Environmental concerns and the move towards Heat Pumps

We are house moving and have been looking at a house with a defunct boiler. If we bought the house we would eplace it with - another gas boiler.

The house was built in the 1930s and, at the moment, installing a heat pump is just too expensive and problematic. I would rather wait a few more years until the technology, which has been around for a long time, has become better and more efficient.

Of course, if the government took all the environmental taxes off electricity and put them on gas instead, that would change the economics and would make replacing a gas boiler with an electric one, quick simple and much, much cheaper or even individual room heaters linked and controlled centrally. Currently either of these quick and simple alternatives are counted out because electricity is so expensive.

I turned down buying a new build house, the heat pump was located below the main bedroom window. Don`t let the wool be pulled over your eyes, they are noisy and irritating. I would never have a heat pump.

I have gas ch and underfloor heating downstairs in my new build detached, if my quiet efficient boiler ever breaks down I would get a new one but cannot see that being needed for many years. If gas is phased out then it would I would get an electric boiler as my house is very well insulated

Btw return on solar panels will take between 11 and 15 years if they are wholly south facing

I doubt gas will be switched off in my lifetime. If I live another 25 years I still would not recover a heat pump plus insulation plus new radiators, etc., cost.

The heat pump is actually a very inefficient way to heat your radiators. Very expensive way to heat.
My dh has researched into it. There are other options which are more economical. Consider underfloor insulation (we have minimum 150 cm going up to 200 cm). Underfloor heating will keep your home warm and cosy. You can have electric or water using your existing boiler. Electric is a little more expensive but once it comes to temperature it is economical. Thermostats in each room enable you to control where and when you heat.
We have insulation on the inside of our walls which also helps keep heat in. Local builders etc have taken a lot of interest in the way we have improved our home. One has even started to insulate his own home to higher spec. Good luck with your research

I bet she wan't also paying of a bill of thousands for installation.
Your Mum was lucky to get a sheltered housing flat, whatever the heating. They are like hen's teeth around here, especially for people not already in Housing Association accomodation.

A friend of mine waited several years for his tiny flat. Unfortunately it is upstairs and he has severe mobility problems but it has the advantage that he rarely has to use his heating as the flat downstairs keeps his warm - accidental underfloor heating.

When my mother was in her sheltered housing flat she had electric plug in radiators which could be set with a timer like central heating. Her flat was always warm and her bills were not extortionate.

Back to practicalities. For an air pump to be sufficient, yuo need a well-insulated house. I was brought up in a rather nice, 3-bed new build council semi with a big garden at the back and a smaller patch at the front. Lovely, but chilly with it's livingroom coal fire, nothing in the dining room and a coke boiler in the kitchen which heated the water in the winter. My bedroom was unheated. We used a very unsafe parafin heater in the bathroom. Chilblains at night, frost patterns on the inside of the living room windows in the morning. Poor insulation. Those houses still in Social use have been having insulating cladding added externally, installed by the Housing Association. They will have had their attics insulated as well. But the windows are 25 years old. Not the best, although still better than the single glazing and draughty wooden surrounds they were built with. Plenty of room for an air pump, probably room for larger radiators and tanks. But I read a few days ago that many houses around the country with the cladding installed about 3 years ago are now smothered in mold internally and the cladding must be redone. Any small gap lets water in and traps it.

My 1970s Wimpey's no-fines "solid" wall property has an extra radiator in the livingroom, insulation in the attic, top quality double glazing and leak free external doors (paid for by me, after I bought it). The walls should have been 12" thick to insulate them, but Council budgets meant that they were built only 8" thick. My research indicates that there is NO WAY the insulation of the walls can be safely improved. There were a lot of these houses built. My elder daughter and SIL own a 3 bed version and have problems keeping it warm even with a new boiler and plenty of money to pay the bills. Their garden situation is even worse than mine. They have the "Patio door" version at the back and an even smaller, North facing garden. These houses, both the no-fines terraces and the older, breeze block semis are everywhere in the country, in their hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions.

