of this year. I am paying EDF £135 a month just so I have an extra bit of a buffer in the account, but so far it seems I am definitely saving money. And as of July I am on the EDF heat pump trial tariff so between 4-7am and 1-4pm my electricity is 10p cheaper than the variable standard rate, so it will be interesting to see what difference that makes during the winter. So far it means my bills are roughly £15 a month cheaper, but I suspect that saving might be larger in the winter. The biggest thing I have learned, is not to treat it like a boiler. Continuous heat at a lower temperature is more comfortable and more cost effective than periods of high heat, and then allowing the house to cool down, which means the heat pump has to work harder to get it back to the target temperature. As such I have stopped doing things like setting a lower overnight temperature, because it's false economy.
@marcinsobczak2485 guess it depends where you live. I was paying £155 per month for LPG so that I built up a credit for winter. My neighbours with oil pay around £450 for a tank fill that lasts around 4-6 weeks in the winter, so there's definitely at least 2 tank fills in the cold weather. Is your oil doing your hot water too?
@@AndrewJonesMcGuire I get hot water from it only in winter along with heating, I use electric shower for the rest of the year. also I only turn on the heating when temperature drops below 7 degrees. I don't think it would make sense to me to get a new heat pump, even when oil doubles in price
Yep ASHP's do work. I have one and we were on LPG, so cleared a huge bulk storage tank from our back garden. Overall the heating is now far quieter in our home and it is very comfortable as well as cheaper to run. Also as you said, gained an extra cupboard in our utility!
@ yep I find it cheaper. Costs of LPG were almost double at the time I swapped and my ASHP costs kept it less than what I had been paying before the price went up.
1. My current tariff is: electric 23.55p per unit, gas 5.5p per unit. Immediately electric energy is costing over 4 times gas energy. 2. Installation cost of a heat pump, radiators, etc and removal of gas boiler and radiators is variable but is around £15,000. Installation of my neighbours solar panels, etc was recently about £20,000. Capital outlay is then about £35,000. So, currently, without a massive subsidy the outlay is excessive and would not be covered at all by any efficiency savings. There is also the concern of the country going all electric and there being insufficient generating capacity for the massive increase of electric. We would need considerably more roof solar panels and roof space to deal with the oncoming lack of electricity to cover our personal requirements in the event of there being insufficient electric generation country wide. The government has already indicated that smart meters could be used to throttle individual energy consumption. Only your solar panels would prevent you having individual issues. Any reduction in gas to the gas grid would be entirely self inflicted by the current government as North Sea gas is still available but they refuse to extract it and fracking is also available but they refuse to use it.
1. There are tariffs that offer better rates, e.g. OVO has one for heat pumps where it's 15p/kWh for heat pump usage. Also, it's worth noting that gas isn't 100% efficient, so your gas cost for actual usable heat is closer to 6.47p/kWh. 2. Depends on the house and what needs doing, if you need that amount of work done, then it means you're already wasting money with gas. Solar prices also vary, sounds like they also had battery storage if their house is average. The National Grid have a page dispelling those types of myths with insufficient capacity etc. Heat pumps aren't going to be a massive increase in electricity and won't happen overnight. Solar and battery storage far out-pace heat pump installs in the UK. Smart meters don't throttle consumption. It's more optional controls built into the devices. Typically, the schemes so far, where you allow load reductions to help prevent any sort of blackout are both voluntary and usually have a financial reward. There are plenty of reasons (environmental, health and regulatory) to not go down the fracking route, same for continued use of burning gas.
Your figures are high BUT on the right track. The initial outlay far exceeds the benifit . How many years of these " Mythical" savings to justify the Installation Cost . Nobody seems to consider the life of these Units A gas compressor / Fans / Pumps all mechanical electrical parts which will wear out.
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr And so will parts in a gas boiler from thermal stress 🤦 How often have you replaced your fridge or freezer because of worn out parts?
@BenIsInSweden THE HEART OF THESE HEAT PUMPS IS A HERMETRICALLY SEALED GAS COMPRESSOR . THIS WEARS .This is usually why Fridges AC units performance drops off with age / usage. These are expensive unrepairable units . Gas Boilers have a Fan for combustion which generaly is renewable at sensible cost. The Compressors require Re- Gassing the system look at the cost of a compresor. I am shure most people do not know about this.
@GrahamNewman-mq7gr the compressor typically lasts 15-25 years of operation. If it hasn't been set up correctly then less. Compressor guarantees are usually 5-7 years as well. And if it's survived that long then they typically go the full distance.
I live in Spain and last year installed a brand new Daikin air conditioner that includes a heat pump. This is is really cheap to run and it keeps very fresh during the summer. When winter came last year, I decided to try and see how that heat pump compared with my electrical radiator in terms of cost. In previous years I was spending around 90 euros a month just heating a single room around 6-7 hours a day. With the heat pump I pay around 40 euros and keep the heating on from 7 to 23. This thing is insanely efficient!
We recently got the kit, PV/battery/heatpump. No more gasboiler or gas anything.our boiler is set to 60 degrees max for legionella and ranges around 46 degrees for hot water and between 35 and 40 degrees for radiator. We’ve set our Livingston temp on 19.7 which is cozy enough for us.love the system. Our outside unit is not really noisy. It’s situated about 14 meters from the street, where it is not noticeable. We don’t hear in the house or in the bedroom, even with the window open.
One problem is that the heat pump needs to be on all day when electricity is most expensive. Having a night time tariff is OK but the battery needs to be pretty big to supply all daytime demands. When it is very cold outside my 9kw heat pump will be using 3kw of electricity all day so that could be 50kwh on extreme days.
@ our system has been installed very recently, so not much data to go to. So far in the past two months my total energy usage, including heatpump, has been about 9kW on average per day
@rogerphelps9939 Ovo do a tariff that works out what your heat pump used and charges it at a lower rate. Octopus do a tariff with 3 low charging blocks, two of which would be when you would want to use the heat pump. So it isn't quite as bad as you suggest.
I am planning on a self install this summer , the oil boiler is coming up to 10 years old , so will replace with a 8kw Samsung unit , looks fairly simple having been in process engineering for the last 25 years , we have solar and battery storage which i might expand a little to take advantage of the cheap over night tarrifs during the winter months , even though its 1930s house i feel confident i should net a saving , total budget will be 5K including increasing a few radiators .
The only reason heat pumps aren't much cheaper than gas boilers in any house is just down to the artificially high price of electricity compared to gas - electricity (and hence heat pumps) pays a higher rate of tax than gas, plus electricity prices are based upon the price of gas even if the majority is being generated by renewables. The UK has a far higher spark gap (ratio of electricity price to gas) than any other European nation. In the Netherlands electricity is cheaper than gas and Sweden electricity is just a bit more expensive, so not surprisingly heat pumps are a no-brainer there.
@@damiendye6623 I have done my research and have such a tariff, not sure what your point is. My point about high electricity pricing still stands, I suggest you do some research.
Is electricity 'artificially' high or is it the load put on it now trying to switch everything to electricity in a panic trying to lead the world. There are the compensation payments to turbine operators when they cannot feed in to the grid and the sheer cost of installing the turbines. Then there is the cost of subsidising gas power stations on standby but ready to go when there is no wind or sun which is happening already. Then there is the cost of having to massively upgrade the grid to handle all the transport and heating power needs with electricity, and from an intermittent source at that. 70% of Sweden's electricity comes from hydro electric and they have nuclear which is steadily being run down in the UK. The Netherlands also does not rely on vulnerable undersea connector cables with Russian ships now sniffing around them, what with our eagerness to involve ourselves in every war wherever we can. Gas is abundant and cheap but electricity completely converted to relying on nature providing at all times is heading in to a massive unknown.
This is ironically because of green tax! Originally electricity was made in coal power stations, and gas was a comparatively greener form of energy, so UK put the tax up of Electricity. Now the electricity grid is much cleaner, but the tax is the same.... I think we need to transition the tax to balance it out again
@@michaeld5888 Electricity is artificially high. For a start the green tariff on electricity is 22%, on gas it's just 2%, crazy that we tax the less polluting method more. The main problem though is the way the price is calculated, with the highest price supplier (usually gas turbines) governing the price we pay. Ignore the exact figures, but for illustration, if 99% of the electricity could come from renewables at 4p/kWh with 1%from gas at 12p/kWh then the wholesale price for all electricity is 12p/kWh - that is a distorted market. For gas not to decide the wholesale price, all the electricity has to be generated from non-gas sources, it happens but rarely. Greg Jackson (Octopus) has said that just regionalizing electricity pricing would bring prices down dramatically, with Scotland having the lowest electricity prices in Europe. This would also be a very good demonstration of how much cheaper renewable energy is than gas, so many people still think that gas is the cheap way to generate electricity, rather than being the most expensive. Gas is not cheap, as we have seen with the recent crisis and massive rise in domestic fuel bills. If a carbon tax was applied to gas then it would be much more expensive, instead the damage caused by climate change is paid for out of general taxation worldwide. The powerful fossil fuel lobby ensures that they do not pay for the damage fossil fuels cause, this needs to change for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Gas boilers are an incredibly polluting way to produce heat for the home, heat pumps produce a fraction of the CO2 of a gas boiler and none of the even more damaging methane losses associated with gas transmission. There would be less global warming emissions from a heat pump running off of a grid powered from coal than using a gas boiler. The grid itself is not too bad, the major problem is the lack of investment in attaching new generation to the grid. This investment would pay itself back reasonably quickly, unfortunately crazy fiscal rules hinder government investment.
Here is a fact for the believers… Dec 23 16kw Midea, in new highly insulated new build house, consumed 2.77Mwh yes 2700kwh. Jan 24 consumed 2.33Mwh. And to add that was generally the ground floor wet UFH. The rad upstairs were off as generally do not like the bedrooms too warm, but the towel rads were barely Luke warm. We have 30 PV panels a 10kw battery. Stuck on a standard 25p tariff as no energy provider can get me a smart meter to work for the export tariff. Currently with Octopus but can’t access any tariffs that would make this incredibly heavy investment worth while. And has been mentioned by others the disparity of gas around 6p Kwh electric 25p Kwh. I’ve just read a Independent report published in March by a Scottish University Professor on findings over the last 10-15 years and the upshot is that generally a ASHP is around 36% more expensive to run as opposed to Gas! Basically because of the cost difference per KWh. Given my time again I’d have stuck with a Gas boiler!
If it's 16kW in a highly insulation new build then either it's a 10 bedroom mansion or something or that heat pump is far too oversized. My 1920's 152sqm home in Sweden consumed ~2.4mWh in December '23, and that's for everything - cooking etc. And we have much lower temperatures.
@@waynecartwright-js8tw I don't know how you manage that 12p/kWh. Standard Octopus rate is 22.35p/kWh. Is your draw primarily overnight? I'm with Fuse, and they are just about the lowest electric rate at 21p/kWh.
The heat pump costs should be similar to a gas boiler (did you have one?), so maybe your use or installation needs tweaking? Certainly smart tariffs enabled by a smart meter would reduce costs significantly.
@@BenIsInSweden yes, it’s a large house but I am not convinced the design of the system is right. For example we have a 100ltr buffer before any hot, or should I say warmish water even gets to the radiators and UFH. Can be around two hours before the pipes around the pumps feel anything like warm. The cylinder loses around 5 degrees on average every two hours. Very frustrating.
Our 5kW heat pump is much quieter than the outdoor oil boiler it replaced, it has a maximum power consumption of 1.55kW which is actually only 3 times more power than the boiler consumed when running; those fans and injection pumps are power hungry beasts. We were able to use the same power supply and pipework, and because all our heating and hot water is from a thermal store it took literally 2 hours to swap over.
We're becoming too reliant on the electricity grid. That's the main problem. I lived in an area where we would get power outages. We could always cook because we had a gas cooker. We had heating because we had an open fire and a solid fuel boiler. With us moving to solar, wind and battery storage the changes of blackouts increases over more controllable generation.
The grid say that the blackout likelihood has decreased to its lowest level in 4 years. If you live in an area where you are worried about blackouts, you can get batteries, PV and an earth rod and even keep your backup forms of heating? The grid gives us the benefit of being able to sell solar and buy wind energy. Increasing numbers of batteries will continue to add stability.
@@Biggest-dh1vr why should you spend stupid amounts òf money on batteries that are a fire risk bags of coal can sit in sheds along side wood and oil and don't degrade as much as batteries
yes, being worried about reliance over electricity (that we can literally get at our own house and harvest from the sky), vs russian gas. Makes total sense!
I live in one of the most remote parts of Scotland and power outages simply aren't an issue, I bought a 5KVA backup generator 20 years ago and it has barely been used in that time. Only once has power been off for more than 24 hours, that was in 2011 due to an ice storm, otherwise it's only been minutes or a few hours and it's hardly worth hooking up the genny. If we were off for a prolonged period then the genny will happily power the heat pump, and a camping stove is more than sufficient for cooking. Anecdotal evidence suggests your last sentence is complete rubbish, certainly in this area the incidence of all power outages has decreased significantly. 10 years ago the clock on our oven would be flashing a couple of times a week indicating a loss of power at some point, these days it's more like once every couple of months, distributed generation is improving reliability not reducing it.
I'm a true petrol head, with a V8 mustang and a big American F150 truck. I'm also a sparky. I was very suspicious of heat pumps, but I sat down and did the running cost comparisons between Gas, and Baseboard heaters and heat pumps. These things are amazing. I'm in Canada, minus 20 winters, my bill was $300 per month all year balanced out. I put in some heat pumps for my boss, he loved them, I did the same, my bill is now $150 per month, and I'm warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Does the heat pump heat a water-based heating system (hot water flowing in radiator panels) or is it a ducted air heating system? Many of the 'confusions' and problems may be due to differences between 'continental climate' ducted air systems, and UKs mild oceanic climate that uses water-based radiators, and has some nasty "damp air in freezing conditions" scenarios. Once below -5 C (23F) there's no need for defrost cycles, but on a -0C day a badly positioned ASHP can be eating its own dog food when attempting to defrost, and it's very near the common design limit for UK systems [when real people turn _up_ there heating, just because!]
I'd like to put a shout out for air to air heat pumps. I've just had these installed in three rooms and they are brilliant. Efficient, like the air to water but you can cool too which for those with solar is a winner in Summer. Do give these some thought if you're looking.
@@intruder313 yes they are. Almost all 'air conditioners' that you can buy in the UK are actually heat pumps that can heat and cool. Just remember they can't do hot water. Well, they could in theory but those sorts of systems don't seem to be available. A shame really as in summer they could dump the waste heat from cooling in to a hot water tank.
@@robwalker864 I think there are systems which do exactly that. My heat pump at least (which is an AC unit mainly) can connect to 2 AC units + a water tank. But I don't think the water tank is heated up with the heat from the AC, the plumbing inside the unit would be ridiculous. But geothermal pumps for example are heating water which goes into the ground through pipes. The heat can also go into your pool. I believe if you contact a company specializing in heat pumps you might find one that can do both heating and cooling and scavenge the heat into a boiler somehow.
Air-to-Air heat pumps are the only sensible way of using heat pumps. The lower temperatures involved have multiple benefits such as much greater equipment life, reliability, efficiency and faster heating as well as cooling.
This! I find it so bizarre that they are not mentioned more! You know those heat pumps that are so often referenced in Scandinavia? Most of them are air to air units! I get that AC isn't very common in the UK and unfortunately air-to-air systems don't currently benefit from any install grants but they should definitely be talked about more! The installation can be so much simpler.
If you don't have any gas to your house, get rid of the meter, you save the standing charge, which at the moment is at about £.50p per day. That works out at about £182.50 per year. We are electric only with a Samsung heat pump and very happy with it's performance, but it is definitely not quiet when working at full chat.
@@zlmdragon. it’s embedded into the wall, it’s not sat on top of the stone. Plus the gas pipe is inside capped off so can’t be filled it. Looks less obvious with it next to the other one tbh.
Excellent advice, just got rid of our oil burner for Ideal logic air 10kw. We live in a old Welsh home walls two foot thick with insulation, the radiators are set to 30 degrees, the temperature in the home is 21/22 degrees, if anything it is a bit too warm so set it to 18 degrees later in the day when the house has warmed up, it has made a huge difference.
Gas engineers have spent most of their lives removing large hot water cylinders and fitting combi boilers. This often gave more room in bathrooms, enabling separate showers to be installed. A combi boiler is quite small and increasingly efficient. In addition to the ugly monstrosity stuck on your outside wall is bad enough, but you have another monstrosity inside which appears to be an immersion heater. If heat pumps are so wonderful, why do they need a backup system. The majority of the housing stock in the UK is more than 50 years old, mine is 120 years old. I can't have cavity insulation because it doesn't have cavity walls. Ed Milliband and his net zero accolades can stick their heat pumps.
