Air sourced heat pumps

We are all going to face an enormous jump in our fuel bills this year as a result of the jump in the price of gas.

It might be a good opportunity, if your house is well insulated - roof, and walls, if not floor, to move to electric heating. Cheap to install, whether boiler, convector (computer controlled, whole house system) or modern storage heaters and as the cost of gas starts to equate with the price of electricity, you will have already absorbed most of the price differential already.

I doubt hydrogen will replace natural gas for domestic use. The hydrogen molecule is a lot smaller than methane, butane or propane and therefore the whole distribution pipework system would have to be upgraded to eliminate leaks and the risk of leaks causing explosions. Hydrogen is probably viable for industrial heating.

But hydrogen needs electricity to make it so you use more electricity by using hydrogen than heating directly with electricity.

The trouble with using night time electricity is that we’re also told not to leave appliances unattended. No one is going to want to be up at 2am watching their smalls going round in the washing machine!

I switched on the radio the other day, half way through an interview with a bloke (some expert or other) who was saying that if the increase in electric use continues, there will be shortages before too long and there will need to be some sort of persuasion for people to use more at night - for laundry, storage radiators and battery charging etc. He also said the whole of the National Grid needs upgrading as it's not up to the foreseen demands. Perhaps that's why hydrogen is being mooted as an alternative to gas heating.

In which case, Katie39 a couple of electric heaters, should meet all requirements and either a water tank with an immersion heater, or an instant water heater like an electric shower, will do the job for several hundred pounds.

New smaller properties especially apartments are often all electric, they are so well insulated and often unoccupied during the day that the cost of a boiler system is not justified.

M0nica

PippaZ ground source heat pumps, need a lot of available land, unless you bore down vertically, which is an incredibly expensive thing to do. Quite how you could run a pipe array able to supply a block of flats I cannpt think. It would need to be an air to air unit in every flat.

Thanks, M0nica. I haven't studied any of this, but we will need to do something in the future. I am surprised they haven't put solar panels on the roof if only to run the building's electricity.

JaneJudge

^Maybe there needs to be a free scheme for everyone to have their home insulted^
I don't think Kirsty Allsop works for free

Hahaha! ??. Oh for an edit button! (Memo to self, don’t mention edit buttons on GN.

?????

Thanks for giving me a good laugh Sue and Jane!!!???

We are back to the "new builds should have better eco credentials" debate I feel.

Mamissimo How many people can afford to spend £18,000 upgradingtheir house and installing a heat pump?

It is the expense over everything that makes me think that elelctric boilers or individual electric heaters will be what most people buy, from sheer necessity. An electric boiler, fitted could cost under £2,000 and a houseful of electric room heaters with central control would also come out at much the same price.

Maybe there needs to be a free scheme for everyone to have their home insulted
I don't think Kirsty Allsop works for free

£18k is a lot of money to expect ordinary people to find. That’s not just loose change you find down the back of the sofa. Maybe there needs to be a free scheme for everyone to have their home insulted etc, like when the UK changed from town gas to NSea gas.

PippaZ ground source heat pumps, need a lot of available land, unless you bore down vertically, which is an incredibly expensive thing to do. Quite how you could run a pipe array able to supply a block of flats I cannpt think. It would need to be an air to air unit in every flat.

The pump is outside MOnica. It’s not a thing of beauty. Ours was installed on a side wall when our house was converted and we have screened it with shrubs without affecting performance. I have seen houses, even new houses, where they are installed on the front wall and are very prominent. I’m delighted with ours but I certainly wouldn’t want it on the front wall. There may be little choice if installing one in an existing property, I don’t know. As you can tell, my green credentials have their limits!

I didn't think of the noise. I live in a flat in an over 60's development and was hoping they would look at a ground source heat pump/s backed up by electricity from solar panels. I'm not sure if it's possible but I hope the service provider does some research.

We used to own a holiday home in Florida and the air conditioning and heat was run on this type of system. There were lots of disadvantages, it was very bulky so had to be outside and because of the heavy rain in some months the life of the unit was shorter than the boilers we use over here. There was also a spate of thefts whereby parts or even the whole unit was stolen so the unit has to be kept secure. It was also very noisy when it started up. The heat or cool air was by vents in the wall so there would be no radiators under this system but vents would have to be installed. I would certainly resist changing to this system, especially since we recently had new radiators installed downstairs.

I love my air pump! We had it installed three years ago when we were finding the labour involved with solid fuel heating too much. We had three radiators replaced with more modern ones and we are double glazed with up to date insulation. We are as snug as bugs! Our electric bills are about the same as they were for electricity and coal as we use solar panels to heat the water.

In all we spent about 18k insulating, going LED lit, solar panels etc and we improved our Victorian home's efficiency to an A rating on our EPC. Perhaps most importantly it's clean, green and comfortable for the rest of our old age. It also added to the value of our home and we get some of the cost repaid by the government over the next 7 years, bringing the total cost down to about £10k.

MamaCaz (upthread) has an air-source heat pump M0nica.

Yes Hydrogen is very inefficient at present but it is vaunted as the “holy grail” of our energy needs, realistically there needs to be quantum leap in the technology for that to happen.

Nevertheless hydrogen into the gas grid is the plan!.

If houses are very well insulated at the same time as they convert to electricity, the cost could be brought down because less electricity will be needed.

I was interested to read up thread of people who have heat pumps, but it is clear that the cost of installation is very high. I have seen figures of £10K plus, and the disruption immense. And probably works in larger homes, but the average small 2 bedroomed house does not have the room for a plant room.

I also would be interested to know what type of heat pump you have. Is it air to air or is it ground to air. If ground to air is it a bored source or pipework spread across a large area of land.

It sounds as though people living on a financial knife edge may not be able to afford heating, Monica. There will have to be some way to help people in that position, otherwise we risk people dying in their own homes of hypothermia.

Hydrogen is very inefficient for domestic heating when electricity can be used directly.

Hydrogen is made from electricity and only 80% of the energy of the electricity is transformed into hydrogen, the rest is used to power the process. This means that heating your house will cost at least 20% more than using electricity and given that there will be a whole lot of costs associated with building the plant to undertake the process, storage facilities, staff etc, at its cheapest, hydrogen will probably be at the very least 50% more expensive than electricity.

The simplest, cheapest and most energy efficient way to heat not just houses,but many other buildings is to replace the gas boilers with an electric boiler or other all elelctric heating system..

At the moment this is very expensive, but as gas is phased out, the comparison will not be with gas but with hydrogen and as hydrogen will cost a lot more than electricity, electricity, no matter how expensive compared with now will be the cheapest and most energy efficient fuel to use.

Heat pumps will only be effective in new builds. For the majority of housing stock, that built before 2000, and especially that built in the earlier years of the 20th century and the 19th century and earlier, then increasing your insulation, dry lining internal walls, making sure roof spaces have maximum insulation and that windows are triple glazed and draft free then replacing the gas boiler with an electric boiler will be by far the best option.

Leave hydrogen for where there, so far, seems no alternative, transport and some industrial uses.