I can afford my current bills. OAP and widow's work pension. I heat the livingroom. The rest gets no heat except the bathroom for a bath when I need one and in the very coldest weather the bedroom for a while before bed. I have hot water 2 days a week and a gas cooker. I pay £70-£80p.m. at present, dual fuel. A heat pump is designed to run continuously day and night, summer and winter, with electric "panels" kicking in if the 35C flow temp can't be reached otherwise. Heat in winter, AC in Summer. How the hell would I pay for that?

The town where I live used to be jam-packed with some of the best scientists in the country. The first wind turbine I ever saw wasin the back garden of a house near me. Possibly designed, built and installed by the residents. It was there for a few years but had to be removed when the Council "officially" noticed it (probaably a complaint from someone). I totally believe there is Climate change. It has changed a lot just over the last 30 of my 77 years. But the fact remains, although this country might not be as cold as Canada, it is still too cold to have no heating!

That's my standpoint. I'll go back to practicalities seperately.

If electicity was cheaper we could just replace our gas boilers with electric boilers. Electric boilers are very simple, cheaper to buy and do not require any changes to existing heating systems.

Air source heat pumps operate on electricity Romola! We have one and are all-electric.

From what I have read of heat pumps I wouldn't currently go for them - few of our houses are up to spec when it comes to insulation and plumbing, so the outlay would be quite a lot. I read somewhere recently that someone had two heat pumps installed, purely to cover a failure because support engineers can be few and far between in some places.

We installed solar panels a few years ago (again, not an option for every house) and I'm watching the domestic wind turbines and solar fences with a lot of interest. The Japanese have developed a small domestic wind turbine for fitting anywhere around the house or garden that doesn't make a noise and is (apparently) non intrusive. Also the development of the really thin solar panels that can be fitted on walls instead of roofs. Non of this is readily available at the moment, and probably too expensive for most of us, but in a year or two we'll see.

Casdon, thanks for posting about your all-electric system.
With all the investment going into creating carbon neutral electricity, we are told that it will become cheaper eventually.
Perhaps air source heat pumps are an intermediate technology which will become obsolete.

I didn’t cherry pick a few scientists, and I don’t think the whole of the rest of the scientific and research community see it as a fact. I don’t have figures but I would imagine there are many amongst them who are skeptics as just talking to people generally I have found a 60/40 split in opinion.

my hubby works for a heat pump company and we were mega keen to get one when we moved into our 1960's bungalow BUT due to our antiquated heating system this was not possible, and also the lack of insulation would be pointless, so although they are promoting it very few houses can actually support this without huge outlay to update everything else in the house to make them efficient

Oh my giddy aunt.
Climate change is not a belief. You cannot generalise about cherry
pick a few scientists who are like dear Trump deniers but the whole of the rest of the scientific and research community sees it as a fact.

You cannot generalise about heat pumps, the technology is improving all the time and new air source pumps are better, quieter and smaller than they were. I went to a heat pump party ! At a three bed terrace house, pump tucked against the rear wall, about the same noise or less than our gas boiler. Only two radiators had to be enlarged and most of the pipe work remained the same. The tanks fitted in the airing cupboard. The total cost was £1,700 including all the making good, after a hefty government grant. The electricity used is economical.
We are considering it for our house but suspect our small detached house may be insufficiently insulated, but I await the survey with interest.
Whether they work will depend on the house and the technology. Octopus are great for an initial opinion. And if your house is of the size that fits one of the ones they typically supply you benefit from the bulk ordering and the price is kept down.

We replaced our very old gas boiler last year, so glad we did as I don’t want a heat pump. Who is going to pay for it and all the disruption they cause, new radiators, redecorating etc. I am a climate change non believer and in my opinion Ed Silliband is an idiot. It’s all about the money and whatever we do is not going to make one jot of difference if the rest of the world don’t join in. I looked back to the eighties at of a lot of predictions made by scientists and none of them have come true. Apologies to climate change believers.

We have had a heat pump for 16 years. It has just reached the end of its life.

Before it was installed, a lot of work had to be done to bring the house's insulation up to scratch.