Mine has no ‘backup system’. You’re looking at old tech. Immersion heater has been disabled from day one due to reasons you’ve clearly not listened to in this video. And gas boilers haven’t got any more efficient for years and can’t get anymore efficient due to simple physics. The fact you’re hating something because a politician likes them is just insane. What if they start pushing beer, does that mean you’ll rally against it?
If these are so wonderful, why are the hundreds of new homes being built in Kenilworth where I live are being fitted with gas boiler systems? A few have been specified with solar panels, to be fair. I asked and was told that modern houses don't have enough room for all the required paraphernalia
Excellent video, thanks. Just had our Cosy 6 heat pump installed and we have microbore. SCOP of 3.69 so far. Battery and solar coming soon, so 7p/kWh. Much cheaper than gas
@@neeeiiil we pay the same as you for gas. Gas boilers are 90% plus efficient. My point was, divide 7p/kWh for electricity by the SCOP of 3.69 (369% efficient) and it's 1.9p/kWh, so much cheaper than gas.
My gas boiler is mounted on a plasterboard partition wall. So it acts like an acoustic instrument. That's inside a cupboard in the kitchen. Certainly hear it but it's a pleasant quiet hum. 7 years old now and not a problem. No room outside for a heat pump due to patio doors at one end plus front door. Other end are the bedrooms. Leaves us just one side as we are a semi detached bungalow. Pathway not wide enough due to the garage. As a retired electrician,I have worked out a suitable setup with low power convection heaters and a instant hot water heater for the bathroom and kitchen. Shower is electric. Thanks for your info.
A clever engineer might have ideas on where to put it (hopefully not down the garden!). Alternatively, regulations may change at some point... (Yay regulations!)
I have the same Vaillant 5kW HP as you and concur with everything you’ve said. It’s not silent, but it’s not noisy, definitely quieter than the gas boiler it replaced. The house is consistently warmer than it used to be, and it’s incredibly efficient. The last 4 weeks has averaged 7.5 kWh per day for heating and hot water. The same period last year when we were on Gas used an average of 40kWh per day. I have battery storage, charged overnight on Intelligent Octopus at 7p, the total cost of heating and hot water for October was £10.85. Oh, and the wife has gained an additional cupboard in the Kitchen where the boiler used to be!
@ Yes, I have 4.7kW of Solar, 1 x 8.2 and 1 x 9.5kW GivEnergy Batteries. Solar contributed next to nothing in October, one of the worst months I’ve ever had!
@@chrisrowe22 thanks! I’ve had a quote from octopus for a heat pump. I’m on intelligent octopus for car charging. From what you say it seems as though heat pump + battery would be a viable solution even without solar?
@@gerryking4346solar in the summer pays for heat pumps in the winter. If you are able, you might find it better value than a battery,as @UpsideDownFork did.
@ Batteries & Octo Intelligent will definitely help to bring the running costs down. Solar generation doesn’t contribute much in Winter, when you most need it!
Good straight forward video, thanks. I personally think that underfloor heating gives a nice even heat, however air to water systems are expensive plus you have to be so careful who you get to install it. On the other side of the coin, air to air is a very good alternative as it is half the price plus you get cooling on the hot summer days. The only downside side is the lack of hot water, which could of course be supplied with an Emerson heater and a battery to keep the cost down. There are many advantages having air to air and it’s a simpler system with far less to go wrong. Horses for courses I guess.
I dont have heat pump, but I do have air con unit which is used for both heating and cooling. The external unit is a bit smaller and I believe it's slightly less efficient, but works using much the same technology. I can certainly confirm that the air con unit works at full blast trying to cook from 28 to 24 degrees or warm from 5 degrees ·= or less) to 23 degrees. The fan is noisy when outside (I can just hear it through double glazing patio door, about 3 metre away ay night). The noise nuisance is external not internal. The flat is modern and well insulated to current day European standards (which are the same or better than the UK). To add to the fan noise, as the unit gets older, bearing start to go and the noise goes up as a result. We had to replace the unit as a fairly expensive repair even though we have an annual maintenance contract. My understanding is the initial cost of the entire system is significantly higher than the total cost of installing a gas equivalent system. Electricity cost sin the UK are currently higher than gas prices (even though gas remains at a historic high price) as well. This part due to Govt policy and subsidies paid to fund green energy systems which are more expensive. The other issue is insulation of the property. For new build, this should be of a good to high standard, but for anyone with a pre-1990 house there is an expensive to very expensive cost for extra insulation to add to the total price of the system. For the may UK city properties without any significant external space (ie anyone living in an apartment) you cant install this type of technology at all. Noise in the least important issue for most people.
@nickbrough8335 this is about the most honest review in this thread 👍🏻 Unlike the guy on the video or some of the reviewers claiming it to be the "world saviour " I run 2 air to air units and I'm happy how they perform and I'm against the air to water con going on at the moment where installers charge up to £15000 before you even need to pay for newer/bigger radiators
The difficulty with trying to get a balanced opinion on UA-cam, is that these videos are made either by the installers or people who are evangelical because they think of the existential risk. I’m afraid that these, like a few other things I can think of are luxury beliefs, as Rob Henderson would say, for a privileged few.
You've said it. Hard to get a really honest opinion. Our bungalow has hot air ducted gas heating (no radiators), which works OK, but times are changing and I can see the government changing the 4:1 elect:gas price ratio at some point to force take up..Our the 'boiler room' is bang in the middle of the house, not near an outside wall. So by the time the water is piped in to a heat exchanger a lot of heat is going to get lost. I see disaster looming on the heating front.
I have a panasonic 5KW heat pump in my newbuild house. When I first saw it, I was checking whether it is on or off. But it was working during that time. They are that quiet!
Just got mine Vaillant AroTHERM plus 7kW Installed 2 wks ago have to say I’ll never go back to using gas boiler. heating on 24/7 Complete comfort Cheap to run using green tariff and home storage battery 🔋 Very happy
I have replaced an oil boiler with a heat pump in 2020 in a 220 year old stone cottage. It's 200 square metres and we never have the flow temp above 40 degrees and the house is always 20 degrees. They do work fine when fitted correctly. I'm now fed up with telling people they do work as soon as I realise they are a denier I just say well don't have one!
@davidscott3292 hi David at the moment it's 5 degrees outside and the heat pump is running at less than 1kw of input power and the house is continously at between 20 and 21 degrees. It costs us about 4000kwh a year for heating and hot water so at our kw cost that's about 800 quid for the year but we do have solar which obviously helps but not much in the winter
Anyone against heat pumps (of any variety) is welcome to Sweden to see how our houses are heated. A massive amount of them have pumps, even up in the north. I have two actually, one air/air and one ground/water. The air/air is mainly used for AC in the summer. Where I live we have winter from Oct to Apr, with temperatures ranging from around 0 to -20 C during that period. I have a 170 sqm 1,5 floor house with a cellar, built in the fifties. It has doubled glazed windows and not very much in the way of insulation. My total electricity consumption is around 9000 kWh/year - and we don't use gas over here, for anything, so that is a non existing expense. Converted to GBP, my total energy bill is ~£725/year. So hot water, heating, cooking - the works. It's not even worth improving the insulation, it would take me ages to return that investment. Let alone installing solar!
@@pauljones3073 "A massive amount" doesn't mean universal. No gas though ;) In our (Sweden) case oil was thrown out in favour of heat pumps, and it's worked fine for 40 plus years.
Owns a 1960s semi detached which came with an ancient gas back boiler and lots if radiators that did not work. We needed to replace all of the pipework anyway so elected to get a heat pump. Only insulation added was 300mm of loft insulation which by itself made a huge difference. Heat pump is great, it easily heats the house in mornings and afternoons. During summer electricity usage for the heat pump is around 2kw, on mild winter days around 10kw, and on the coldest days around 25kw. We have the octopus cosy tariff which allows cheaper electricity between 4am and 7am, and 1pm and 4pm. Very happy with heat pump, looking forward to getting solar and battery so our electricity usage in summer can be reduced to near zero.
People living in cold climate and who have not installed heat pump of some kind are too late already and have wasted a lot of mopney in electricity bills all these years. These came out about 30 years ago and reached their peak efficiency 20 years ago. They heat both air inside the house and even provide hot water depending on the kind you buy. My electricity consumption dropped from 22000kwh per year to 11000kwh per year on changing from simple boiler heater to heat pump heater. It has already paid itself off many years ago. We keep indoor temp of 23 deg C and the out side winter temp can be 0 to minus15 deg C.The only thing that heat pump can not compete with is if you have a very cheap supply of gas to heat the house or have your own forest. They work down to minus 30 deg C as in northern Sweden .
Our first air heat pump was installed some 22 years ago. We live in the wet, mild western Norwegian coastal climate zone with few below-freezing winter days. In an old wooden house, small footprint, three floors. The heat pump is set to keep the average temperature in the whole house above around 15-16C. Combined with a wood stove in the first floor living room, used for some hours daily, and small panel heaters in every room for additional heating when needed. These are not used a lot. The annual electricity consumption went down around 35 percent after installation, and the two heat pumps installed so far (the first one was not well suited and stopped working after some years, the second is still in good working order after 17 years) were paid down by savings alone in around five years, each. Now, piped gas is not used domestically here and fossil fuel burning heaters were banned a few years ago. So there are not many options to resistance heaters, heat pump tech or bio fuel. Still, economy is the main reason for why so many Norwegian small houses use heat pumps. Even simple air-to-air systems just work.
@@janhanchenmichelsen2627 You live in a mild climate and your heat pump keeps your house at a chilly 15 -16C. Sorry that is not a great advert for installing a heat pump. Obviously people feel the cold differently but I would need those panel heaters on quite a lot for rooms set at 15 - 16C.
@@brucejoseph8367 Read my post again. OUR settings, in our old house. Of course the heat pump can heat it all without any trouble. Max output equals around 6500W. But none of us like hot rooms. Prefer 19-20, max, 15-16 at night. And there is no reason to heat rooms when they are not used. Unless you love to waste money. Today it’s below zero, the heat pump is turned up to 20C, this because the unit is at the ground floor. The heat rises all the way up, preventing the third floor to fall below around 16C. Before making dinner, I got the wood-burning stove going. Now it’s all comfortable.
@@janhanchenmichelsen2627 You have just contradicted yourself saying that you use a heat pump fully, and THEN saying that you put on the wood burner to FULLY heat your house/flat. Again all lies with these heat pumps UNTILL fully checked out in full blown minus 50 C (-50 C) temps.
I was lucky enough to have an ASHP fitted 4 years ago as a case study for OVO energy who were fitting them to existing housing stock to see how they perform. I have an averagely built 1960s semi detached bungalow, 1980s double glazing, 70mm cavity walls with blown insulation and 300mm loft roll. They replaced 2 (out 7) radiators for larger ones, others retained. Heat pump is nigh on silent just outside my bedroom. Cost to run is virtually the same as the gas boiler it replaced, slightly cheaper but not enough to notice. People that say they done work in existing houses without massive upgrades are wrong. *obviously insulate first where possible for easy wins. However, the comfort is FAR better than it was with the gas boiler, it’s always just an even, comfortable heat compared to peaks and troughs of heat you get as the boiler runs, cuts out then kicks in again.
Any modern gas boiler can modulate and keep the temperature within a 0.2C margin. If your expenses are still the same AND you had to pay for the installation (about 5 times the price of a gas boiler), then it would actually have been very expensive.
They operate below freezing. There's no water in the loop, so there's nothing inherently different about operating below freezing except for icing up on the condenser. I'm sure you'd get When the condenser gets iced up it runs in reverse for a short while to melt the ice (I'm not sure if they have an electric resistance heater somewhere in the loop), then it runs forwards again. Look at one of Technology Connections' many videos on heat pumps to see this in action. I've never seen a heat pump with a resistive heater inline with the incoming air, but I haven't opened many up, and none I've looked at were the modern low temperature heat pumps.
@@ThisRandomUsername We had a lot of condensation in our house when we moved in, as do many in cold weather - some worse than others. We had a heat recovery system fitted. This draws air in from the cold side of house - North facing ( so it does not get too hot in summer). It extracts air from the house and blows it out at the warm South facing side of the house. There are vents for the incoming air in most rooms and extraction vents in others like. the toilet/bathroom. kitchen. The flow is balanced and all the air changes in the house every 20 minutes or so. When it was first turned on (Winter) all the condensation disappeared from windows an walls within about 20 minutes - a miracle at the time -still is. The house is cleaner with less dust and healthier for chest complaints. This is not a heating system, but it does have a built in heating cooling compressor, which you need. When air is draw in from outside it is mixed with the extracted air from the house, and that heat is added to the colder incoming air. Then it is blown in around the hose The incoming and outgoing air goes through a filters in the machine to clean the air both ways. When you change them every 6 months approx' , you can see all the dirt that has been removed. So in Winter the incoming air is colder and is heated and mixed to maintain a decent temperature in the house. If the air drawn in is too hot in Summer the air is cooled by the compressor to maintain the temperature in the house. Usually the compressor is off apart from extreme temperatures. Some people add a duct heater to in incoming air to warm it up before it reaches the machine. The machine is just 2 fans and a compressor, and a controller where ever you want it. The controller is for the temperature you require in your house, fan speeds, filter change reminder etc etc. This long ramble is for people who are not familiar with heat exchangers. That was why I asked about heating cold air as it is draw in through the heat pump, as it would make less work for this system, and you would get warm incoming air all year round? You could switch the heater on as required for a few days we experience really cold weather?? Just a thought!
@@Smiler7 That's an interesting setup you have there. I'm wanting to do something like you have for just my bathroom, but just with a heat exchanger, not including a compressor. I'm not sure if you understand how these heat pumps work, but they do not bring in outside air and dump inside air outside. They just move heat from the colder outside air and warm up the warmer inside air using a refrigeration cycle. It's a reversible air conditioner. There is no movement of air from outside to inside and vice versa.
Big old Yorkshire farmhouse. 16kw Grant ASHP, 300 litre tank. Previously on oil burning about £300 per month to be cold most of the time. Spending the same money on electricity in winter, inc 20,000 mile electric car on Intel Octopus Go. Now 22 degrees 24/7
Heatpumps of all kinds works just fine in Sweden and I just presume that the temperatures here are just a bit lower than in Britain. In fact I’ve never ever heard any upset debates on that matter here. We also use a thing called insulation which is a great idea that you should check out.
You don't have a debate because you have much lower electricity prices in Sweden. It's the high cost of electricity - the highest in Europe - compared to gas that's the issue in the UK. If UK electricity prices were in line with the average production cost, which includes solar and wind, rather than be pegged at the production cost of gas-powered generation, then heatpumps become a no-brainer.
@@FangPawI wouldn't say much lower. I recently did a calculation with converting to GBP. Taxes and transmission costs for a start work out at just over 6p/kWh which cannot be changed (local grid charge). My average supply cost between today and tomorrow is about 8p/kWh. So about 14p/kWh currently. Yes,it's cheaper, but it's not as cheap as people make it out to be, as many sources will just use the "spot price" which excludes taxes and transmission costs as they vary by who owns the DNO.
@@BenIsInSweden That's still significantly cheaper that UK prices which are about 22-26p/kWh, depending on tariff (plus daily standing charge ie transmission charge) + tax (VAT currently at 5%). At 14p/kWh, a heat pump would most definitely be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. The supply companies clearly know electricity is over-priced as they can offer EV charging rates at 7p/kWh. The stupidity of our system is that it's cheaper to export electricity generated by solar panels and buy back from the grid to charge your EV , rather than use the solar for battery storage and/or charging the EV.
@@FangPawpretty sure VAT is already included in that 22-26p. Standing charge isn't per kWh so doesn't change based on usage, our transmission charges are per kWh. If you really want to get into it, I also have to pay ~£50 per month for the connection to the DNO (more like the standing charge).
@@BenIsInSweden Maybe. 5% doesn't make that much difference (less than 2p/kWh). The circa £50 monthly connection charge you pay is a lot more than the UK daily standing charge. But presumably you'd have to pay it whether you had a heat pump or not. So it doesn't alter the argument - what you pay to run your heat pump is significantly less than what I'd be paying in the UK on an energy/Therm basis. But in reality, you're preaching to the converted (thanks to you!). I'm going to look into hybrid systems, with a heatpump to provide the bulk of the heating, and and use my existing gas boiler to top-up the heating during cold spells.
Great video. I went straight to the comments with my popcorn and I was disappointed. Clearly the truth is starting to prevail over the mis and disinformation! No mention of improved comfort levels in your home though?
