Will Landlords be able to apply for heat pump grants in April 2022?

Reply to the comment left by Martin Weaver at 21/10/2021 - 12:01
They did put larger rads in but to my mind the old ones were too small anyway and were quite old, I was corgi registered for years so have some knowledge. I am surprised how hot the water in the rads does get. The system is a well known quality brand but can't remember who without asking her, she's on holiday at the moment. The overall job was very neatly done and I'm a fussy bugger.

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 21/10/2021 - 12:11
I'm fairly sure heading towards £12,000 all in but can find out if needed. As said previously it was a quality brand. When I had my Solar Panels done a few years ago I went for the dearest quote as all the rest were high pressure salesmen with no knowledge selling cheap Chinese rubbish. The ones I got the company sent round an engineer not a salesman who answered all my questions and all components were German made with a 25 year insurance backed guarantee if power produced ever dropped below a certain level. Had no problems at all in 7 years and annually produce twice as much as I actually use. A neighbour went for cheaper Chinese ones and had nothing but problems.

Reply to the comment left by Dennis Leverett at 21/10/2021 - 11:41
So the only people I know who have one are a retired couple. I didn't know that they still needed the immersion heater.

So if the air-source heat pump needs power to compress the air and they still need the immersion heater, I'm guessing that the running costs are way higher than a modern condensing gas boiler, unless you have also installed photovoltaic panels or tiles.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 21/10/2021 - 13:56
I would say higher than a modern gas boiler but not more than her old boiler. The emersion heater is an auto booster as required although switched on permanently and I turned the stat down a few degrees as the hot water was far to hot with three young children, this should reduce costs a bit.. There is a good supply of hot water as the storage tank is quite big and she has never run out of hot water yet. The shower in the bathroom which works off mains water pressure is amazing and doesn't loose flow if other taps are turned on while in use.. The whole internal works, tank etc. fill a typical floor to ceiling airing cupboard, there's lots of it.

Reply to the comment left by Dennis Leverett at 21/10/2021 - 16:24
So the running costs are higher than for a modern gas boiler then.

All this talk of hear and ground source pumps is just a step too far at the moment. There is NOTHING enviro friendly about scrapping what is in good use now just to replace with a more expensive system that is clearly going to have more installation time/cost/disruption in the process. Not to mention the ever present concern of finding a proper qualified installer in the first place .

I am certainly no expert but from what I have gleaned so far the best approach would be to look to hydrogen replacements for gas boilers first. This will be a phased approach so that as and when boilers need replacing the push is on to get people to choose these over gas replacements. The hydrogen option needs to be a really good alternative in terms of cost and efficiency to persuade people to move. Of course this also needs the infrastructure to back this up at the same time. In parallel the issue of better insulation needs to be addressed...
Only then can further carbon saving/reducing things like pumps etc be considered. If these need the best insulated homes to work at the optimum then what the point of pushing to get them in now?
I'd even suggest that there would not be any need for grants at all if this approach were taken! LL's inevitably replace a heating system if it came to its end of life with the most cost effective option anyway so just make the choices available financially comparable. Same goes for private home owners. No need for government to muddy the waters trying to throw carrots and sticks into the mix. Make the goal and the direction of how to get there CLEAR, have tick points on the way to show when a certain point has been reached and everyone will follow.

Reply to the comment left by DSR at 22/10/2021 - 09:22
I am also sceptical about the heat pumps. Because as far as I can see if a house had photovoltaics and hydrogen generating capacity it could have a gas boiler and also send H2 back to the grid.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 22/10/2021 - 09:26
I'm not that technical to understand the detail in what you are saying, but if true then yes it stands to reason this is a far better idea than pumps.
I just think for all this meddling, if a LL can show he/she is doing everything they can to balance out actual viability of eco measures at that specific property against cost/disruption to tenant/reality of actual £'s saved/actual CO2 saved/ then whatever the answer is is a qualified one.

Reply to the comment left by DSR at 22/10/2021 - 09:34
So if the facts and my assumptions are correct:

- if you take out your gas boiler and put in a ground or air source heat pump the costs of installation will not be covered by the government grant

(So the only way you could recover this is by recovering the extra cost by raising the rent to your tenants)

- the tenants' heating bills will rise

- if we are presently connected to a network that could send/receive H2 then it's not a smart thing to do.

And you aren't going to be able to access any grants unless you put in CWI? Is that the case?

I'd consider photovoltaics, heat-pumps, biomass boilers, heat-recovery ventilation systems. But at the end of the day the only way I could fund this is to raise the rent and the tenants' bills are going to rise anyway.

Reply to the comment left by Martin Weaver at 20/10/2021 - 13:04
Well said Martin.