by Adam Apperley, Boilerhut Ltd.
The government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme offers homeowners the opportunity to get up to £7,500 towards an air or ground source heat pump installed in their homes. But is it a good deal?
Boilerhut has been examining the costs and benefits of heat pumps versus more traditional gas, LPG, and oil boilers. And it’s not all as good as it seems.
Heat pumps for new homes
The benefits of fitting a heat pump into a new home are clear. The new home can be built with a heat pump in mind, meaning high-performance insulation, low heat loss windows and doors, and the correct size pipework and radiators. However, new homes don’t benefit from the government grant of £7,500.
Retrofitting a heat pump
If you are considering a heat pump, there are a couple of things to really consider before taking the plunge. Firstly, do you have any recommendations on your home EPC report? These will all need to be actioned and can include new doors and/or windows and cavity and loft insulation—not too expensive but not cheap either.
The main issue will be moving the hot water around your radiators. For most heat pumps to work at their most efficient, they’ll output water at 40 degrees centigrade, which is considerably lower than a gas, LPG, or oil boiler.
In order to heat your home effectively, you may need to completely repipe your home and change all your radiators. This will allow the heat pump to get enough heat into your property to warm it effectively, but it would come at a huge cost and inconvenience.
Will solar panels help me with a heat pump?
No, not really. If you think about when you need your heating and when solar panels will create the most electricity, they’re at completely different times of the year. You also need to consider that 25-35% of the electricity in the UK is created using natural gas in power stations, and this is higher in the winter as solar panels produce less energy.
Won’t a heat pump save me money?
Only if the home improvements allow you to run it as it’s most efficient. Then, only if you live in the home long enough to see the return on an installation of around £14,000-20,000. And consider: Is it the heat pump saving you money or the efficiency of your home reducing the requirement for heating altogether?
At Boilerhut, we speak to people all the time who want a new boiler because they spend just as much money on electricity as they used to on gas, if not more.
What’s the answer?
Often the best choice for a homeowner is to replace an old boiler with a new, highly efficient one. It sounds odd to say, but with all the work to make a home efficient enough to get the government grant for a heat pump it would hardly need to be on anyway, so why pay so much for the heat pump?
Boilerhut recommends carefully considering all this. Paul Hughes, manager at Boilerhut, advises: “Homeowners are better off upgrading to a new highly efficient gas, LPG, or oil boiler and smart thermostat and making changes to their home insulation to help reduce the frequency of use.
“Heat pumps are great products, but they currently don’t work for most homes in the UK and retrofitting them will cost a lot of money during a time when everything is costing more. The Viessmann 100-W is 94% efficient, and the 200-W is 98% efficient and a whole lot cheaper to install than an air source heat pump.”
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