I've had gas much of my life and only recently had a heat pump as part of a grant. It is a case of getting used to how they work and how to use them. The fundamental terror everyone has is that gas is 6p - even with 70% tax - and electricity is 25p (for my neighbours who are on a pre-pay meter it's 36p). Of course folk are avoiding them. I don't mean to get political but the government is determined to make energy expensive - nigh unaffordable for many - and that's because of unreliables. It cannot force the pretend 'carbon' (as all life is made from carbon in some form) benefits while deliberately forcing up the cost of energy using the most inefficient, expensive methods going which hike the cost of electricity, hindering the take up of alternatives like heat pumps. I'll be honest: we are going to move to a home that has gas. For us, it's hot water. 2 swimming clubs 4 times a week, 2 adults who gym at the same time and our 150l tank isn't enough and we all like hot, hot showers. I'm also unconvinced heat pumps work 'for' (not *in*) the UK. We've a damp climate whereas Sweden and Norway are cold but dry.
@@px794 1) Why are you using a standard tariff? There are plenty of tariffs out there that make electricity cheaper - and there are heat pump tariffs. 2) Charging more per kWh for a prepayment meter was ruled out in July last year. 3) Where is there any evidence that "unreliables" are costing more than gas etc? 4) 150L sounds small for your family, but there other ways around it, e.g. bigger tank, or having the DHW heated to a higher temperature and blended down. Where that 150L will go even further. 5) We get cold and damp over here too, it's not exclusive to the UK, it really doesn't matter either way though, as heat pumps in the UK when properly designed, will not be running full pelt when it's "cold and damp".
@@px794 Seriously? Are we back to this nonsense again? If you really do have a heat pump then you should know that these claims about insufficient hot water and heat pumps not working in damp climates are all bogus.
Whether it's cheaper to run a heat pump or a gas boiler depends on their respective tariffs. My supplier (OVO) charges 20.2p per kWh for electricity and 5.45p per kWh for gas. Assuming (pessimistically) that my modern gas boiler is only 80% efficient, any heat pump I installed would have to have a CoE (coefficient of efficiency) of over 3 to break even (or 3.37 assuming a 90% efficient gas boiler). All the literature I've seen claims that the CoE can be as high as 3.5, but in winter, this typically drops to nearer 2.5. In other words, most of the time, the heat pump would cost me more to run than the gas boiler.. Until the UK ditches the ludicrous policy of marginal pricing for electricity (where the price is tied to the most expensive single generation source, usually gas) - resulting in the highest electricity prices in Europe - there is little incentive to switch to heat pumps. I'm not about to fork out some £20K for a heat pump installation for the privilege of paying more for my heating. I'm all for saving the planet (I have PV panels and I drive an EV), but - as the boss of Octopus has pointed out - people need financial incentives to switch to greener technologies.
SCOPs are what you want to compare again, they are the average, but are weighted towards winter. Heating Degree days are taken for each day, with the COP performance for each, and that is used for the SCOP calculation. MCS minimum SCOP is 2.8, but SCOPs of 4 or 5 are achievable. So there maybe some days (e.g. those that dip below say -2C) where a gas boiler is cheaper to run, but those are only a handful of days per year, and many others the heat pump will at least break even or outperform a gas boiler. Also OVO have a heat pump tariff where it's 15p/kWh lowering that requirement even further.
Any poorer performance on very cold days is compensated by better performance on warmer days and hot water heating. As Ben says, the average SCOP over the whole year is what matters (can be between 4 and 5 for good installs). And as EVMan says, a reasonably installed heat pump has similar energy costs to a gas boiler on the standard tariff.
As you've mentioned what Greg Jackson has said, it seems reasonable to point out that it would be insane for someone to stay on the standard tariff when getting off gas. For the billing month from 16Oct to 15 Nov, for the last half of which we have also had a heat pump and no gas usage, our total electricity cost excluding the 18 quid standing charge was £63, for which we got 861kWh (I'm not including exports here, which take a further ~25 quid off the bill). That makes our electricity tariff rate for that month 7.31p/kWh. It also includes all of our motoring fuel costs. I'm the worst case billing scenario, I'm sure a fully electric household would cost more to run, but it's incumbent on those of us who've started down this path to let everyone else know this important fact: there are many cheap rate tariffs available that will enable you to save you a small fortune!
Built a house in '88 with an "inexpensive" air source heat pump. Outside unit was kinda noisy. Replaced it after 20 years because due to a less-than-stellar humidifier, it rusted. Got a nearly top of the line heat pump this time and I could not hear the outside unit unless I was literally close enough to touch it.
Hi evm you did not show your usage on the 17th Dec for us. Also, you did not mention Octopus have a heat pump tariff (or have they stopped that one now?)
Straight swap, gas boiler to heat pump, with no solar or batteries will cost roughly the same in pounds per month to run. This is such an important message to get out there. Cheers EVM.
The thermal efficiency of your properties should have been improved as much as humanly possible before the heat pump system was installed. Doing that would save you money no matter what heating system you have… but yeah.. electricity is still 4 x more expensive than gas so we need the solar and battery’s to offset the electricity bill… all a big out lay 😩
@@damiendye6623No mate- heat pumps are brilliant when the house is as thermally efficient as possible and the heating system is designed to match the house’s thermal efficiency. We all know fossil fuel heating systems need to go- but we all know what we’re on about don’t we.
We have an air to air heat pump, far cheaper and more efficient than an air to water for heating a smaller home. Perfect for an apartment, it runs at around 300w power draw and you dont need to spend thousands to install one.
Sounds like you have an aircon unit that heats rather than a Heat Pump. Especially as Air to Air need two units, one for heating and one for hot water.
I’ve finally established I can have one as I don’t have space for all the internal GUBBINS or batteries and I can’t have solar due to one small western roof and nothing south. Got all the way to a £10k quote which is also a joke. Installers are bumping up the price now that they know about the £7.5k grant. Sad but true. If I ever get a decent house this and an EV charger are high on my list (Internet speed is top)
I got a lot of silly quotes at first, way over engineered systems with loads of kit to fit somewhere. Have you tried Octopus ? They were the only ones that gave me something reasonable and space effective for less than replacing the gas boiler. Only need space for a water tank inside, and replace a couple of larger radiators.
We have ENE/WSW facing roof aspects. In Feb we installed panels on both sides. Since then, the ENE-facing panels are providing 86% of the output compared to the WSW panels. You don't *need* a pure S facing roof for it to be worthwhile.
We have an air to air heat pump and a thermo dynamic hot water heater. Our bungalow is detached and our electricity bill is still around 100 euros a month, even after the recent price increases. We are going to be quids in after about 7 years.
That was really valuable information, thanks. But £500-£600 saving from your gas boiler seems really high. Our setup is solar panels with immersion heater when solar heating available, 40 year old gas boiler when it's not. And we have a gas oven and gas hobs, but we don't even use £500 per year, even though much of the bill is standing charge. So when you say there's a £500-600 saving, are you including the marginal cost of your setup over a gas boiler? If not, how many years would it take to recover that? And what's the lifetime of the home battery and the heat pump etc? Other question... for interest, you said a heat pump is essentially a fridge (or maybe more accurately an aircon?) So why are they so much more expensive than an aircon? That's where i have a problem, because it seems to repurpose the ~con?
Heat pumps can be very noisy! We went to view a property on Dartmoor and the heat pump in that brand-new house was so loud that’s what put us off buying it. The other issue is it takes up half your garden (well, the one in that new build property was huge) There was also a ginormous boiler in the cupboard so to accommodate this new system you need a house the size of Buckingham Palace! Oh, and did I say they are also an eyesore!
We replaced our perfectly good gas boiler with a 12kw valiant arotherm in Oct 2023. IT IS AMAZING. our house is constantly toasty 20 degrees. We have loads of hot water. 98% of the time it is TOTALLY SILENT. We live in central Scotland. It's been minus double digits and our house is still warm. We have installed 10kw of solar panels and 10kwh battery. We have an electric car. OUR ENERGY BILL FOR A 4 BED DETACHED HOUSE INCLUDING 10,000 MILES OF DRIVING IS NOW ABOUT £1,000 PER YEAR. Gas boiler and diesel car we spent £4,000 per year. Our C02 emissions from heating our house with gas and driving a diesel car have dropped from 8 TONNES OF CO2 to 400kg. IGNORE THE SCEPTICS THIS IS THE FUTURE!!!
@@mrmiruk In our case it was around £7k + 1K ASHP (as got 15Kw of Pylontech batteries for just over 2k in last 2 years), the basic Victron MP-II 5Kw GX + 7.2Kw of pylontech from my local distributer=voltacon was £5k - 2 years ago), so think I've already paid it back in 2 years? - The Daikin ASHP (6Kw), was accident damaged at £900 + fitting was around £300 mainly 28mm copper pipes (tip B&Q have 28mm copper pipes cheaper than 22mm at around £8/m) - EDIT - I should say that we use IOG, which allows charging of all electric at 7p/unit well before the 11:30pm official time (with an ohme charger connected to an EV)
I agree it's weird, in many countries it totally normal to heat/cool houses with air to air source heat pumps. I think it has something to do with conspiracy theory / disinformation that is doing the rounds on social media. Plus the "I hate change" mentality that some people have. Remember how some people hated that weights changed to metric/kg and that they could no longer buy incandesent light bulbs.
That one looks a lot neater than the Octopus one, big plastic box outside and a mass of pipes, wires and a huge tank inside !. I'm between homes just now but will look at a Heat pump again once we move in
Heat pumps need a separate water cylinder. The Octopus heat pump has a certain look, but will probably benefit from close integration with their systems.
We've had our pump for almost two years and are just about used to it! You mentioned you get your hot water up to 72c. Ours only manages 48c. Our installers said this was standard. The only time our water is above 60 is when surplus from our roof heats it. Perhaps I'll ask our supplier when the system is serviced next month.
Heat pumps that use R32 or R410a are limited to about 55C. R290 ones, which are very common now are able to do 70C+. You may have an immersion if you want higher than what the heat pump can provide or for anti-legionella. But that's only for taking it from the maximum the heat pump can achieve to the desired temperature.
You "WILL NOT GET WATER TO 72 DEGREES WITH A HEAT PUMP" only if you have a ELECRTIC IMERSION ELEMENT IN THE TANK DRINKING ELECTRIC. Your figure about correct . Rads will not get any hotter either. HEAT PUMPS ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE CRACKED UP TO BE.
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr DOES SHOUTING MAKE IT TRUE? No, of course not. Research R290 heat pumps and even R744 ones. R290 can do up to 75C, and R744 can do up to 95C. Immersion is only used to fill the gap in R32/R410A heat pumps. Again do your research. or should I say DO YOUR RESEARCH!
The thing is that heatpumps are a good thing. When living in Belgium though... the invented something like a capacity tariff... Once your total energy consumption during 15 minutes (!!!) exceeds e.g. 3500Kwh, they change the rate at which they charge you for the whole month. So: if you drive an EV and in winter you hook it up at your charging pole, you start cooking and if at that moment the heatpump kicks in, the rate at which you will be charged is going up for the whole month. Besides of that they are thinking here to charge you for electricity injection (so when using solar panels, in summer, you will get additionally charged when you send too much electricity to the grid. They do this because the grid cannot cope with all the energy coming in.) So one way they promote clean energy and on the other hand they make you pay for using it so they can upgrade their grid. We live in a crazy country
My EV charger has a clamp to see what my house is drawing. It limits charge speeds if the house draws lots. Yours probably has something similar, so can protect you from that one time all the stars align against you. Also, 3500kWh in 15 minutes would require 14000kW of power draw for the whole 15 minutes. That's running 2000 normal single phase EV chargers concurrently. Think your numbers might be a little off.
@@asharak84 Ah, I misexplained myself. If your consumption would exceed, when extrapollated to yearbasis, would exceed 3500kWh. I looked up the actual rule: if your peak consumption at any given time raises above 2500kW during 15min, that consumtion defines the price you pay for a whole month. So example: if you stay below 2500kW all time, you pay for example 0.30 Euros per kW. When you consume for 15 minutes 3000kW, you will pay for example 0.40 Euro per kW for a whole month. Try and stay below that threshold of 2500kW all time with a heatpump, an electric vehicle, 2 kids each having a computer... Everything basically switches to ON around 18:00 when everybody is home. There is no way postponing the cooking, doing laundry, kids using their PC for homework, charging your car for next day etc.... And during winter you cannot get a fully loaded battery using solar either so.... get my point? It is an unfair rule as those households that go to work with 2 basically are charged most as they have little to no options. I am in IT, so I do know those tools to regulate your consumption. But it is impossible to stay below 2500kW at all time with a normal household.
My biggest fear is the possibility that the installer will not be able to set the thing up properly. Had a new gas boiler installed recently plus some new rads and power flush, all told £4k. Only thing was plumber did not set the whole system up properly; everything turned up to max. Times I have visited other houses to find that the rads are scorching. It seems most plumbers either don't understand or don’t care. I set about adjusting everything to the requirements suggested by various experts. Result, the consumption dropped by over 25% compared to what the plumber left. I now have a warm bungalow that costs on average over the year £10 a week. I looked at heat pumps originally, but, could not justify the initial outlay; the pay back would take years on an investment of £6500 plus. Gov grant. Don't forget electric consumption of approx £1000+ based on my own estimated 3000kWh to power the pump, which equates to 12000kWh to heat the place at a coefficient of performance 4 to 1. I only use 2800kWh pa of electricity as it is. I don’t have solar, yes, makes sense to have solar but thats another huge expense. And they expect the average guy to buy. Nice idea, but, just too expensive. We should have been thinking and planning about this 30 years ago.
3000kWh at current price cap is £735. 12000kWh of heat on an above-average gas boiler would be 13333kWh used at 6.24p/kWh = ~£832, even a 100% efficient would be £748. Difference being is there are tariffs out there for heat pumps.. e.g. OVO have one where the heat pump usage is 15p/kWh, so 3000kWh would cost £450.
@@RBcymru pipework and rads should be seen as a separate cost for switching to low temperature heating. As it benefits any heating system. Factoring it in on the heat pump savings is like wanting solar panels to pay for a new roof. Not every property needs pipes and radiators upsizing
I'm getting an error with replying. I need to understand what the calculation between thermostat & flow temperature is. If someone is a pensioner or has a chronic illness & needs thermostat at 70 degrees farenheit - what is the flow tempetature to be set at?
We only heat our 250 year old cottage at 14 to 17 c, being used to having none for the last 19 years! Temps here get down to -22 c from time to time in the North East of Scotland. Our heat pump, coupled with roof insulation, interior to outside wall cladding and solar panels, is pretty much under worked. It worked out at £2.50 to £4.00 per day from March this year until 2 weeks ago and £7.00 to £12.00 last winter. It depended on whether we were washing and drying clothes, more appliances etc. Overall, we're really happy with how it has all worked out.
We used 12500kWh/year for heating and hotwater in a poorly insulated 150m2 house and a 200m2 garage up here by the Arctic Circle in Sweden with a 16kW Bosch 7800! geothermal system. Cost of electricity vs heating oil is roughly the same here so about 1/3 of the cost now. Using a small Air to Air heat pump cuts the cost in half. The real problem is that you still have the luxury of cheap gas and heating oil and crappy houses, not that heat pumps don't work. 😁
Just sourced and fitted a heat pump to heat my pool here in Perth, Western Australia. It provides 9kW of heating but when running on full power only draws some 7A from the supply! Mad. 😮
Well we have an L&G heat pump. I can tell you this, its currently 1D and ours is on all the time and its constantly whirring/humming noise. They are far from silent I can assure you. My wife works for a company that installs these on large industrial projects. One of the engineer's put it this way. The average temperature in the UK day and night is 12D. These things work well thermally and economically above an ambient temperature of 7D or above so in theory they work.
Getting a heat pump installed in about a week 🎉 looking forward to having gas disconnected and saving the standing charge of nearly £95 per year, plus the peace of mind of not having flammable / toxic gas in the house. The only sad thing is ill probably have to do it all over again when i move in a few years time !
I guess you have had one of these conversations. I mention I have a heat pump and someone spiels out all the myths. They cost a fortune, you will be cold all the time, etc. Each one I say no to. Maybe even show a monthly energy bill, I have solar, a heat pump and time shift batteries, so my bills are comfortably low. The response is "that is all made up, I know the truth, you must be lying" and off they go in a huff. Personally I do not care what they have or do. Why do they have to convert me away from what to me is super affordable and comfortable? Very strange.
