Air Source Heating

4 years ago

Has anyone changed their heating to an Air Source Heat Pump?
I am probably moving to a house with a gas central heating system that I might well replace.
Instead of duplicating the system boiler, with Hot water tank and radiators I was considering an Air Source heat pump.
Has anyone got any experience? Do they work in winter? Are they cheaper than gas? Are they noisy? Are the advertised incentives worth getting excited about?

Featured Answer

home_farm

4 years ago

I think solar is a must for ashp - they work hand-in-hand. Right now, as I type this, it’s a cold day, but the sun is shining, so all our heating for the past 2-3 has been generated by the panels and the house is maintains a good temperature.

We also get feed-in-tariff payments from the government and will do so for a long time to come.

You‘ve asked an excellent question. I will work out our solar PV contribution and see whether it was a good investment... I don’t have an immediate answer. Will pull all the required data next week and get back to you on it.

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Comments (14)

Jonathan
Original Author
4 years ago
My research suggests this type of system is eligible for a Government incentive which works out at around £500 a year (for 7 years) for a family sized house. The cost of heating the house should go down too.
The cost of installation seems to be about £2000 more than a conventional system boiler so it should pay for itself within a few years- do other people agree with these figures?
Any other comments?
PRO
OnePlan
4 years ago
Are you in a good location to add solar too ? To run it ? ie not too many trees blocking a roof full southern sunshine for about 8-12 panels ?
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Jonathan
Original Author
4 years ago
Thanks Karen- it looks to me as though the incentives for solar panels makes it more difficult to recoup the investment than ASHP but I think it remains a good option for hot water heating
Suzanne Burnell
4 years ago
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><md>We’ve literally just had it done in our house. We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom old flint cottage. We have double glazing throughout and good loft insulation which will what is required from your house to get the government incentive. It cost us about £16,000 and over seven years, we will get about £10,500 back in quarterly payments which may be more as it’s index linked. We needed a new boiler and that was going to cost about £4,000 so felt it was a good time. So far, we have constant hot water and because it’s still so warm outside, have turned our radiators off so that they don’t come on, which is what they were doing rather randomly. We are still trying to work out the settings! The water tank takes up more room than our boiler did. If you want, I’ll take a pic of ours and post it. No more oil bills but I understand my electricity bill will go up. The unit outside is quite big, and has to be not too close to neighbours or seen from the road. Again, I’ll post a pic if you want. I hope this helps. Definitely do it for the planet.......
Jonathan
Original Author
4 years ago
@honeymummy that’s for sharing your experience. My research suggests installation of an Air Source heat pump should be £6-8k versus the a £4-6k gas boiler. What you paid seems a lot more - is there a reason for that or is my research flawed?
PRO
OnePlan
4 years ago
An article in next months Ideal home magazine suggests about £15k. ( bought it yesterday )
PRO
OnePlan
4 years ago
(Page 99 of October Ideal Home magazine)
PRO
OnePlan
4 years ago
Oh - hang on - this one in Mag is a ground source heat pump ! Sorry !
Suzie Dolan
4 years ago
I looked Into the air source pumps as a solution and all was looking well until I tried to apply for the grant. my home had a gas boiler on a single pipe system and was not powerful enough to heat the house. lucky if 5 rooms got heated. full heating system needed overhauling especially now as we built an extension.
recommendations were that we could get the air source pumps in and get a grant. estimated cost based on our house size was 12k. rebate would be around 10k so effectively would cost us 2k. however the plan was to get this financed and the rebates would cover the cost.
however the grant was refused as we were not changing from oil or electric heating and the main heat source in the area was gas.
we are now having had central heating installed with unvented boiler at approx 11k.
the estimated running costs of air pumps was likely going to cost a little bit more each year as electricity is more expensive than gas unless we had solar panels also.
there is a tool available online for you to use to compare. might be worth a comparison.
Suzanne Burnell
4 years ago
Gosh, I don’t know how your research came up with such a small amount but our price included the dismantling and disposal of our old boiler, 6 new radiators (as the old ones were over 25 years old), a water tank and the removal of our oil tank. You may find, like Suzie above, you won’t get the government grant if you have gas. This is only for people with oil or electric heating.
Jonathan
Original Author
4 years ago
@honeymummy. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that a typical air source heat pump installation will cost you around £6000 – £8000. But you have had a bigger job done by adding radiators. Also removing the oil tank could have been as much as £2k of your total bill.
Separately gas customers are eligible
home_farm
4 years ago
Our air source heat pump has now been operational since the spring. It’s time to see how it performed over the course of the past three months as part of our autumn air source heat pump review.

To see how it performed over the autumn, including a very cold November, please check out this video.

Additional information and data available here: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/caernarfon-18kw-autumn-air-source-heat-pump-review
Jonathan
Original Author
4 years ago
@Home_farm thanks for your reply. I have watched your Autumn blog so answered a lot of the questions I had.
I did notice that your solar panels seem to only be producing about 5% of the electricity you need. Is that right? Do you think the acquisition price for solar panels makes it worth it?

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