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Originally Posted by Sephiroth
We certainly haven’t. What happens when you go awy for 2 weeks in January? Temperature outside is sub-zero. House cools down to not much above zero; temperature outside rises to the same. There is no heat to transfer into the home.
I believe this is frustrating technology - you’d need a backup heat source- like the one you’ve just switched from.
Like EVs, we’re not there yet., imo.
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From the limited research I have done already, I would tend to agree with you at this point. From what I can see, the devil is in the detail and this is rarely discussed on the information I can see in the public domain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
I did extensive research into heat pumps before eventually installing a wood pellet biomass system because the heat loss at my old house was awful and remedying it was non-trivial due to its construction. At the time I was looking at ground source with a borehole and sealed loop collectors due to lack of available land for trenched ground loop collectors and the relatively poor efficiency of air source heat pumps at the time.
However, that was 15 years ago and in that time, air source heat pumps have become as efficient as ground source pumps were back then. So I’m guessing what I learned then pertains to what you need to do now, which is get a surveyor out who is qualified to do a full heat loss survey on your house (ideally the one where they tape up your front door with plastic sheeting and blow warm air into the property). Find out exactly what the heat requirement for your house is, then get a heat pump installer to specify and cost quote a system for you based on that precise requirement.
Discuss with them whether you’re sticking with radiators, and how much larger the panels will need to be in each room (if at all - if your rads are very old, simply replacing them with super-modern efficient ones *might* be enough). Consider whether you’d like to switch to underfloor heating, downstairs at least. This is the most efficient way to heat a home and is ideally suited to the lower heat output of a heat pump.
As I said, all of this research led us not to go ahead with it, as we learned our house was particularly ill suited. So I can’t advise you on what actually happens when you put one in. But it is definitely worth doing the research.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to detail your past experience. Our house is a 1906 semi but with (old-ish) cavity wall insulation and a modern loft conversion, so it sort of meets the minimum bar. However saying that, the energy rating is probably about a D, most in our road are D.
Our rads are modern but would need some replacing with a larger "footprint" to accommodate the lower heating flow temperatures. We had a quote from Octopus who seem hot (!) on this at the moment. This came in approx 6.5k inc. fitting and new rads where required. Our concerns are how the new (external) unit integrates with the current 22mm CH circuit and so what additional building work is needed to interface into the current circuits, given the current Combi is on the 1st floor.
The other concern is the noise of the unit as we are close to our neighbours and we would not want to create a noise problem. Given that our Combi is still under the 10yr warranty, my instinct is that this is a no for us at this house. I can see though, sooner rather than later, Electricity costs decoupling from Gas given that our Wind, etc. provision will increase significantly and so this option becoming more price competitive.
It is always good to get other's opinions and hear their experiences. It helps to validate (or not) your instincts.