We've got a 16kW heat pump, you can have a whispered conversation next to it when it's on full speed :) Entering our first full winter with it and so far we're very very happy and no more oil deliveries. Along with solar and batteries we're looking at over a 75% reduction in our energy bills :D I believe a lot of the negative experiences are due to the lack of education of the owner and cowboy installers.
I don't have room for the inside unit of the heat pump so I installed a very efficient AC (which is essentially a heat pump) and I am using it in conjunction with the conventional gas heater. I think they make a good pair and I have redundancy + AC in the summer which is increasingly becoming a must.
I'm a council tennant, and as such have their choice of gas boiler (Installed Dec 19- so newish) which is serviced regularly. However It is still really expensive to have the heating on- typically £3-4 per day, which when your on a pension is just untenable. I would like a heat pump IF it would save me money, as a former RN Engineer with experience of boilers and erfrigeration equipment- I don't doubt their efficiency. (But our cash strapped council will never sancion replacing 100,000 homes with heat pumps. I have 10 solar panels that at the very best in mid summer full sun deliver just over 1400 watts (originally 190w panels) which are ten years old and dirty. Great video and informative. I shall look at some more of your vids for info- thanks for taking the time to make them!!!
It would take me longer to recoup the supposed savings after the increased installation cost than the expected life of it. They just don't make sense for a lot of people here.
Mmmmm perhaps however once fitted should it require replacement say after 10-15 years it's going to be a lot cheaper than the first time round as all you will be replacing is the heat pump and the prices will have come down . Much like replacing a wall mounted boiler today .
Get a problem with gas boiler you can be confident a gas engineer will be able to fix it , get a problem with an ASHP, forget finding someone capable of fixing or troubleshooting the problem.
Here in Sweden we’ve been heating our 162 sq meter house with a heat pump and it works great. The only other sources of heat are the heated tile floors in our bathrooms and our entry foyer. We also have solar and solar batteries and our current electric bill only goes up above 0 in the winter, but averages about 1050 kroner a month for 5 months, which is about £75/month (or €90 or US$95)
The electricity generating and supply grid will not be able to cope with much more of an increase in demand. It would cost £Billions to upgrade and that cost will be covered by even higher bills. Either way electricity and gas will become a luxury item for millions of people.
The transition is needed to meet our Net Zero commitment and help the planet. It will cost money to upgrade to a more sustainable grid, but we should save money from the efficiencies of electric cars and benefit from less pollution from heating.
Look at the commemts, some bragging that they have three electric cars a heat pump, solar battery, solar panels. They are not your average person, hence the bragging. So what we have are well off people who could easily afford a gas boiler and non EV's but they just can't help virtue signalling to show us how they live such wonderful lives.
There are schemes that continue to deliver heat pumps, batteries and solar to those less well off too. Heat pump installs can cost from £500. Secondhand EV prices are now more reasonable allowing more people to save on their motoring.
@@Biggest-dh1vr you will never get a heat pump, solar and batteries for the same cost as a combie boiler. As said in the video a heat pump alone will not save you any running costs but will cost more to purchase and install. Combie boiler tiny, all the other heat pump related equipment quite large space required. Many new houses are tiny, not practical for a hp.
The weather over the two weeks will drop and snow 🌨️ about 4 inches expecting. Please track energy over that time and how often it uses the secondary heating and what kWh over that time and what a typical bill at normal rate it would be
I can't believe some of the Luddite comments here. Heat pumps are 3-4 times more efficient than a gas boiler. Can be run on electricity from renewable sources. Are very low maintenance. Like the internal combustion engine the gas boiler is very old inefficient technology.
To the anti heat pump mob. I need to thank you!
Any interaction with a video (comment/like/dislike) tells UA-cam it's interesting and to push it onto more people. So by telling me how much of a scam these Heat Pumps are, you're making more people watch it.
So 🤗👍
Need to start having a bingo card for the youtube comments... I asked ChatGPT for suggestions and I think it hit the nail on the head 😂:
❒ "Heat pumps don't work in cold climates."
❒ "They’re way too expensive to run."
❒ "Gas heating is just better and cheaper."
❒ "You need a giant garden for the outdoor unit."
❒ "They don’t work when it’s freezing outside."
❒ "They’re noisy and annoying."
❒ "Heat pumps need constant maintenance."
❒ "You can’t use them for hot water."
❒ "They can’t keep your house warm enough."
❒ "You need to replace your entire heating system."
❒ "They're only good for new builds."
❒ "They’re bad for the environment."
❒ "They take up too much space indoors."
❒ "You’ll need underfloor heating."
❒ "They’re unreliable."
❒ "The government just wants to make us buy them."
❒ "They only last 5-10 years."
❒ "They’re ugly and ruin curb appeal."
❒ "They’re bad for people with allergies."
❒ "My neighbor’s heat pump is always breaking."
I am willing to be convinced. So far you have not managed to convince me, getting a heat pump is not going to cost me more money than keeping my existing central heating, A lot more money. By the time its paid for itself it will need replacing . Same as buying an EV will cost me a lot more than keeping an existing car. There is not one single argument that replacing something that works, with a new something is going to save you money.
@keithdenton8386 you don't need to replace it if it works. But if it's old and potentially on its way out it's worth considering given the grant is there.
@@keithdenton8386 When did I say that? Not once.
Said many times in these vids that we waited until our gas boiler went before replacing it.
Same with an EV. Who’s telling you to replace an old car with a new one?
@@ElectricVehicleMan Down to Vaillant HQ in the morning, You are not moving enough units, no bonus this year. You charlatan tart.
Good informative video, thank you! Regarding noise: I have a 15 year old Aircon system which also works in reverse as a heat pump (very similar tech to whole house heat pumps, just a bit smaller). After 15 year, the fan motor in the outside unit starting making a LOT of noise. As an electronics engineer, changing a fan motor is an easy task. Sadly, nobody would supply me with a replacement, with many wanting to replace the entire system for many 1000s. In the end I tracked down an alternate fan unit, which was slightly different mechanically and electrically (different connector - otherwise exactly the same), and I made it work with a small amount of modification. The system is now almost silent again, and I expect I will get several more years of life out of it.
I do hope that in 15 years time, similar minor issues can be fixed (with parts available) with whole house heat pumps rather than forcing consumers to throw out entire systems. I appreciate that other parts will wear out, but I feel legislation needs to be in place to make sure manufacturers make spare parts available for some time to come.
That's a heat pump. AC is literally a heat pump. So is a freezer. So is a fridge. The systems that can hear just have a two way valve. Marketing makes simple things seem complicated. Marketing sucks.
@grahamcollins6810 Therein lies the rub. They're quiet when new but have a lifespan and should be maintained. When these are ubiquitous someone somewhere near you won't look after it, pay to have it installed correctly or take some other shortcut that they think is saving them money.
The only thing that will make spares readily available is demand. Manufacturers always get around legislation.
Most customers can't be arsed to fix anything, and fitters want the cash from fitting entire systems. They are the real problems.
I am a Brit but I live in Norway and -20 is not unusual... I can confirm heat pumps work! I recently replaced my old one (probably 20 years old) as it was acting up and blowing -17 into my house without heating... but that was a broken circuit board. My new one is great and I leave it on 20C-24C.. I do have a woodburner for the real cold days but its quite rare and mainly due to the bad insulation in the house...
I’m another Brit living in Norway and have to agree, heat pumps are great. We had temperatures of -33c last winter and it was no problem. They’re not noisy either, inside or out.
Yes. The big thing i didnt get, because I'm thick ... was that they do still work in cold conditions. As warm blooded mammals we're instinctively programmed to think everything stops at 0'c, but of course, physics doesn't work like that. There is still *theoretically* energy available all the way down to absolute zero. Once i grasped that, i got it.
Heat Pumps suck children into their blades..fact!
stop right there it can go high temperature, BUT, if you run it at high temperature it is pointless changing your boiler. It is completely inefficient. So don’t sell it as a high temperature device that is so wrong. Heat Pumps are CO2 saving devices not money saving. Run them at high temperatures and it is costly and pointless. Great promo for vaillant anyway.
Nobody is worried about the sound from their own heat pump, it's more a concern about the neighbours installing a shitty noisy one pointing at your house. Which is a concern when you live near to other people.
A gas boiler makes as much noise outside, I have a heat pump.
@@davidperry7128then your boiler was broken, I can't hear mine at all outside the home.
Complain to your local Environmental Health Dept about he noise pollution, they are very helpful.
Yes, & over time they don't get quieter, we're also in an era where 50% dislike their neighbours, so opportunities to site them well away from their own bedrooms & close to their neighbours would be of interest, an eco noise weapon. Who will be the judge as to whether the noise is a nuisance, disturbing sleep etc? environmental health dept, the owner, or the neighbour ? got to be the neighbour, surely, & the neighbour has to have the power to insist that the HP is quietened to his/her satisfaction, promptly, could mean turning it OFF between say 11pm & 6am, that would be a reasonable request, that I would grant, if I had one, to respect my neighbours wishes.
I am kept awake by our heat pump the whole time.
Why would it upset neighbours who are much further away than you?
I don't get it.
Its important to get a proper heat loss survey before choosing the system. We have a new build that came with a panasonic 5kw heat pump that always felt cold in winter. After a few years the heat pump failed leaking the refrigerant gasses into the water side. The new company who dealt with the replacement did a routine survey and discovered that our house looses about 7KW at -2C outside temp which explains why house felt cold as 5 KW heat pump was never going to keep the house warm in cold temps. The replacement heat pump was a 10KW Grant heat pump that could provide the needed 7KW of heat at -2C. The house has felt much cosier in the winter and as an added bonus our electricity bill has gone down by ~1500 kWh a year as the larger heat pump works more efficiently.
You will never heat a house with 5kW, just get a good modern gas boiler, super reliable get some decent controls it's worth the extra few hundred quid. Once you tune it you will have a lovely comfortable home... Heat pumps are total BS
@@coyote5735 Modern gas boilers are less reliable in my experience , more to go wrong. How come 75% of UK boilers are under 12yrs old?
@@coyote5735 Your grasp of Heat Pumps is what's BS. My 5KW Arotherm has been flawless over the last 3 years. Comfort level is amazing. Cheap to run too.
Heat loss calcution is key...and an installer who knows what he's doing. Plus, the operator of the system needs to understand the controls..!
@@waynecartwright-js8twbecause you can’t only replace old boilers with condensing systems which are good
@@coyote5735 My badly insulated house uses ~6kW @-15C. This is quite precise calculation based on hot water usage (too long to explain). So in British climate 5kW @-5 would be OK. Power curve is more important than rated power though. I have my "total BS" 11.2 kW Mitsubishi Zubadan working for 10 years with no problems and haven't fired up my boiler since. As I have old house and battery-, not floor heating, it works with too hot output (i.e. sub-optimal). But I lose may-be 100€ a year due to reduced COP.
I have a heat pump, had it since March, no gas in house so everything electric, n my monthly payments are surprisingly alot lower, I am impressed that it works so well, also have solar panals n batteries, just had problems with sorting out charging my batteries over night on cheaper rates with my supplier.
Did I miss the cost of that installation with battery etc ? The UK is surrounded by North Sea Gas, North Sea Oil, we have a long-term, proven safe nuclear power industry, only a politician could sit down and arrange an energy crisis for the UK. As for the 'climate crisis'.. the UK's contribution to global emissions is less than 1 %.. yes, Less than 1 %. If the UK sank beneath the waves tomorrow it would have zero effect on climate change.. The big hitters, China, India, Russia, South America etc have no interest in climate change, they're far more concerned with feeding their hungry billions of population. Recently the closure of the UK's last remaining coal power station was highly publicised.. how wonderful !! China is building 800 New coal-fired power stations every year ! Putting yet more financial hardship on struggling families is not going to be a vote winner.. and it's totally unnecessary.
That 1% figure is misleading though isn't it? When one factors historical carbon emissions the West is responsible for the vast majority of emissions over time with the USA by far the highest but the UK being much higher than 1%. You also need to factor in that a lot of the emissions we are responsible for through products we buy and feed for animals doesn't come under our domestic consumption and so it would be higher than 1%. A much more useful measure is carbon per capita and then the UK is pretty bad, although not as bad as the USA and the middle East, neither of which you mentioned.
I also think it's worth mentioning that China is building renewables at a far faster rate than the UK or West in general.
You're right about one thing though, it is a political decision that costs the average person. The UK subsidises fossil fuels massively whilst not supporting renewables at all and so with the right political situation we could have low carbon and low cost.
Thanks for reading.
@@klang180 The climate IS changing.. I'm probably more aware of that than most having spent a good portion of my career travelling in and out of the arctic and witnessed the changing 'Ice-scape'.. However, accepting that greenhouse emissions exacerbate that change, 'experts' cannot agree as to the extent of that influence. People in this country on low incomes, families, those now retired, are struggling to keep pace with expenditure, a high proportion of this is related to energy costs. That is unacceptable when we're surrounded by energy and have an effective nuclear industry. Land-based windfarms are a sad joke yet governments continue to subsidise them. Our farms are being given over to solar panels, like windfarms, a blot on the landscape. Families needing a new boiler should always be offered the choice, not forced to outlay £14000 instead of £4000. EVs are a miserable failure in the UK, nobody should be forced to own one at the current level of technology, heat pumps fall into that same category. Putting ourselves at the mercy of our 'enemies' with regard to energy is another major factor in keeping our options fluid.
The UK may be 1% of global emissions, but over 55% of global emissions come from countries producing 1% or less. So it is just as important for those countries to reduce their CO2 as the big emitters.
@@ianmcairns No, it isn't, not when it's creating major problems for struggling families.. The extent of the additional effect on global warming is far from being proven. If it's that important then let the government find ways to subsidise alternative energy for households, ensure that it costs no more than the energy resources we currently depend on. No silly subsidies for 'third-world rip-off merchants. EVs will never become a practical alternative in the UK.. we lack the space for household home charging. Heat pumps require more space than the majority of households have available. This country is in dire trouble economically with a million new low-achieving immigrants likely to arrive during this government's tenure.. we have far bigger problems on the horizon.
@jamesgraham6122 depends which 'experts' you listen to. My understanding is that virtually all the credible science backs man-man influence on abnormal heating of the earth's atmosphere.
I dont care what china does or doesn't do. I live in the UK and i can only vote in the uk. I want our politicians to act responsibility. My reading of the science is that if we don't act now, then our kids kids will have disaster unfurled upon them.
Thnx Andy. We've had our heatpump for nearly a year. Would I return to gas boiler... never! I've never lived in such comfort! Always hot water and pleasantly warm home everywhere at such low cost, bc the power I've sold to the grid has more than paid for our winter needs!
My advice to anyone thinking of going this route is to make sure you thoroughly do the research. M
Replacing a gas boiler is reasonably affordable for most households on mains gas and will guarantee a warm house at a known cost. The reason heat pumps are not popular is because over 70% of households in the UK have access to mains gas and cannot afford a heat pump system, even with a government grant; the same reason most people cannot afford to buy electric cars. Why would consumers spend more money to change to a heat pump system with no guarantee that your house will be correctly surveyed, installed properly or that energy savings will cover the cost.
Same was said with mobile phones.
They don't work, the signal is rubbish outside of towns, no one wasnts to type on a screen or talk over a video call.
Now look.
No one has said they're for every house or even affordable. But they do work for a lot.
Heat pump installs can be similarly priced to gas boilers, they come with modern heat controls and reduce emissions significantly.
@@ElectricVehicleMan No one has said that about mobile phones. Oh and the signal is still not great in many areas 'outside of town'.
@@ElectricVehicleManso they’re not for every household or even affordable, doesn’t help the green policy evangelists then?
@@ElectricVehicleMan Your earlier video explained that the cost was £17,500 above the cost of replacing the gas boiler and would take about ten years to recoup the cost; providing you remain in the same house. However, you failed to take account the investment or loan of the capital. If you were fortunate to have £17,500 in cash and chose to invest the money over ten years at 4.5% you would gain £7000. Choosing to borrow the capital over ten years would cost you £204 a month. Taking account of my previous comment until the issue of consumer confidence and cost are addressed people currently on mains gas will replace their current gas boiler to a more efficient new one.
Thanks
Neighbour had a heat pump fitted around 2 years ago and points at our house, maybe 8 feet pump to wall. No noise in warm weather but it's starting to wind up in noise levels now it's getting cold. Sure you can hear it outside and not indoors. However last winter when it got really cold, we could hear it in bed at night. Not loud, but loud enough that you could hear it over our own heating.
So, no, they are not silent. So should we ever get one, it will be fitted in a way that it doesn't have detrimental effects on neighbours
It might be that maintenance is needed?
