Heat pump supplier criticises heat pump efficiency

An expert is prepared to impact his own business by talking facts, but all the SNP/Greens do is talk false and misleading soundbites.

How often do you experience power cuts? The performance of the heat pump depends on the glycol mix and outside temperature. The home needs to be very well insulated as it heats slower at lower temperature than gas boilers. We have a long way to go before there will be enough skills to both install and understand these boxes before rolling out in Scotland, let alone the rest of country.

My daughter had a heat pump system installed about 3 years ago. Had nothing but trouble initially because it had not been installed correctly and now her electricity bill has way more than doubled, relative to before crisis, because it has to use the immersion heater to get hot enough water and the radiators do not get hot enough for a comfortable heat. She is now going get a log burner installed in the lounge in order to be warm enough in the winter. She has three young children. She wishes she had got a modern oil boiler, no gas here, for a huge amount less. Her house is typical 3 bed 30's and is well insulated. The noise at night is annoying especially in the winter. My oil condensing boiler is very efficient and the winter bonus the gov. gives us more than covers cost of oil. Our solar panels more than cover our electricity bills, we live in a good sized 40's 3 bed bungalow which we have insulated as far as we can, loft, decent cavity fill and good quality double gazing. Log burner in lounge works a treat and by leaving a couple of interior doors open reduces oil consumption. We are lucky that so far our supply of correct logs have cost us nothing through our own natural wastage. Chopping logs keeps you fit as well!!!!! We are in Suffolk not Scotland.

When it comes to the SNP and the Greens , They simply don't listen to anyone except themselves, they take no lessons and learn nothing.
Scotland is a currently a SNP dictatorship, The UK government with all its faults is still better , the best thing that could happen to Scotland is to abolishe the Scottish parliament before its too late for Normal folk .
No wonder people who can leave do .

Reply to the comment left by Dennis Leverett at 01/08/2023 - 12:46
Don’t get me wrong, but our heat pump works but it takes a long time to heat the house or any one room. So we’ve installed an air conditioning unit which cools us on those hot summer days and warms us in winter evenings when we need the extra heat. Retrofitting a ASHP heat pump into an old home is not going to work as they don’t have layers of insulation needed to keep the heat in. Our heat pump costs £190 to service each year and if we ever had to drain the glycol this would cost £2000 alone as it has to be deposed of safely. Ground source Heat pumps on new build is a good option if you have the attached land or able to drill down. Expensive to do but probably worth it in long run

Reply to the comment left by Pete England - PaTMa Property Management at 01/08/2023 - 13:52
Interesting how the ongoing costs of these so-called energy-efficient appliances and vehicles are so high, as well as expensive to purchase and install. Funny, how they all need fossil fuel-based electricity to operate.

How are our institutions getting away with this nonsense?

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 01/08/2023 - 15:16
Only about 35% of our electricity is being generated through fossil fuels the rest is coming through renewables, biofuels and of course nuclear. Very little coal is being used on occasions. Octopus Energy are trying to install ASHP for £8k but costs of importing materials from abroad is why these appliances are so expensive.

Speaking from experience of owing a heat pump. My is brilliant but I’m a rare few…

Heat pumps are great for new builds but require very specific circumstances for retro fits. My rule of thumb is….
1) If your house was built before approx 2001 then forget it the U values simply aren’t there and adding proper insulation is going to be very expensive. Don’t be fooled that you can just bung in a bit of loft insulation and cavity wall fill and that makes it well insulated. You need air tightness also.
2) If you have electric only then forgot it as you will need to install radiators/Underfloor heating/ hot water tank, plumbing in every room, very expensive and intrusive.
3) If you already have gas central heating then replacing it with a heat pump even using the existing pipe work and radiators will unlikely see benefits and breaking even may take decades.

So really the only “good” candidates would be houses built after 2001 and use heating oil. Even then you will need a proper energy assessment to check the heat loss and size the correct heat pump / radiators but with heating oil price declining and government grants significantly reduced and heat pump equipment costs and installations on the rise it make this more unviable.

Basically heat pumps just don’t make financial or technical sense for most if not nearly all existing properties. The problem is exacerbated the colder the ambient temperature so Scotland is pretty much a wright off!