Heat Pumps: anyone have one/thought about it?

[fish]

Right, so our boiler has decided to go to the scrap heap in the sky which has us in a rather large dilema. A replacement boiler is going to be around 3k (oh joy) or the alternative is go absolutely mad, get an air source heat pump and solar/battery array installed and hope for a payback of less than 20 years. This would effectively mean us removing gas from the property altogether and moving over to fully electric.

The question i have is, does anyone have an air source heatpump in an older house and whats ytour experience with them.

Cheers

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

I don't have one. But whenever I see them mentioned or see articles about them it's always about how they aren't worth it and don't work any better than traditional gas boilers.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Solar panel production figures

SE looks the place of magical proportions the data shows!

forums.overclockers.co.uk

 

[koolpc]

Plus i heard they are noisy?

 

[gazref]

I've been looking into the cost feasibility of these ashps too. Unless the cost of gas becomes more punitive you'll need to crunch the numbers to see if they work for you.

If your house is suitable a battery system/overnight tariff and heat recovery system might provide the quickest return on investment.

 

[alphaomega16]

Maybe if I win the lottery.

 

[Rroff]

I don't know much about them but as I've mentioned before, just before I moved to where I'm living now there was some kind of local scheme (replacing oil fired boilers) to install heat pumps and pretty much no one has anything positive to say about the air source ones, the people with ground source ones seem happier. I have no idea whether that is due to something specific to the installations on that scheme, people's expectations/user error or whatever though.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Plus i heard they are noisy?

Ours is much quieter than our neighbours oil fired boiler and than our old gas boiler.
Very occasionally, if the ASHP is running at full speed, it can make a bit more noise but when that happens it's because it's extremely cold outside so we're not spending time outside and our windows are shut. 99% of the time it makes very little noise.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Right, so our boiler has decided to go to the scrap heap in the sky which has us in a rather large dilema. A replacement boiler is going to be around 3k (oh joy) or the alternative is go absolutely mad, get an air source heat pump and solar/battery array installed and hope for a payback of less than 20 years. This would effectively mean us removing gas from the property altogether and moving over to fully electric.

The question i have is, does anyone have an air source heatpump in an older house and whats ytour experience with them.

Cheers

Have a look at the post I linked up above.
The one thing I would say is that if you have an old house, you may need to increase insulation, reduce drafts, and change radiators to get the benefits of an ASHP.
I don't think a straight swap between gas boiler and ASHP would work in an old house. ASHP heating is slow heating, so if the heat is lost as fast as it comes in you'll be cold.
For us, going from LPG boiler to ASHP with solar panels has been great. Our running costs are around half what they used to be.

 

[bigmike20vt]

Right, so our boiler has decided to go to the scrap heap in the sky which has us in a rather large dilema. A replacement boiler is going to be around 3k (oh joy) or the alternative is go absolutely mad, get an air source heat pump and solar/battery array installed and hope for a payback of less than 20 years. This would effectively mean us removing gas from the property altogether and moving over to fully electric.

The question i have is, does anyone have an air source heatpump in an older house and whats ytour experience with them.

Cheers

I don't have one yet but have done some research as one way or another I am ditching gas when the boiler is end of life.
before you even consider one make sure your house insulation is really good
make sure you do not have microbore pipes
you may need to replace your radiators (it depends)
underfloor heating works better than radiators as I understand it.

ASHP are brilliant in new builds and they can work in retrofits BUT if you don't do it right you can end up very dissapointed. I don't know for certain but I would wager any council based schemes to trial were half assed.

as for what you have read about them........ not all info sources are equal. I knew our press were shocking but over the last 3 years , getting solar and an EV my eyes have been opened to just how bad some of our gutter press is, especially WRT renewable energy and things like EVs. they have a tirade of miss information and half truths against them and always fail to cover the positives.

that said....... in this case you can't just blindly get one you need to do the prep first and as you are in need right now, it may be worth giving a miss this time.