@@Biggest-dh1vr It was noisy from the start unfortunately
Wait till the bearings start to wear down …same as a boilers fan ..but a lot more expensive to replace
Common issue here is that isn't installed level.
my neighbours it exactly the same noisy AF.
Here in Finland I've used two air-to-air heat pumps for 14 years to keep my house warm in the winter & cool in the summer. So far I've saved thousands of Euros in electricity bills.
Lucky you! I live in southern England. Ive had an air to air 8 KW Mitsubishi heat pump with eco dan fitted to my small 1936 house for about 10 years now, and trouble to find anything good to say about it. First of all it's quite noisy, my next door neighbour mentions the noise. Secondly the radiators never get more than lukewarm and on days like today [snow] I actually have to turn it off because it's on 24/7 and still only heats the house to 15c. So I use an old wood burner . When the government cancels gas and oil in the future I guess a good old fashioned fire is the only thing that will heat the house properly.
@@denzilpenbirthy5028 Your heat pump is clearly faulty or you were tricked into buying something very old. If it works in the Nordics, and they definitely do, they work in England as well. I only keep wood to burn as a backup. It is so much more expensive to to burn wood than just running the heat pump. Mine gives enough heat down to -30 C and they are not even expensive.
@@quadcopter Ive finally managed to get a genuine specialist to have a look at it next month. Having said that I think the problem is caused by damp and cold environments, as opposed to dry and cold. I live on the North side of a hill, it is very damp and moss grows everywhere. It's the high moisture content that causes the vanes to freeze up. So its very possible the defrost function is working fine.
Wood is a good option for me because its free👍🏻
If your rads only get luke warm you get no stack effect so the heat, however minimal, isn’t distributed beyond the radiator. Try checking the temperature of the flow pipe from the heat pump if that’s also Luke warm it’s the heat pump that’s the problem, if it’s hot then your rads may need flushing.
@@JohnJohnson-mt9yt Thankyou, yes I've just checked and the flow pipe is only luke warm. The thing is its been like this since it was new.
Here in Eastern Canada heat pumps have become very popular, but they are almost always heating the air, not water. It is mostly mini splits, but some people have whole home systems with duct work similar to a forced air furnace. The only one I know with a water system has a ground source heat pump and in-floor heating.
Of course not that many people have hot water heating system in their houses. Most have forced air or electric baseboards, so there aren't that many systems to retro-fit.
Homes in the UK are smaller so there is not the space for ducting hence the use of water.
I honestly think mini splits are way better than ASHP's as they currently exist in the UK. Much cheaper, can install yourself, can be AC too which his getting handy in the UK summers, you can have a few totally separate' systems in a house so nice level of redundancy if one breaks.
@@asdreww Problem is planning in the UK which you need to get planning permission for putting in AC, the idea being that having AC would increase power usage, but really given that home batteries and solar exist I don't see that being valid if you have a power rating on your solar and inverter that matches the maximum power draw of the heatpump.
Because there is plenty of sun on hot days surprisingly and given that your house is relatively well insulated you shouldn't need to use anywhere near your maximum power rating even in the middle of the day.
And someone who has went through the effort of putting in solar, a battery and a heat pump their first concern would have likely have been improving the insolation so someone that has solar, a battery and heatpump almost certainly already has at least decent insolation.
Air to air in the UK doesn't get a government subsidy (it seems because it can also be used for air con) which is why it is not the usual choice. As always, subsidies distort unhelpfully.
I have mini split downstairs and ducted system upstairs. It does work quite nicely but the gas boiler is cheaper to run due to the higher electricity costs. But the air-conditioning side is great in the summer. Maybe a modern system would be scheaper to run, as i have had mine for 20 years now.
Absolutely agree but there is for me, and others I introduced to heat pumps to, one of the big plus points is the COMFORT of heat pump heating. unlike heating with gas which is an on or off affair Heat pump heating when you set it up for a low flow temperature runs long and gentle so the walls of the house warm up and the warmth is all-around heat so that you feel more comfortably warm.
I am planning to install heat pump, but, nobody stops you putting your radiator temp to 45 degrees on gas boiler, I did it and very happy with comfort. It will make it work similarly and more efficiently and better for system longevity overall
What a load of TWADDLE . Gas Boiler comes ON/ OFF CYCLING MATCHING DEMAND FOR HEAT INSTANT. What is this " COMFORT CRAP". You are obviously not from Electrical / Mechanical background. Same B/S about Heat Pumps as Electric cars. Total Expensive Disaster.
A gas system can be made to work in a similar way by reducing the radiator temperature, ours is set to 50C so the radiators aren't so hot but are on most of the time, also means the boiler is operating at a more efficient level and the overall cost works out a bit cheaper, but it definitely feels more comfortable than when it was 60C when we got the house.
It's OK of you are an old gager dying in your house..😂😂😂😂😂 but of you travel and ejoy yourself then it is useless as it has long start up and is inflexible. Gas boiler is flexible and superior .
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr agreed. I don't get why there are so many positive comments about air source heat pumps. As soon as it drops below 55F outside it seems like your getting fuck all for heat out of the vents. THEN, speaking of comfort, I love how it has to reverse once an hour when its colder out and blow 40f air through the vents for 3 minutes.Barely heats the house and it feels breezy inside. Not my first heat pump. It seems like your just getting the waste heat from the compressor below 45f. One solid oak log and a fan blowing on the stove can heat the house more than the heat pump running all night long.
Straight swap IF you had mains gas, might work out at roughly the same cost that's true. BUT if weren't on mains gas, it 100% works out cheaper. I was on LPG, and when I was offered solar, heat pump and solid wall insulation under an ECO4 scheme, I agreed to it. I worked out that as long as the running cost was below £250 a month, I would be saving money. It was installed in Novermber last year, it's a 12kW Samsung unit. Although January cost me £281 my monthly average is still sitting at £127 for the whole of this year. I am paying EDF £135 a month just so I have an extra bit of a buffer in the account, but so far it seems I am definitely saving money. And as of July I am on the EDF heat pump trial tariff so between 4-7am and 1-4pm my electricity is 10p cheaper than the variable standard rate, so it will be interesting to see what difference that makes during the winter. So far it means my bills are roughly £15 a month cheaper, but I suspect that saving might be larger in the winter. The biggest thing I have learned, is not to treat it like a boiler. Continuous heat at a lower temperature is more comfortable and more cost effective than periods of high heat, and then allowing the house to cool down, which means the heat pump has to work harder to get it back to the target temperature. As such I have stopped doing things like setting a lower overnight temperature, because it's false economy.
with the ec04 scheme how much did your total install cost with and with out the grant
Heat pumps seem to be false economy all together, in Ireland I pay for my annual oil usage 500 euros on 20yo oil furnace.
@marcinsobczak2485 guess it depends where you live. I was paying £155 per month for LPG so that I built up a credit for winter. My neighbours with oil pay around £450 for a tank fill that lasts around 4-6 weeks in the winter, so there's definitely at least 2 tank fills in the cold weather. Is your oil doing your hot water too?
@@AndrewJonesMcGuire I get hot water from it only in winter along with heating, I use electric shower for the rest of the year. also I only turn on the heating when temperature drops below 7 degrees. I don't think it would make sense to me to get a new heat pump, even when oil doubles in price
Yep ASHP's do work. I have one and we were on LPG, so cleared a huge bulk storage tank from our back garden. Overall the heating is now far quieter in our home and it is very comfortable as well as cheaper to run. Also as you said, gained an extra cupboard in our utility!
cheaper than heating from a bulk tank LPG? My experience is the exact opposite- ASHP costs more
@ yep I find it cheaper. Costs of LPG were almost double at the time I swapped and my ASHP costs kept it less than what I had been paying before the price went up.
@@asdreww Yes, LPG is a no-no nowadays.
@@barlow2976 I think LPG prices must vary massively across the country because its still cheaper here.
1. My current tariff is: electric 23.55p per unit, gas 5.5p per unit. Immediately electric energy is costing over 4 times gas energy.
2. Installation cost of a heat pump, radiators, etc and removal of gas boiler and radiators is variable but is around £15,000. Installation of my neighbours solar panels, etc was recently about £20,000. Capital outlay is then about £35,000.
So, currently, without a massive subsidy the outlay is excessive and would not be covered at all by any efficiency savings.
There is also the concern of the country going all electric and there being insufficient generating capacity for the massive increase of electric. We would need considerably more roof solar panels and roof space to deal with the oncoming lack of electricity to cover our personal requirements in the event of there being insufficient electric generation country wide.
The government has already indicated that smart meters could be used to throttle individual energy consumption. Only your solar panels would prevent you having individual issues.
Any reduction in gas to the gas grid would be entirely self inflicted by the current government as North Sea gas is still available but they refuse to extract it and fracking is also available but they refuse to use it.
1. There are tariffs that offer better rates, e.g. OVO has one for heat pumps where it's 15p/kWh for heat pump usage. Also, it's worth noting that gas isn't 100% efficient, so your gas cost for actual usable heat is closer to 6.47p/kWh.
2. Depends on the house and what needs doing, if you need that amount of work done, then it means you're already wasting money with gas. Solar prices also vary, sounds like they also had battery storage if their house is average.
The National Grid have a page dispelling those types of myths with insufficient capacity etc. Heat pumps aren't going to be a massive increase in electricity and won't happen overnight. Solar and battery storage far out-pace heat pump installs in the UK.
Smart meters don't throttle consumption. It's more optional controls built into the devices. Typically, the schemes so far, where you allow load reductions to help prevent any sort of blackout are both voluntary and usually have a financial reward.
There are plenty of reasons (environmental, health and regulatory) to not go down the fracking route, same for continued use of burning gas.
Your figures are high BUT on the right track. The initial outlay far exceeds the benifit . How many years of these " Mythical" savings to justify the Installation Cost . Nobody seems to consider the life of these Units A gas compressor / Fans / Pumps all mechanical electrical parts which will wear out.
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr And so will parts in a gas boiler from thermal stress 🤦 How often have you replaced your fridge or freezer because of worn out parts?
@BenIsInSweden THE HEART OF THESE HEAT PUMPS IS A HERMETRICALLY SEALED GAS COMPRESSOR . THIS WEARS .This is usually why Fridges AC units performance drops off with age / usage. These are expensive unrepairable units . Gas Boilers have a Fan for combustion which generaly is renewable at sensible cost. The Compressors require Re- Gassing the system look at the cost of a compresor. I am shure most people do not know about this.
@GrahamNewman-mq7gr the compressor typically lasts 15-25 years of operation. If it hasn't been set up correctly then less.
Compressor guarantees are usually 5-7 years as well. And if it's survived that long then they typically go the full distance.
I live in Spain and last year installed a brand new Daikin air conditioner that includes a heat pump. This is is really cheap to run and it keeps very fresh during the summer. When winter came last year, I decided to try and see how that heat pump compared with my electrical radiator in terms of cost. In previous years I was spending around 90 euros a month just heating a single room around 6-7 hours a day. With the heat pump I pay around 40 euros and keep the heating on from 7 to 23. This thing is insanely efficient!
We recently got the kit, PV/battery/heatpump. No more gasboiler or gas anything.our boiler is set to 60 degrees max for legionella and ranges around 46 degrees for hot water and between 35 and 40 degrees for radiator. We’ve set our Livingston temp on 19.7 which is cozy enough for us.love the system. Our outside unit is not really noisy. It’s situated about 14 meters from the street, where it is not noticeable. We don’t hear in the house or in the bedroom, even with the window open.
One problem is that the heat pump needs to be on all day when electricity is most expensive. Having a night time tariff is OK but the battery needs to be pretty big to supply all daytime demands. When it is very cold outside my 9kw heat pump will be using 3kw of electricity all day so that could be 50kwh on extreme days.
@ our system has been installed very recently, so not much data to go to. So far in the past two months my total energy usage, including heatpump, has been about 9kW on average per day
@rogerphelps9939 Ovo do a tariff that works out what your heat pump used and charges it at a lower rate. Octopus do a tariff with 3 low charging blocks, two of which would be when you would want to use the heat pump.
So it isn't quite as bad as you suggest.
Give it time. Visit a system 5 or 10byears old to talk about noise. That's the comparison.
I live in Spain and will be having underfloor heating (water based), would a heat pump be ok for that? Thanks!
I am planning on a self install this summer , the oil boiler is coming up to 10 years old , so will replace with a 8kw Samsung unit , looks fairly simple having been in process engineering for the last 25 years , we have solar and battery storage which i might expand a little to take advantage of the cheap over night tarrifs during the winter months , even though its 1930s house i feel confident i should net a saving , total budget will be 5K including increasing a few radiators .
The only reason heat pumps aren't much cheaper than gas boilers in any house is just down to the artificially high price of electricity compared to gas - electricity (and hence heat pumps) pays a higher rate of tax than gas, plus electricity prices are based upon the price of gas even if the majority is being generated by renewables.
The UK has a far higher spark gap (ratio of electricity price to gas) than any other European nation. In the Netherlands electricity is cheaper than gas and Sweden electricity is just a bit more expensive, so not surprisingly heat pumps are a no-brainer there.
You can get tariffs that give you 30 Minute pricing and it's only 4 till 7 that's expensive, try research.
@@damiendye6623 I have done my research and have such a tariff, not sure what your point is.
My point about high electricity pricing still stands, I suggest you do some research.
Is electricity 'artificially' high or is it the load put on it now trying to switch everything to electricity in a panic trying to lead the world. There are the compensation payments to turbine operators when they cannot feed in to the grid and the sheer cost of installing the turbines. Then there is the cost of subsidising gas power stations on standby but ready to go when there is no wind or sun which is happening already. Then there is the cost of having to massively upgrade the grid to handle all the transport and heating power needs with electricity, and from an intermittent source at that. 70% of Sweden's electricity comes from hydro electric and they have nuclear which is steadily being run down in the UK. The Netherlands also does not rely on vulnerable undersea connector cables with Russian ships now sniffing around them, what with our eagerness to involve ourselves in every war wherever we can. Gas is abundant and cheap but electricity completely converted to relying on nature providing at all times is heading in to a massive unknown.
This is ironically because of green tax! Originally electricity was made in coal power stations, and gas was a comparatively greener form of energy, so UK put the tax up of Electricity. Now the electricity grid is much cleaner, but the tax is the same.... I think we need to transition the tax to balance it out again
@@michaeld5888 Electricity is artificially high. For a start the green tariff on electricity is 22%, on gas it's just 2%, crazy that we tax the less polluting method more. The main problem though is the way the price is calculated, with the highest price supplier (usually gas turbines) governing the price we pay. Ignore the exact figures, but for illustration, if 99% of the electricity could come from renewables at 4p/kWh with 1%from gas at 12p/kWh then the wholesale price for all electricity is 12p/kWh - that is a distorted market. For gas not to decide the wholesale price, all the electricity has to be generated from non-gas sources, it happens but rarely.
Greg Jackson (Octopus) has said that just regionalizing electricity pricing would bring prices down dramatically, with Scotland having the lowest electricity prices in Europe. This would also be a very good demonstration of how much cheaper renewable energy is than gas, so many people still think that gas is the cheap way to generate electricity, rather than being the most expensive.
Gas is not cheap, as we have seen with the recent crisis and massive rise in domestic fuel bills. If a carbon tax was applied to gas then it would be much more expensive, instead the damage caused by climate change is paid for out of general taxation worldwide. The powerful fossil fuel lobby ensures that they do not pay for the damage fossil fuels cause, this needs to change for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Gas boilers are an incredibly polluting way to produce heat for the home, heat pumps produce a fraction of the CO2 of a gas boiler and none of the even more damaging methane losses associated with gas transmission. There would be less global warming emissions from a heat pump running off of a grid powered from coal than using a gas boiler.
The grid itself is not too bad, the major problem is the lack of investment in attaching new generation to the grid. This investment would pay itself back reasonably quickly, unfortunately crazy fiscal rules hinder government investment.
Here is a fact for the believers… Dec 23 16kw Midea, in new highly insulated new build house, consumed 2.77Mwh yes 2700kwh. Jan 24 consumed 2.33Mwh. And to add that was generally the ground floor wet UFH. The rad upstairs were off as generally do not like the bedrooms too warm, but the towel rads were barely Luke warm. We have 30 PV panels a 10kw battery. Stuck on a standard 25p tariff as no energy provider can get me a smart meter to work for the export tariff. Currently with Octopus but can’t access any tariffs that would make this incredibly heavy investment worth while. And has been mentioned by others the disparity of gas around 6p Kwh electric 25p Kwh. I’ve just read a Independent report published in March by a Scottish University Professor on findings over the last 10-15 years and the upshot is that generally a ASHP is around 36% more expensive to run as opposed to Gas! Basically because of the cost difference per KWh.