Prior to having it, the house was (poorly) heated by a storage heater in the kitchen and a coal fire with backboiler in the lounge which provided hot water and heated two or three radiators upstairs. Oh, and the built-on downstairs bathroom/toilet had a tiny electric dimplex heater on the wall that struggled to raise the temperature in there above 8° in winter.

Our energy costs dropped dramatically once the heat pump (air- source) was up and running, and the whole house was so much warmer.
The electricity bill alone was lower than it had been previously, before even taking the saving on coal into account. (There is no gas in our village, so that was never an option.)

The system was entirely trouble-free for about 12 years, but has had many repairs over the last 4 years, often leaving us with no heat or hot water for weeks at a time while waiting for the repairs to be carried out. Now, after 16 years, it has reached its end and is due to be replaced in the next month or so.

But would I recommend this system? Not if you own your own home and want to save money.
We don't own our house, and didnt have to pay for any of the associated costs: the system itself; installation, servicing; replacement parts/repairs. Once those things are taken into account, I am not convinced that there would have been any savings whatsoever.

That said, some energy supplier offer cheap deals to some of their customers - our neighbour is about to have a heat pump put in for not much over £4,000. Personally though, I would still advise anyone to think carefully about it unless money is simply not an issue.

Homestead62

I will not be having a Heat Pump, they are no use in Scotland as it gets so cold here and the size of them and the noise! I have good relationships with my neighbours and want to keep it that way. Why are they being forced upon us, when our own Houses of Parliament refused them? Due to the noise I may add. Someone is getting very rich and my guess is Elon Musk because if the Heat Pump is made by Tesla, it's his company.

For you disdain of Musk, better look to this company who makes plenty of profit. No heat pump for me either.
Who is the biggest manufacturer of heat pumps?

Heat Pump Manufacturer Ranking

RankCompanyClick Share1Guangdong New Energy Technology Development Co., Ltd.11.5%2The Whalen Company9.5%3Daikin Applied5.6%4Systemair AB5.2%

There currently are grants for installing ghem
But you really need solar panels apparently according to our local energy experts and battery storage. And many houses will not. Be a le to have one, even if you have solar panels. And batteries. But think of all those back to bsck houses, and houses with a tiny back yard and no front garden, they won't be a le to have one
I can't have one in my current house

My gas boiler is at least twenty years old and working fine.
I had it serviced this year too.

I don’t like heat pumps and would never get one.
If the present one packs up, I’ll replace with another gas boiler.

I certainly won't have a heat pump. The cost is horrendous and from a friend who lives on the south coast don't expect to be lovely and cosy. Bought a bungalow type property, had it fully refurbished, internal redesign, super location with access under house to accommodate pipes etc. They are not impressed. As for environment, my local council won't even collect glass (bottles etc) I have to collect and take them to collection centre when box full, or stick in landfill bin. Battery production/disposal, still not convinced they save pollution.

We recently renovated outbuildings into our retirement home.The house is well insulated where possible but has loads of windows in the living room.We have underfloor heating and a heat pump which has kept the house cosy and warm even through the coldest part of the winter.The pump is not huge neither is it noisy, all we hear is a gentle hum. The upstairs radiator is no larger than normal,just a bit deeper. Best of all, we were given a government grant of 7500 pounds so the total cost of pump and installation was around 1500 pou

My friend has a period house, she has a heat pump and the house is never quite warm enough. She needs her wood burner.

I wasn't implying all properties are suitable - but was agreeing with Summerlove that being in Scotland is not relevant to the heat pump issue.

But I agree about solar panels and building regs. Especially now we have better looking solar panels - including some that look just like tiles!

NotSpaghetti

*Homestead62*, Summerlove is right.
Today's heat pumps work efficiently as low as -25°C.
Norway is full of them

Norway isn’t full of drafty Victorian terraced houses or the many older buildings we have in the UK. It also has a small population, less than London alone.

I do think solar panels on new-build houses should be mandatory, at the very least. They’re not much use in deep winter but now the sun is shining mine are making about 4kw of energy a day, which is about half my daily usage.