Anyone watched the TV documentary tonight about Heat Pumps and electricity supplies in general?

[jedisparks]

Around 2016'ish one of my clients had an ASHP installed to heat their drafty old farm house. He called me a couple of years after to ask if I could look at his electricity meter. His leccy bill had racked up £5k for an 18 month period. Hate to think what it is now. Combination of thinking he could save some polar bears and getting bad advice.

 

[DPG]

Around 2016'ish one of my clients had an ASHP installed to heat their drafty old farm house. He called me a couple of years after to ask if I could look at his electricity meter. His leccy bill had racked up £5k for an 18 month period. Hate to think what it is now. Combination of thinking he could save some polar bears and getting bad advice.

Yeah that's just someone who's been ripped off unfortunately. Look at people who have had a decent install done in a modern well insulated house.

 

[jedisparks]

Yeah that's just someone who's been ripped off unfortunately. Look at people who have had a decent install done in a modern well insulated house.

He was ripped off. I felt sorry for him, he thought he was doing the right thing.


More recently, I looked at an EV charger job. Client had an ASAP installed previous year. The contractor replaced the CU whilst there. On a TT system a dual RCD with circuits run off a couple of non RCD protected ways. One of which fed a metal sub DB. The CU change was rough too. This was one of the big local green tech firms. I declined the EV job.

I wonder if old housing stock can be sufficiently insulated for HPs to be effective. There's a heck of a lot out there.

 

[ferg]

I think ASHP can be good under the right circumstances.
As mentioned previously a great deal of the housing in the UK is nowhere near well insulated enough.

I'm not sure how easy / possible it is to upgrade the insulation for older houses to the point where an ASHP is the best option.

If moving away from gas and oil is where we are heading then I think there is a lot more to be done than just chucking in ASHP's everywhere.

Moving away from gas and oil is a massive undertaking and will most likely require more than one solution, new technology and a great deal of compromise.

I can't help wondering if we have become a little spoilt in terms of heating houses to 22c relatively cheaply instead of putting on a jumper etc.

Recent energy costs are perhaps highlighting how wasteful our current housing stock is in terms of heating. Those with lower incomes tend to live in lower quality, in terms of insulation, housing and are less able to fork out the 10's of thousands required to become more efficient.
That leaves the government to foot the massive bill in one way or another.

I'm not sure if there is any new technology in the pipeline to address the issues but there is nothing I'm aware of which just leaves enormous expenditure and upheaval.

By the same token I absolutely think that it's the right thing to do.

In short no answers and lots of questions just like most people.

 

[pirate]

I also agree that heat pumps only work well with properly insulated buildings, and they are expensive. My pal was being persuaded to fit one in her cottage, with a grant of £5k. She would have needed her existing radiators upgraded, new, larger bore pipework PLUS a new hot water cylinder with immersion heater to top up the temperature, at a cost to her of about £15k. I suggested that £15k would buy a lot of heating oil, especially as she only uses about £750/year. Doing the maths, she decided that the huge upheaval for the heat pump installation wasn't worth it, because by the time she had used the £15k worth of oil she'd probably be dead! She decided to go a few more holidays instead! Her neighbour has a heat pump, and the fan noise is annoying too. Considering that a large sector of the population live in flats, heat pumps are not really viable for them either. I'm all-electric, or at least my flat is, and I'm quite happy with that.

 

[DPG]

I also agree that heat pumps only work well with properly insulated buildings, and they are expensive. My pal was being persuaded to fit one in her cottage, with a grant of £5k. She would have needed her existing radiators upgraded, new, larger bore pipework PLUS a new hot water cylinder with immersion heater to top up the temperature, at a cost to her of about £15k. I suggested that £15k would buy a lot of heating oil, especially as she only uses about £750/year. Doing the maths, she decided that the huge upheaval for the heat pump installation wasn't worth it, because by the time she had used the £15k worth of oil she'd probably be dead! She decided to go a few more holidays instead! Her neighbour has a heat pump, and the fan noise is annoying too. Considering that a large sector of the population live in flats, heat pumps are not really viable for them either. I'm all-electric, or at least my flat is, and I'm quite happy with that.

Interesting point re the noise.

 

[pirate]

The usual problem is that the neighbour doesn't hear his fan, but my pal does. It's not that intrusive but it's just "there", so she is aware of it on quiet days and evenings, which are frequent as she lives in a farm steading conversion in the country. I suggested she stick a lollipop stick in the grille, like we did with our bikes when kids, so he would hear it and switch off...but hey, good neighbours are a blessing!