Given my time again I’d have stuck with a Gas boiler!
I think you need a solution to your smart meter issues , we are 100% electric. Average cost per imported Kwh is 12p for me thanks to Octopus.
If it's 16kW in a highly insulation new build then either it's a 10 bedroom mansion or something or that heat pump is far too oversized. My 1920's 152sqm home in Sweden consumed ~2.4mWh in December '23, and that's for everything - cooking etc. And we have much lower temperatures.
@@waynecartwright-js8tw
I don't know how you manage that 12p/kWh. Standard Octopus rate is 22.35p/kWh. Is your draw primarily overnight? I'm with Fuse, and they are just about the lowest electric rate at 21p/kWh.
The heat pump costs should be similar to a gas boiler (did you have one?), so maybe your use or installation needs tweaking?
Certainly smart tariffs enabled by a smart meter would reduce costs significantly.
@@BenIsInSweden yes, it’s a large house but I am not convinced the design of the system is right. For example we have a 100ltr buffer before any hot, or should I say warmish water even gets to the radiators and UFH. Can be around two hours before the pipes around the pumps feel anything like warm. The cylinder loses around 5 degrees on average every two hours. Very frustrating.
Our 5kW heat pump is much quieter than the outdoor oil boiler it replaced, it has a maximum power consumption of 1.55kW which is actually only 3 times more power than the boiler consumed when running; those fans and injection pumps are power hungry beasts. We were able to use the same power supply and pipework, and because all our heating and hot water is from a thermal store it took literally 2 hours to swap over.
OY! You forgot to put in the graph!
I was excited to see your consumption for 17'th December but where was it?
We're becoming too reliant on the electricity grid. That's the main problem. I lived in an area where we would get power outages. We could always cook because we had a gas cooker. We had heating because we had an open fire and a solid fuel boiler. With us moving to solar, wind and battery storage the changes of blackouts increases over more controllable generation.
The grid say that the blackout likelihood has decreased to its lowest level in 4 years. If you live in an area where you are worried about blackouts, you can get batteries, PV and an earth rod and even keep your backup forms of heating? The grid gives us the benefit of being able to sell solar and buy wind energy. Increasing numbers of batteries will continue to add stability.
@@Biggest-dh1vr why should you spend stupid amounts òf money on batteries that are a fire risk bags of coal can sit in sheds along side wood and oil and don't degrade as much as batteries
Thats the agenda- so you can be cancelled.
yes, being worried about reliance over electricity (that we can literally get at our own house and harvest from the sky), vs russian gas. Makes total sense!
I live in one of the most remote parts of Scotland and power outages simply aren't an issue, I bought a 5KVA backup generator 20 years ago and it has barely been used in that time. Only once has power been off for more than 24 hours, that was in 2011 due to an ice storm, otherwise it's only been minutes or a few hours and it's hardly worth hooking up the genny. If we were off for a prolonged period then the genny will happily power the heat pump, and a camping stove is more than sufficient for cooking.
Anecdotal evidence suggests your last sentence is complete rubbish, certainly in this area the incidence of all power outages has decreased significantly. 10 years ago the clock on our oven would be flashing a couple of times a week indicating a loss of power at some point, these days it's more like once every couple of months, distributed generation is improving reliability not reducing it.
I'm a true petrol head, with a V8 mustang and a big American F150 truck. I'm also a sparky. I was very suspicious of heat pumps, but I sat down and did the running cost comparisons between Gas, and Baseboard heaters and heat pumps. These things are amazing. I'm in Canada, minus 20 winters, my bill was $300 per month all year balanced out. I put in some heat pumps for my boss, he loved them, I did the same, my bill is now $150 per month, and I'm warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
Does the heat pump heat a water-based heating system (hot water flowing in radiator panels) or is it a ducted air heating system?
Many of the 'confusions' and problems may be due to differences between 'continental climate' ducted air systems, and UKs mild oceanic climate that uses water-based radiators, and has some nasty "damp air in freezing conditions" scenarios.
Once below -5 C (23F) there's no need for defrost cycles, but on a -0C day a badly positioned ASHP can be eating its own dog food when attempting to defrost, and it's very near the common design limit for UK systems [when real people turn _up_ there heating, just because!]
Thanks
I'd like to put a shout out for air to air heat pumps. I've just had these installed in three rooms and they are brilliant. Efficient, like the air to water but you can cool too which for those with solar is a winner in Summer.
Do give these some thought if you're looking.
Are there basically air cons with the reverse mode to heat ? Might look at that
@@intruder313 yes they are. Almost all 'air conditioners' that you can buy in the UK are actually heat pumps that can heat and cool. Just remember they can't do hot water. Well, they could in theory but those sorts of systems don't seem to be available. A shame really as in summer they could dump the waste heat from cooling in to a hot water tank.
@@robwalker864 I think there are systems which do exactly that. My heat pump at least (which is an AC unit mainly) can connect to 2 AC units + a water tank. But I don't think the water tank is heated up with the heat from the AC, the plumbing inside the unit would be ridiculous.
But geothermal pumps for example are heating water which goes into the ground through pipes. The heat can also go into your pool. I believe if you contact a company specializing in heat pumps you might find one that can do both heating and cooling and scavenge the heat into a boiler somehow.
Air-to-Air heat pumps are the only sensible way of using heat pumps. The lower temperatures involved have multiple benefits such as much greater equipment life, reliability, efficiency and faster heating as well as cooling.
This! I find it so bizarre that they are not mentioned more! You know those heat pumps that are so often referenced in Scandinavia? Most of them are air to air units!
I get that AC isn't very common in the UK and unfortunately air-to-air systems don't currently benefit from any install grants but they should definitely be talked about more! The installation can be so much simpler.
If you don't have any gas to your house, get rid of the meter, you save the standing charge, which at the moment is at about £.50p per day. That works out at about £182.50 per year. We are electric only with a Samsung heat pump and very happy with it's performance, but it is definitely not quiet when working at full chat.
Meter removed ages ago.
@@ElectricVehicleMan how comes you haven't decorated the external case to blend in with the environment?
@@zlmdragon. it’s embedded into the wall, it’s not sat on top of the stone. Plus the gas pipe is inside capped off so can’t be filled it.
Looks less obvious with it next to the other one tbh.
@@ElectricVehicleMan The white heat pump case I meant.
@@zlmdragon. Nothing can be done with it tbh. There’s 3 bins next to it as well so it’s just a modern thing.
Excellent advice, just got rid of our oil burner for Ideal logic air 10kw. We live in a old Welsh home walls two foot thick with insulation, the radiators are set to 30 degrees, the temperature in the home is 21/22 degrees, if anything it is a bit too warm so set it to 18 degrees later in the day when the house has warmed up, it has made a huge difference.
I like my home to be 25 in the winter, not 18.
Gas engineers have spent most of their lives removing large hot water cylinders and fitting combi boilers. This often gave more room in bathrooms, enabling separate showers to be installed.
A combi boiler is quite small and increasingly efficient.
In addition to the ugly monstrosity stuck on your outside wall is bad enough, but you have another monstrosity inside which appears to be an immersion heater. If heat pumps are so wonderful, why do they need a backup system.
The majority of the housing stock in the UK is more than 50 years old, mine is 120 years old.
I can't have cavity insulation because it doesn't have cavity walls.
Ed Milliband and his net zero accolades can stick their heat pumps.
Mine has no ‘backup system’. You’re looking at old tech. Immersion heater has been disabled from day one due to reasons you’ve clearly not listened to in this video.
And gas boilers haven’t got any more efficient for years and can’t get anymore efficient due to simple physics.
The fact you’re hating something because a politician likes them is just insane. What if they start pushing beer, does that mean you’ll rally against it?
If these are so wonderful, why are the hundreds of new homes being built in Kenilworth where I live are being fitted with gas boiler systems? A few have been specified with solar panels, to be fair. I asked and was told that modern houses don't have enough room for all the required paraphernalia
@ Because house builders spend the minimum they can. Just look at the houses!
@@ElectricVehicleMan - not sure I want to take environmental advice from a man who can't even eat a bacon sandwich!
Excellent video, thanks.
Just had our Cosy 6 heat pump installed and we have microbore. SCOP of 3.69 so far.
Battery and solar coming soon, so 7p/kWh. Much cheaper than gas
I pay 6p/kwh for gas
@@neeeiiil we pay the same as you for gas. Gas boilers are 90% plus efficient.
My point was, divide 7p/kWh for electricity by the SCOP of 3.69 (369% efficient) and it's 1.9p/kWh, so much cheaper than gas.
My gas boiler is mounted on a plasterboard partition wall. So it acts like an acoustic instrument. That's inside a cupboard in the kitchen. Certainly hear it but it's a pleasant quiet hum. 7 years old now and not a problem. No room outside for a heat pump due to patio doors at one end plus front door. Other end are the bedrooms. Leaves us just one side as we are a semi detached bungalow. Pathway not wide enough due to the garage. As a retired electrician,I have worked out a suitable setup with low power convection heaters and a instant hot water heater for the bathroom and kitchen. Shower is electric. Thanks for your info.
A clever engineer might have ideas on where to put it (hopefully not down the garden!). Alternatively, regulations may change at some point...
(Yay regulations!)
Thank You! Fantastic information!
Thumbs up for this video, one of the clearest explanations of why heat pumps work and why some houses are more suitable 👍
Re Noise - We don't get the cricking/clanking of the pipe either which used to wake me up.
I can hear my gas boiler come on from the other side of the house.
Just how noisy was your boiler that it wakened you up, should have had it serviced.
I have the same Vaillant 5kW HP as you and concur with everything you’ve said. It’s not silent, but it’s not noisy, definitely quieter than the gas boiler it replaced. The house is consistently warmer than it used to be, and it’s incredibly efficient. The last 4 weeks has averaged 7.5 kWh per day for heating and hot water. The same period last year when we were on Gas used an average of 40kWh per day. I have battery storage, charged overnight on Intelligent Octopus at 7p, the total cost of heating and hot water for October was £10.85.
Oh, and the wife has gained an additional cupboard in the Kitchen where the boiler used to be!
Interesting. Could I ask what battery you have and do you have solar?
@ Yes, I have 4.7kW of Solar, 1 x 8.2 and 1 x 9.5kW GivEnergy Batteries. Solar contributed next to nothing in October, one of the worst months I’ve ever had!
@@chrisrowe22 thanks! I’ve had a quote from octopus for a heat pump. I’m on intelligent octopus for car charging.
From what you say it seems as though heat pump + battery would be a viable solution even without solar?
@@gerryking4346solar in the summer pays for heat pumps in the winter. If you are able, you might find it better value than a battery,as @UpsideDownFork did.
@ Batteries & Octo Intelligent will definitely help to bring the running costs down. Solar generation doesn’t contribute much in Winter, when you most need it!
I had one fitted this year with solar, and so far it’s been brilliant ❤
Winter hasnt started yet.
Good straight forward video, thanks. I personally think that underfloor heating gives a nice even heat, however air to water systems are expensive plus you have to be so careful who you get to install it. On the other side of the coin, air to air is a very good alternative as it is half the price plus you get cooling on the hot summer days. The only downside side is the lack of hot water, which could of course be supplied with an Emerson heater and a battery to keep the cost down. There are many advantages having air to air and it’s a simpler system with far less to go wrong. Horses for courses I guess.
Very useful info. Thanks a bunch
I dont have heat pump, but I do have air con unit which is used for both heating and cooling. The external unit is a bit smaller and I believe it's slightly less efficient, but works using much the same technology. I can certainly confirm that the air con unit works at full blast trying to cook from 28 to 24 degrees or warm from 5 degrees ·= or less) to 23 degrees. The fan is noisy when outside (I can just hear it through double glazing patio door, about 3 metre away ay night). The noise nuisance is external not internal. The flat is modern and well insulated to current day European standards (which are the same or better than the UK). To add to the fan noise, as the unit gets older, bearing start to go and the noise goes up as a result. We had to replace the unit as a fairly expensive repair even though we have an annual maintenance contract.
My understanding is the initial cost of the entire system is significantly higher than the total cost of installing a gas equivalent system. Electricity cost sin the UK are currently higher than gas prices (even though gas remains at a historic high price) as well. This part due to Govt policy and subsidies paid to fund green energy systems which are more expensive.
The other issue is insulation of the property. For new build, this should be of a good to high standard, but for anyone with a pre-1990 house there is an expensive to very expensive cost for extra insulation to add to the total price of the system. For the may UK city properties without any significant external space (ie anyone living in an apartment) you cant install this type of technology at all.
Noise in the least important issue for most people.
@nickbrough8335 this is about the most honest review in this thread 👍🏻
Unlike the guy on the video or some of the reviewers claiming it to be the "world saviour "
I run 2 air to air units and I'm happy how they perform and I'm against the air to water con going on at the moment where installers charge up to £15000 before you even need to pay for newer/bigger radiators
The difficulty with trying to get a balanced opinion on UA-cam, is that these videos are made either by the installers or people who are evangelical because they think of the existential risk. I’m afraid that these, like a few other things I can think of are luxury beliefs, as Rob Henderson would say, for a privileged few.
You've said it. Hard to get a really honest opinion. Our bungalow has hot air ducted gas heating (no radiators), which works OK, but times are changing and I can see the government changing the 4:1 elect:gas price ratio at some point to force take up..Our the 'boiler room' is bang in the middle of the house, not near an outside wall. So by the time the water is piped in to a heat exchanger a lot of heat is going to get lost. I see disaster looming on the heating front.
I have a panasonic 5KW heat pump in my newbuild house. When I first saw it, I was checking whether it is on or off. But it was working during that time. They are that quiet!
WHAT? CANT HEAR YOU OVER MY HEAT PUMP.
Wait until winter comes
@@brickmissing8295 It was 3 days ago.
Thank you, faaaabulously clear and convincing!
Just got mine Vaillant AroTHERM plus 7kW
Installed 2 wks ago have to say I’ll never go back to using gas boiler.
heating on 24/7
Complete comfort
Cheap to run using green tariff and home storage battery 🔋
Very happy
I have replaced an oil boiler with a heat pump in 2020 in a 220 year old stone cottage. It's 200 square metres and we never have the flow temp above 40 degrees and the house is always 20 degrees. They do work fine when fitted correctly. I'm now fed up with telling people they do work as soon as I realise they are a denier I just say well don't have one!
A bit like Like owning an ev
It may work but at what cost.
@mrmitch5054 yes we have that too as we have an ev and family members say they are useless
@davidscott3292 hi David at the moment it's 5 degrees outside and the heat pump is running at less than 1kw of input power and the house is continously at between 20 and 21 degrees. It costs us about 4000kwh a year for heating and hot water so at our kw cost that's about 800 quid for the year but we do have solar which obviously helps but not much in the winter
I live in a similar property in North Wales with oil heating. Any idea of savings in running cost, i.e oil versus heat pump?
Anyone against heat pumps (of any variety) is welcome to Sweden to see how our houses are heated. A massive amount of them have pumps, even up in the north. I have two actually, one air/air and one ground/water. The air/air is mainly used for AC in the summer. Where I live we have winter from Oct to Apr, with temperatures ranging from around 0 to -20 C during that period.
I have a 170 sqm 1,5 floor house with a cellar, built in the fifties. It has doubled glazed windows and not very much in the way of insulation. My total electricity consumption is around 9000 kWh/year - and we don't use gas over here, for anything, so that is a non existing expense.
Converted to GBP, my total energy bill is ~£725/year. So hot water, heating, cooking - the works. It's not even worth improving the insulation, it would take me ages to return that investment. Let alone installing solar!
I had a flat/apartment in Sweden, heating was done by oil, houses nearby had stacks of wood.
@@pauljones3073 "A massive amount" doesn't mean universal. No gas though ;)
In our (Sweden) case oil was thrown out in favour of heat pumps, and it's worked fine for 40 plus years.
All Nordic countries have heavily insulated houses. For obvious reasons .
Owns a 1960s semi detached which came with an ancient gas back boiler and lots if radiators that did not work. We needed to replace all of the pipework anyway so elected to get a heat pump. Only insulation added was 300mm of loft insulation which by itself made a huge difference. Heat pump is great, it easily heats the house in mornings and afternoons. During summer electricity usage for the heat pump is around 2kw, on mild winter days around 10kw, and on the coldest days around 25kw. We have the octopus cosy tariff which allows cheaper electricity between 4am and 7am, and 1pm and 4pm.
Very happy with heat pump, looking forward to getting solar and battery so our electricity usage in summer can be reduced to near zero.