(solar and battery however..... if you can afford it, and are not moving house in the next 7 years ish and you house does not need reroofing any time soon...... let's just say I will never not have solar and battery now, so I would say do those and maybe get a new gas boiler for now but next time you decorate start to prep for something better next time.)

 

[robj20]

Like all things they'll no doubt get better and cheaper so I'll wait until it's obvious that they are worth it.
Ours is an older house that should breath so I don't think a heat pump would work.

Right now the wood burner does about 80% of the heating all winter for around £400 and that's with Windows open a bit for some air flow.

 

[throwaway4372]

Thought about it. My house is very well insulated, so it's an ideal candidate for it. The problem is I really want to get rid of the hot water tank because ultimately the heat ends up in the house and it gets too hot - and I'll eventually have AC so I'll be paying twice for that energy, once to heat water and again to cool the house. So IMO a water tank doesn't make sense for a well insulated house, especially one that isn't big and I'm the only resident. There are electric boilers, the only problem with them is leccy cost, but there's every reason to believe electricity will be cheaper in the future as we get more renewables/nuclear and decouple the price from gas. So I think rather than struggling to push everyone into heat pumps the govt would be better off getting leccy prices down, then people can choose electric boilers, much simpler solution.

 

[bigmike20vt]

a modern water tank will be so well insulated you won't get any heat loss of note through it.
not saying you should get a water tank heating system.... but I don't think that is a reason not to

 

[throwaway4372]

Doesn't match my experience. My water tank is modern. Insulation doesn't stop heat loss it just slows it. Eventually that heat ends up in the house.

 

[China Man]

I am also looking at replacing my heating system to heat pumps, I have solar, batteries and invested in some wind farm and solar farm. I find air source heat pump still not economical viable as it dependent on air temperature for efficiency claimed, the cold winter months it will be very inefficient. I have a big garden and if I install ground loop for ground source then it will be a different story.

 

[LiE]

Is AC not a viable way to heat the house? We don't have gas at our business and the AC heats the place nicely and cools in the summer heat.

Hot water comes from an immersion heater/tank.

 

[robj20]

Is AC not a viable way to heat the house? We don't have gas at our business and the AC heats the place nicely and cools in the summer heat.

Hot water comes from an immersion heater/tank.

You can get some AC that work as heat pumps to heat the house.
Older AC just have heating elements in the indoor unit, so very different approaches to the same end result.

 

[LiE]

You can get some AC that work as heat pumps to heat the house.
Older AC just have heating elements in the indoor unit, so very different approaches to the same end result.

Ah ours is quite new and doesn't have a heating element. It's meant we no longer have to use the underfloor heating to heat the business which was very expensive.

 

[fish]

Thanks for all the replies so far guys we are going to get and evaluation done on the property to see where we stand. Although the property is older we did a substantial renovation around 5 years ago and changed all the windows and upgraded the insulation significantly so I’m hoping that will help. We have 2 wood burners which if lit will heat the house fine on their own so t may be the push we need.

 

[rangor gubbins]

Thanks for all the replies so far guys we are going to get and evaluation done on the property to see where we stand. Although the property is older we did a substantial renovation around 5 years ago and changed all the windows and upgraded the insulation significantly so I’m hoping that will help. We have 2 wood burners which if lit will heat the house fine on their own so t may be the push we need.

If you've also got alternative heating from wood burning stoves, I'd say that works well with an ASHP. When it's really cold and damp, which is the worst weather for ASHP efficiency due to ice build up on the coils, you can rely on the stoves. For the rest of the year the ASHP will work well.

If you do go for an ASHP make sure you use a reputable installer that does a proper heat loss calculation.
Size the water tank correctly. The water tank can act as a thermal store so I think it's useful to go slightly larger than you would normally especially if you've got solar panels/thermal coupled to the water tank.
I'd also recommend having thermostats and zoning the pipe loops so you can control which areas of the house are heated more and which less.
ASHPs get expensive when you run the flow to rads or UFH at higher temps. Try to keep below 45° C flow temp. Use larger bore pipes (ours are 22mm).