Heat Pumps

We moved into a house with a heat pump a couple of months ago and so far it’s been fine. It’s not very noisy - makes a low hum and though the radiators don’t get red hot the rooms are comfortably warm. However we’re having trouble finding someone to service it. I assume the previous owners had it installed as part of some government scheme (we’re in Scotland) and although the company who installed it are supposed to come to do a free service they won’t send anyone due to distance.

A friend is ignoring heatpumps. he has a big solar array on his roof (a perfectly standard ex council house semi) which produces paractically enough electricity to supply all he needs plus an income and he intends to replace his gas boiler with an electric boiler. Normally ths would be very expensive to run, but he reckons that the free power he gets from his solar array will make running it much cheaper.

So much simpler, so much cheaper. Not an answer for everyone, but, even if you have a small house with a roof facing the right way, it might well be the way to go.

?

Apparently if you use a heat pump with radiators, which would be the case with most houses in the UK, the radiators will have to be bigger than your existing radiators and the insulation in the house has to be upgraded. So it’s not just a case of paying out for the heat pump.