How efficient are they at below 40 degrees Fahrenheit????? Do you need extra hat sources when it's cold
A reasonably installed heat pump's energy cost is similar to that of a gas boiler. No extra heat sources are needed.
I always reach for a Sombrero when it's cold.
People living in cold climate and who have not installed heat pump of some kind are too late already and have wasted a lot of mopney in electricity bills all these years. These came out about 30 years ago and reached their peak efficiency 20 years ago. They heat both air inside the house and even provide hot water depending on the kind you buy. My electricity consumption dropped from 22000kwh per year to 11000kwh per year on changing from simple boiler heater to heat pump heater. It has already paid itself off many years ago. We keep indoor temp of 23 deg C and the out side winter temp can be 0 to minus15 deg C.The only thing that heat pump can not compete with is if you have a very cheap supply of gas to heat the house or have your own forest. They work down to minus 30 deg C as in northern Sweden .
Our first air heat pump was installed some 22 years ago. We live in the wet, mild western Norwegian coastal climate zone with few below-freezing winter days. In an old wooden house, small footprint, three floors. The heat pump is set to keep the average temperature in the whole house above around 15-16C. Combined with a wood stove in the first floor living room, used for some hours daily, and small panel heaters in every room for additional heating when needed. These are not used a lot. The annual electricity consumption went down around 35 percent after installation, and the two heat pumps installed so far (the first one was not well suited and stopped working after some years, the second is still in good working order after 17 years) were paid down by savings alone in around five years, each. Now, piped gas is not used domestically here and fossil fuel burning heaters were banned a few years ago. So there are not many options to resistance heaters, heat pump tech or bio fuel. Still, economy is the main reason for why so many Norwegian small houses use heat pumps. Even simple air-to-air systems just work.
@@janhanchenmichelsen2627 You live in a mild climate and your heat pump keeps your house at a chilly 15 -16C. Sorry that is not a great advert for installing a heat pump. Obviously people feel the cold differently but I would need those panel heaters on quite a lot for rooms set at 15 - 16C.
@@brucejoseph8367 Read my post again. OUR settings, in our old house. Of course the heat pump can heat it all without any trouble. Max output equals around 6500W. But none of us like hot rooms. Prefer 19-20, max, 15-16 at night. And there is no reason to heat rooms when they are not used. Unless you love to waste money. Today it’s below zero, the heat pump is turned up to 20C, this because the unit is at the ground floor. The heat rises all the way up, preventing the third floor to fall below around 16C. Before making dinner, I got the wood-burning stove going. Now it’s all comfortable.
@@janhanchenmichelsen2627 I like to keep the whole house warm it keeps the humidity to a healthy level.
@@janhanchenmichelsen2627 You have just contradicted yourself saying that you use a heat pump fully, and THEN saying that you put on the wood burner to FULLY heat your house/flat. Again all lies with these heat pumps UNTILL fully checked out in full blown minus 50 C (-50 C) temps.
I was lucky enough to have an ASHP fitted 4 years ago as a case study for OVO energy who were fitting them to existing housing stock to see how they perform.
I have an averagely built 1960s semi detached bungalow, 1980s double glazing, 70mm cavity walls with blown insulation and 300mm loft roll. They replaced 2 (out 7) radiators for larger ones, others retained. Heat pump is nigh on silent just outside my bedroom. Cost to run is virtually the same as the gas boiler it replaced, slightly cheaper but not enough to notice.
People that say they done work in existing houses without massive upgrades are wrong.
*obviously insulate first where possible for easy wins.
However, the comfort is FAR better than it was with the gas boiler, it’s always just an even, comfortable heat compared to peaks and troughs of heat you get as the boiler runs, cuts out then kicks in again.
Any modern gas boiler can modulate and keep the temperature within a 0.2C margin. If your expenses are still the same AND you had to pay for the installation (about 5 times the price of a gas boiler), then it would actually have been very expensive.
Just turn the temp down on the boiler to stop the peaks
When it is freezing does the heat pump warm up the incoming air?
You mentioned the compressor.
Is it warming the air?
They operate below freezing. There's no water in the loop, so there's nothing inherently different about operating below freezing except for icing up on the condenser. I'm sure you'd get When the condenser gets iced up it runs in reverse for a short while to melt the ice (I'm not sure if they have an electric resistance heater somewhere in the loop), then it runs forwards again. Look at one of Technology Connections' many videos on heat pumps to see this in action.
I've never seen a heat pump with a resistive heater inline with the incoming air, but I haven't opened many up, and none I've looked at were the modern low temperature heat pumps.
@@ThisRandomUsername
We had a lot of condensation in our house when we moved in, as do many in cold weather - some worse than others.
We had a heat recovery system fitted. This draws air in from the cold side of house - North facing ( so it does not get too hot in summer).
It extracts air from the house and blows it out at the warm South facing side of the house.
There are vents for the incoming air in most rooms and extraction vents in others like. the toilet/bathroom. kitchen.
The flow is balanced and all the air changes in the house every 20 minutes or so.
When it was first turned on (Winter) all the condensation disappeared from windows an walls within about 20 minutes - a miracle at the time -still is.
The house is cleaner with less dust and healthier for chest complaints.
This is not a heating system, but it does have a built in heating cooling compressor, which you need.
When air is draw in from outside it is mixed with the extracted air from the house, and that heat is added to the colder incoming air.
Then it is blown in around the hose
The incoming and outgoing air goes through a filters in the machine to clean the air both ways.
When you change them every 6 months approx' , you can see all the dirt that has been removed.
So in Winter the incoming air is colder and is heated and mixed to maintain a decent temperature in the house.
If the air drawn in is too hot in Summer the air is cooled by the compressor to maintain the temperature in the house.
Usually the compressor is off apart from extreme temperatures.
Some people add a duct heater to in incoming air to warm it up before it reaches the machine.
The machine is just 2 fans and a compressor, and a controller where ever you want it.
The controller is for the temperature you require in your house, fan speeds, filter change reminder etc etc.
This long ramble is for people who are not familiar with heat exchangers.
That was why I asked about heating cold air as it is draw in through the heat pump, as it would make less work
for this system, and you would get warm incoming air all year round?
You could switch the heater on as required for a few days we experience really cold weather??
Just a thought!
@@Smiler7 That's an interesting setup you have there. I'm wanting to do something like you have for just my bathroom, but just with a heat exchanger, not including a compressor.
I'm not sure if you understand how these heat pumps work, but they do not bring in outside air and dump inside air outside. They just move heat from the colder outside air and warm up the warmer inside air using a refrigeration cycle. It's a reversible air conditioner. There is no movement of air from outside to inside and vice versa.
Have you forgotten the cost of installation and how long it will take to pay for ?..
@@kennethbickley8491 Eh?
Forgotten. It was never a topic in this video.
I’ve done entire running and install costs previously.
Big old Yorkshire farmhouse. 16kw Grant ASHP, 300 litre tank. Previously on oil burning about £300 per month to be cold most of the time. Spending the same money on electricity in winter, inc 20,000 mile electric car on Intel Octopus Go. Now 22 degrees 24/7
Heatpumps of all kinds works just fine in Sweden and I just presume that the temperatures here are just a bit lower than in Britain. In fact I’ve never ever heard any upset debates on that matter here. We also use a thing called insulation which is a great idea that you should check out.
You don't have a debate because you have much lower electricity prices in Sweden. It's the high cost of electricity - the highest in Europe - compared to gas that's the issue in the UK. If UK electricity prices were in line with the average production cost, which includes solar and wind, rather than be pegged at the production cost of gas-powered generation, then heatpumps become a no-brainer.
@@FangPawI wouldn't say much lower.
I recently did a calculation with converting to GBP.
Taxes and transmission costs for a start work out at just over 6p/kWh which cannot be changed (local grid charge).
My average supply cost between today and tomorrow is about 8p/kWh. So about 14p/kWh currently.
Yes,it's cheaper, but it's not as cheap as people make it out to be, as many sources will just use the "spot price" which excludes taxes and transmission costs as they vary by who owns the DNO.
@@BenIsInSweden
That's still significantly cheaper that UK prices which are about 22-26p/kWh, depending on tariff (plus daily standing charge ie transmission charge) + tax (VAT currently at 5%). At 14p/kWh, a heat pump would most definitely be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.
The supply companies clearly know electricity is over-priced as they can offer EV charging rates at 7p/kWh. The stupidity of our system is that it's cheaper to export electricity generated by solar panels and buy back from the grid to charge your EV , rather than use the solar for battery storage and/or charging the EV.
@@FangPawpretty sure VAT is already included in that 22-26p. Standing charge isn't per kWh so doesn't change based on usage, our transmission charges are per kWh. If you really want to get into it, I also have to pay ~£50 per month for the connection to the DNO (more like the standing charge).
@@BenIsInSweden
Maybe. 5% doesn't make that much difference (less than 2p/kWh). The circa £50 monthly connection charge you pay is a lot more than the UK daily standing charge. But presumably you'd have to pay it whether you had a heat pump or not. So it doesn't alter the argument - what you pay to run your heat pump is significantly less than what I'd be paying in the UK on an energy/Therm basis.
But in reality, you're preaching to the converted (thanks to you!). I'm going to look into hybrid systems, with a heatpump to provide the bulk of the heating, and and use my existing gas boiler to top-up the heating during cold spells.
Great video. I went straight to the comments with my popcorn and I was disappointed. Clearly the truth is starting to prevail over the mis and disinformation!
No mention of improved comfort levels in your home though?
Give it time. They’ll turn up.
time to get a new batch of popcorn!
I've had gas much of my life and only recently had a heat pump as part of a grant. It is a case of getting used to how they work and how to use them. The fundamental terror everyone has is that gas is 6p - even with 70% tax - and electricity is 25p (for my neighbours who are on a pre-pay meter it's 36p). Of course folk are avoiding them.
I don't mean to get political but the government is determined to make energy expensive - nigh unaffordable for many - and that's because of unreliables. It cannot force the pretend 'carbon' (as all life is made from carbon in some form) benefits while deliberately forcing up the cost of energy using the most inefficient, expensive methods going which hike the cost of electricity, hindering the take up of alternatives like heat pumps.
I'll be honest: we are going to move to a home that has gas. For us, it's hot water. 2 swimming clubs 4 times a week, 2 adults who gym at the same time and our 150l tank isn't enough and we all like hot, hot showers. I'm also unconvinced heat pumps work 'for' (not *in*) the UK. We've a damp climate whereas Sweden and Norway are cold but dry.
@@px794
1) Why are you using a standard tariff? There are plenty of tariffs out there that make electricity cheaper - and there are heat pump tariffs.
2) Charging more per kWh for a prepayment meter was ruled out in July last year.
3) Where is there any evidence that "unreliables" are costing more than gas etc?
4) 150L sounds small for your family, but there other ways around it, e.g. bigger tank, or having the DHW heated to a higher temperature and blended down. Where that 150L will go even further.
5) We get cold and damp over here too, it's not exclusive to the UK, it really doesn't matter either way though, as heat pumps in the UK when properly designed, will not be running full pelt when it's "cold and damp".
@@px794 Seriously? Are we back to this nonsense again? If you really do have a heat pump then you should know that these claims about insufficient hot water and heat pumps not working in damp climates are all bogus.
Good video. Clear and I feel honest. Well done have subscribed
Good video 👍
How much did the complete installation cost, including the battery set-up?
Love the content as always
Whether it's cheaper to run a heat pump or a gas boiler depends on their respective tariffs. My supplier (OVO) charges 20.2p per kWh for electricity and 5.45p per kWh for gas. Assuming (pessimistically) that my modern gas boiler is only 80% efficient, any heat pump I installed would have to have a CoE (coefficient of efficiency) of over 3 to break even (or 3.37 assuming a 90% efficient gas boiler). All the literature I've seen claims that the CoE can be as high as 3.5, but in winter, this typically drops to nearer 2.5. In other words, most of the time, the heat pump would cost me more to run than the gas boiler..
Until the UK ditches the ludicrous policy of marginal pricing for electricity (where the price is tied to the most expensive single generation source, usually gas) - resulting in the highest electricity prices in Europe - there is little incentive to switch to heat pumps. I'm not about to fork out some £20K for a heat pump installation for the privilege of paying more for my heating.
I'm all for saving the planet (I have PV panels and I drive an EV), but - as the boss of Octopus has pointed out - people need financial incentives to switch to greener technologies.
You’ve said pretty much everything that I would have wanted to.
SCOPs are what you want to compare again, they are the average, but are weighted towards winter. Heating Degree days are taken for each day, with the COP performance for each, and that is used for the SCOP calculation.
MCS minimum SCOP is 2.8, but SCOPs of 4 or 5 are achievable.
So there maybe some days (e.g. those that dip below say -2C) where a gas boiler is cheaper to run, but those are only a handful of days per year, and many others the heat pump will at least break even or outperform a gas boiler.
Also OVO have a heat pump tariff where it's 15p/kWh lowering that requirement even further.
Any poorer performance on very cold days is compensated by better performance on warmer days and hot water heating. As Ben says, the average SCOP over the whole year is what matters (can be between 4 and 5 for good installs). And as EVMan says, a reasonably installed heat pump has similar energy costs to a gas boiler on the standard tariff.
As you've mentioned what Greg Jackson has said, it seems reasonable to point out that it would be insane for someone to stay on the standard tariff when getting off gas.
For the billing month from 16Oct to 15 Nov, for the last half of which we have also had a heat pump and no gas usage, our total electricity cost excluding the 18 quid standing charge was £63, for which we got 861kWh (I'm not including exports here, which take a further ~25 quid off the bill).
That makes our electricity tariff rate for that month 7.31p/kWh. It also includes all of our motoring fuel costs.
I'm the worst case billing scenario, I'm sure a fully electric household would cost more to run, but it's incumbent on those of us who've started down this path to let everyone else know this important fact: there are many cheap rate tariffs available that will enable you to save you a small fortune!
@@RoobubbaYou might be shocked by the number of people who can't get a cheap tariff because their smart meter doesn't work properly.
Built a house in '88 with an "inexpensive" air source heat pump. Outside unit was kinda noisy. Replaced it after 20 years because due to a less-than-stellar humidifier, it rusted. Got a nearly top of the line heat pump this time and I could not hear the outside unit unless I was literally close enough to touch it.
This chap is just a great teacher.
Hi evm you did not show your usage on the 17th Dec for us. Also, you did not mention Octopus have a heat pump tariff (or have they stopped that one now?)
Straight swap, gas boiler to heat pump, with no solar or batteries will cost roughly the same in pounds per month to run. This is such an important message to get out there. Cheers EVM.
The cost for me is the same, as well, but the house is warmer or should I say always warm.
The thermal efficiency of your properties should have been improved as much as humanly possible before the heat pump system was installed.
Doing that would save you money no matter what heating system you have… but yeah.. electricity is still 4 x more expensive than gas so we need the solar and battery’s to offset the electricity bill… all a big out lay 😩
a heat pump would most probably cost way more to run than a gas boiler if it was a straight swap!
@@PlumbExejust pumping out tripe to keep selling gas boilers!
@@damiendye6623No mate- heat pumps are brilliant when the house is as thermally efficient as possible and the heating system is designed to match the house’s thermal efficiency.
We all know fossil fuel heating systems need to go- but we all know what we’re on about don’t we.
We have an air to air heat pump, far cheaper and more efficient than an air to water for heating a smaller home. Perfect for an apartment, it runs at around 300w power draw and you dont need to spend thousands to install one.
Sounds like you have an aircon unit that heats rather than a Heat Pump. Especially as Air to Air need two units, one for heating and one for hot water.
I’ve finally established I can have one as I don’t have space for all the internal GUBBINS or batteries and I can’t have solar due to one small western roof and nothing south.
Got all the way to a £10k quote which is also a joke. Installers are bumping up the price now that they know about the £7.5k grant.
Sad but true.
If I ever get a decent house this and an EV charger are high on my list (Internet speed is top)
I got a lot of silly quotes at first, way over engineered systems with loads of kit to fit somewhere. Have you tried Octopus ? They were the only ones that gave me something reasonable and space effective for less than replacing the gas boiler. Only need space for a water tank inside, and replace a couple of larger radiators.
Also, small hot water stores are available if space is at a premium (see Heat Geek)
We have ENE/WSW facing roof aspects. In Feb we installed panels on both sides. Since then, the ENE-facing panels are providing 86% of the output compared to the WSW panels.
You don't *need* a pure S facing roof for it to be worthwhile.
We have an air to air heat pump and a thermo dynamic hot water heater. Our bungalow is detached and our electricity bill is still around 100 euros a month, even after the recent price increases. We are going to be quids in after about 7 years.
That was really valuable information, thanks. But £500-£600 saving from your gas boiler seems really high. Our setup is solar panels with immersion heater when solar heating available, 40 year old gas boiler when it's not. And we have a gas oven and gas hobs, but we don't even use £500 per year, even though much of the bill is standing charge.
So when you say there's a £500-600 saving, are you including the marginal cost of your setup over a gas boiler? If not, how many years would it take to recover that? And what's the lifetime of the home battery and the heat pump etc?
Other question... for interest, you said a heat pump is essentially a fridge (or maybe more accurately an aircon?) So why are they so much more expensive than an aircon? That's where i have a problem, because it seems to repurpose the ~con?
Heat pumps can be very noisy! We went to view a property on Dartmoor and the heat pump in that brand-new house was so loud that’s what put us off buying it. The other issue is it takes up half your garden (well, the one in that new build property was huge)
There was also a ginormous boiler in the cupboard so to accommodate this new system you need a house the size of Buckingham Palace! Oh, and did I say they are also an eyesore!
New builds shouldn't require large heat pumps. They've been oversized then.
You dodged a dodgy install then.
We replaced our perfectly good gas boiler with a 12kw valiant arotherm in Oct 2023. IT IS AMAZING. our house is constantly toasty 20 degrees. We have loads of hot water. 98% of the time it is TOTALLY SILENT. We live in central Scotland. It's been minus double digits and our house is still warm. We have installed 10kw of solar panels and 10kwh battery. We have an electric car. OUR ENERGY BILL FOR A 4 BED DETACHED HOUSE INCLUDING 10,000 MILES OF DRIVING IS NOW ABOUT £1,000 PER YEAR. Gas boiler and diesel car we spent £4,000 per year. Our C02 emissions from heating our house with gas and driving a diesel car have dropped from 8 TONNES OF CO2 to 400kg. IGNORE THE SCEPTICS THIS IS THE FUTURE!!!
Were exactly the same, gone from £4k+ down to less than £1k. (in ourcase we have a Victron system & 20kw batteries, thanks to EV Puzzle)
Those numbers are great! How much did it all cost to set up and what's your payback period?
20 degrees! I would be roasting my **** off at that temp. 17 for me 😂
@@mrmiruk In our case it was around £7k + 1K ASHP (as got 15Kw of Pylontech batteries for just over 2k in last 2 years), the basic Victron MP-II 5Kw GX + 7.2Kw of pylontech from my local distributer=voltacon was £5k - 2 years ago), so think I've already paid it back in 2 years? - The Daikin ASHP (6Kw), was accident damaged at £900 + fitting was around £300 mainly 28mm copper pipes (tip B&Q have 28mm copper pipes cheaper than 22mm at around £8/m) - EDIT - I should say that we use IOG, which allows charging of all electric at 7p/unit well before the 11:30pm official time (with an ohme charger connected to an EV)
Well said
I don't get the hate about heat pumps. I own multiple and they save a fortune. No exaggeration.
Noisy scroll compressors, don't last decades, lose efficiency in cold weather
I agree it's weird, in many countries it totally normal to heat/cool houses with air to air source heat pumps. I think it has something to do with conspiracy theory / disinformation that is doing the rounds on social media. Plus the "I hate change" mentality that some people have. Remember how some people hated that weights changed to metric/kg and that they could no longer buy incandesent light bulbs.
cost on installation with batteries and extras etc ? how long before it starts to pay for itself ?
@@blitzco As stated in the video. All that is in the channel.
That one looks a lot neater than the Octopus one, big plastic box outside and a mass of pipes, wires and a huge tank inside !. I'm between homes just now but will look at a Heat pump again once we move in
Heat pumps need a separate water cylinder. The Octopus heat pump has a certain look, but will probably benefit from close integration with their systems.
We've had our pump for almost two years and are just about used to it! You mentioned you get your hot water up to 72c. Ours only manages 48c. Our installers said this was standard. The only time our water is above 60 is when surplus from our roof heats it. Perhaps I'll ask our supplier when the system is serviced next month.
Heat pumps that use R32 or R410a are limited to about 55C. R290 ones, which are very common now are able to do 70C+. You may have an immersion if you want higher than what the heat pump can provide or for anti-legionella. But that's only for taking it from the maximum the heat pump can achieve to the desired temperature.
You "WILL NOT GET WATER TO 72 DEGREES WITH A HEAT PUMP" only if you have a ELECRTIC IMERSION ELEMENT IN THE TANK DRINKING ELECTRIC. Your figure about correct . Rads will not get any hotter either. HEAT PUMPS ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE CRACKED UP TO BE.
@@GrahamNewman-mq7gr DOES SHOUTING MAKE IT TRUE?
No, of course not. Research R290 heat pumps and even R744 ones.
R290 can do up to 75C, and R744 can do up to 95C.
Immersion is only used to fill the gap in R32/R410A heat pumps. Again do your research.
or should I say DO YOUR RESEARCH!
The thing is that heatpumps are a good thing. When living in Belgium though... the invented something like a capacity tariff... Once your total energy consumption during 15 minutes (!!!) exceeds e.g. 3500Kwh, they change the rate at which they charge you for the whole month. So: if you drive an EV and in winter you hook it up at your charging pole, you start cooking and if at that moment the heatpump kicks in, the rate at which you will be charged is going up for the whole month. Besides of that they are thinking here to charge you for electricity injection (so when using solar panels, in summer, you will get additionally charged when you send too much electricity to the grid. They do this because the grid cannot cope with all the energy coming in.) So one way they promote clean energy and on the other hand they make you pay for using it so they can upgrade their grid. We live in a crazy country
Thanks to our green idiots . Tinne VD Straeten our minister should be in prison.
My EV charger has a clamp to see what my house is drawing. It limits charge speeds if the house draws lots. Yours probably has something similar, so can protect you from that one time all the stars align against you. Also, 3500kWh in 15 minutes would require 14000kW of power draw for the whole 15 minutes. That's running 2000 normal single phase EV chargers concurrently. Think your numbers might be a little off.
@@asharak84 Ah, I misexplained myself. If your consumption would exceed, when extrapollated to yearbasis, would exceed 3500kWh. I looked up the actual rule: if your peak consumption at any given time raises above 2500kW during 15min, that consumtion defines the price you pay for a whole month. So example: if you stay below 2500kW all time, you pay for example 0.30 Euros per kW. When you consume for 15 minutes 3000kW, you will pay for example 0.40 Euro per kW for a whole month. Try and stay below that threshold of 2500kW all time with a heatpump, an electric vehicle, 2 kids each having a computer... Everything basically switches to ON around 18:00 when everybody is home. There is no way postponing the cooking, doing laundry, kids using their PC for homework, charging your car for next day etc.... And during winter you cannot get a fully loaded battery using solar either so.... get my point? It is an unfair rule as those households that go to work with 2 basically are charged most as they have little to no options. I am in IT, so I do know those tools to regulate your consumption. But it is impossible to stay below 2500kW at all time with a normal household.
It's just another way of robbing citizens.
My biggest fear is the possibility that the installer will not be able to set the thing up properly. Had a new gas boiler installed recently plus some new rads and power flush, all told £4k. Only thing was plumber did not set the whole system up properly; everything turned up to max. Times I have visited other houses to find that the rads are scorching. It seems most plumbers either don't understand or don’t care. I set about adjusting everything to the requirements suggested by various experts. Result, the consumption dropped by over 25% compared to what the plumber left. I now have a warm bungalow that costs on average over the year £10 a week. I looked at heat pumps originally, but, could not justify the initial outlay; the pay back would take years on an investment of £6500 plus. Gov grant. Don't forget electric consumption of approx £1000+ based on my own estimated 3000kWh to power the pump, which equates to 12000kWh to heat the place at a coefficient of performance 4 to 1. I only use 2800kWh pa of electricity as it is. I don’t have solar, yes, makes sense to have solar but thats another huge expense. And they expect the average guy to buy. Nice idea, but, just too expensive. We should have been thinking and planning about this 30 years ago.
3000kWh at current price cap is £735. 12000kWh of heat on an above-average gas boiler would be 13333kWh used at 6.24p/kWh = ~£832, even a 100% efficient would be £748.
Difference being is there are tariffs out there for heat pumps.. e.g. OVO have one where the heat pump usage is 15p/kWh, so 3000kWh would cost £450.
That's my problem, I can't afford to have all this stuff installed so I have to freeze
@@BenIsInSweden Cost of system plus new pipework and radiators ??????????
@@RBcymru pipework and rads should be seen as a separate cost for switching to low temperature heating. As it benefits any heating system.
Factoring it in on the heat pump savings is like wanting solar panels to pay for a new roof.
Not every property needs pipes and radiators upsizing
@@DewtbArenatsiz same here ❤️🇬🇧
I'm getting an error with replying. I need to understand what the calculation between thermostat & flow temperature is. If someone is a pensioner or has a chronic illness & needs thermostat at 70 degrees farenheit - what is the flow tempetature to be set at?
How do you explain the people who have installed a heat pump and regret it?
Do NOT install a heat pump into a poorly insulated property it will coast a fortune to run
@@DGT73 As will gas.
@@ElectricVehicleMan But costs a fifth of price initially.
@@pauladamson9749 erm. No.
We only heat our 250 year old cottage at 14 to 17 c, being used to having none for the last 19 years! Temps here get down to -22 c from time to time in the North East of Scotland. Our heat pump, coupled with roof insulation, interior to outside wall cladding and solar panels, is pretty much under worked. It worked out at £2.50 to £4.00 per day from March this year until 2 weeks ago and £7.00 to £12.00 last winter. It depended on whether we were washing and drying clothes, more appliances etc. Overall, we're really happy with how it has all worked out.
14 to 17 C is baltic. Try running it at 19-21C like every normal family household and then report back about how great it is.
@@wagmiorngmi To each their own, but 14-16C is fine. And I say that as a Greek used to 15C winters living in Ireland.
We used 12500kWh/year for heating and hotwater in a poorly insulated 150m2 house and a 200m2 garage up here by the Arctic Circle in Sweden with a 16kW Bosch 7800! geothermal system. Cost of electricity vs heating oil is roughly the same here so about 1/3 of the cost now. Using a small Air to Air heat pump cuts the cost in half. The real problem is that you still have the luxury of cheap gas and heating oil and crappy houses, not that heat pumps don't work. 😁
Just sourced and fitted a heat pump to heat my pool here in Perth, Western Australia. It provides 9kW of heating but when running on full power only draws some 7A from the supply! Mad. 😮
With Australia's grid voltage being 230/240V, that's about 1610W.
Well we have an L&G heat pump. I can tell you this, its currently 1D and ours is on all the time and its constantly whirring/humming noise. They are far from silent I can assure you. My wife works for a company that installs these on large industrial projects. One of the engineer's put it this way. The average temperature in the UK day and night is 12D. These things work well thermally and economically above an ambient temperature of 7D or above so in theory they work.
Mine works down to -25C (not tested here yet!). Their efficiency over the whole year is what counts, with costs similar to a gas boiler.
@@Biggest-dh1vr Think that was the point I was making.
Getting a heat pump installed in about a week 🎉 looking forward to having gas disconnected and saving the standing charge of nearly £95 per year, plus the peace of mind of not having flammable / toxic gas in the house. The only sad thing is ill probably have to do it all over again when i move in a few years time !
Decarbonising more than one house is a win! 😅
@@GlynHudson
Oh, dear.
Good luck selling it without gas-fired central heating.
@@brickmissing8295 a heat pump will add value by future proofing by future proofing and lowering the running costs.
I guess you have had one of these conversations. I mention I have a heat pump and someone spiels out all the myths. They cost a fortune, you will be cold all the time, etc. Each one I say no to. Maybe even show a monthly energy bill, I have solar, a heat pump and time shift batteries, so my bills are comfortably low. The response is "that is all made up, I know the truth, you must be lying" and off they go in a huff. Personally I do not care what they have or do. Why do they have to convert me away from what to me is super affordable and comfortable? Very strange.
Do they not cost a fortune then?
We've got a 16kW heat pump, you can have a whispered conversation next to it when it's on full speed :) Entering our first full winter with it and so far we're very very happy and no more oil deliveries. Along with solar and batteries we're looking at over a 75% reduction in our energy bills :D
I believe a lot of the negative experiences are due to the lack of education of the owner and cowboy installers.
I don't have room for the inside unit of the heat pump so I installed a very efficient AC (which is essentially a heat pump) and I am using it in conjunction with the conventional gas heater. I think they make a good pair and I have redundancy + AC in the summer which is increasingly becoming a must.
AC offers some of the efficiency of heat pumps (200-300% efficient?), perhaps more AC could help you ditch gas?
I'm a council tennant, and as such have their choice of gas boiler (Installed Dec 19- so newish) which is serviced regularly. However It is still really expensive to have the heating on- typically £3-4 per day, which when your on a pension is just untenable. I would like a heat pump IF it would save me money, as a former RN Engineer with experience of boilers and erfrigeration equipment- I don't doubt their efficiency. (But our cash strapped council will never sancion replacing 100,000 homes with heat pumps. I have 10 solar panels that at the very best in mid summer full sun deliver just over 1400 watts (originally 190w panels) which are ten years old and dirty. Great video and informative. I shall look at some more of your vids for info- thanks for taking the time to make them!!!
It would take me longer to recoup the supposed savings after the increased installation cost than the expected life of it. They just don't make sense for a lot of people here.
Mmmmm perhaps however once fitted should it require replacement say after 10-15 years it's going to be a lot cheaper than the first time round as all you will be replacing is the heat pump and the prices will have come down . Much like replacing a wall mounted boiler today .
Get a problem with gas boiler you can be confident a gas engineer will be able to fix it , get a problem with an ASHP, forget finding someone capable of fixing or troubleshooting the problem.
It took my dad months to get his fixed as no one seemed capable
Well ignoring the manufacturer themselves, there's a huge amount of people out there.
If you can't find one then try something called 'Google'.
I'm really struggling to find anyone prepared to look at my system. It's 11 years old now and nobody seems interested in helping.
@@ElectricVehicleMan oh yes trusty old Google. No cowboys on there
@@BrianCompston Look at the heat geek map.
10:33 i think the editor forgot something
Can I ask..
Can a heat pump set separate temps for different circuits?
Eg..set ufh to 35c, rads to 50c, water to 65c?
Here in Sweden we’ve been heating our 162 sq meter house with a heat pump and it works great. The only other sources of heat are the heated tile floors in our bathrooms and our entry foyer. We also have solar and solar batteries and our current electric bill only goes up above 0 in the winter, but averages about 1050 kroner a month for 5 months, which is about £75/month (or €90 or US$95)
The electricity generating and supply grid will not be able to cope with much more of an increase in demand. It would cost £Billions to upgrade and that cost will be covered by even higher bills. Either way electricity and gas will become a luxury item for millions of people.
National grid say otherwise. And it's not like everyone is going to get a heat pump overnight, they take time to roll out.
The transition is needed to meet our Net Zero commitment and help the planet. It will cost money to upgrade to a more sustainable grid, but we should save money from the efficiencies of electric cars and benefit from less pollution from heating.
@@Biggest-dh1vr Absolutely deluded. Your heat pump parts and EV parts are manufactured in China in factories that are powered by fossil fuel.
@@BenIsInSwedenthey said that about EV’s…
@@leecromer3289 and?
Look at the commemts, some bragging that they have three electric cars a heat pump, solar battery, solar panels. They are not your average person, hence the bragging. So what we have are well off people who could easily afford a gas boiler and non EV's but they just can't help virtue signalling to show us how they live such wonderful lives.
There are schemes that continue to deliver heat pumps, batteries and solar to those less well off too. Heat pump installs can cost from £500. Secondhand EV prices are now more reasonable allowing more people to save on their motoring.
@@Biggest-dh1vr you will never get a heat pump, solar and batteries for the same cost as a combie boiler. As said in the video a heat pump alone will not save you any running costs but will cost more to purchase and install. Combie boiler tiny, all the other heat pump related equipment quite large space required. Many new houses are tiny, not practical for a hp.
@@Biggest-dh1vr I work for a major heating manufacturer and you couldn't be more wrong.
They're wealthy because they save money not because they have a huge income..
Well said!
A really good review here. Very understandable.
The weather over the two weeks will drop and snow 🌨️ about 4 inches expecting. Please track energy over that time and how often it uses the secondary heating and what kWh over that time and what a typical bill at normal rate it would be
There is no secondary heating.
And I’ve a full years usage in the channel.
I can't believe some of the Luddite comments here. Heat pumps are 3-4 times more efficient than a gas boiler. Can be run on electricity from renewable sources. Are very low maintenance. Like the internal combustion engine the gas boiler is very old inefficient technology.