Heat Pumps

My "between the lines" understanding from the reports you mention is that the Government have every intention of increasing the price of gas to make it uneconomical to use it for heating compared to ASHP. Unless I missed it, there was no mention of necessary and inconvenient changes to radiator size or installation of underfloor heating to compensate for the lower temperature of the ASHP water.

Perhaps it's my cynical nature, but someone is going to make a lot of money from anything government-sponsored (PPE anyone?...). Is it time to invest in ASHP, perhaps? Or, a little more speculative, solar power, batteries, and ASHP?

But not if Reform get in... :-)))

Indeed, in this crowded island of ours we are going to be free to make our neighbours' lives even more intolerable with the noise of our heat pumps :-(

What put me off was the extra size of the hot water tank needed to accomodate the larger heating coils. We simply didn't have the space without moving a staircase.

Er. More expensively ITYM Electricity is about 4 times the price of gas due to 'renewables'

Essentially electricity will get more expnsive until the renewable boondoggle collapses and nuclear power takes over. Then it will be so cheap no one will bother with a heat pump anyway.

Unbelievably, it looks very much as though they will.

Well its preferable to domestic violence and screaming babies

One might argue that that extra noise in the local environment could make both of the above more likely!

Dunno about gas prices but in my twilight years there is not going to be a ASHP for us I do not want to spend the rest of my life paying for it just for someone else to benefit from it when I leave this mortal coil. Because we live in a bungalow it is not that I cannot accommodate a ASHP that does not annoy my neighbour it is where do you put all the other paraphernalia that goes with one which on average seems to fill up half a garage. According to the skill builder channel on YT there are some houses that will never be suitable for one.

A few years back I read a government study that concluded every house could be fitted with a ASHP but the older the property the less likely it was a financially viable solution because of the major work also required for insulation etc. It's my opinion that it may also apply to the rabbit hutch sized properties built not too long ago where there was no intention for a hot water tank and relied on near instant hot water from a combi boiler.

Yeah. They will simply gut the houses and remodel them completely for ASHP

But I predict that two things are going to happen.

1. Reform will firm the next government and scrap all the 'green crap'
2. RR will get the greenlight fior nuclear, and electricity prices will fall . Making pure electric heating not so expensive

Well you put the ASHP outside and the tank where the combi used to be...

Nearly right: prices *never* fall. Wasn't electricity from the original fission reactors going to be 'too cheap to meter'? The problem is that the cost of *everything* is vastly higher than the manufacturing cost.

The whole scheme might gain more traction if they didn't farm it out to a bunch of cowboys spamming facebook with snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com contact details and a strong aversion to citing any government sources.

A combi is relatively small and can be hung in the wall somewhere. An ASHP requires two quite large tanks (one for the space heating; one for the hot water). Probably more than would fit in the average airing cupboard, which you would then lose the use of.

No, there is only one tank required for the hot water, as in current houses with a hot water tank. The space the boiler took up would not be required, as the heat source will be outside now. It does not have to be a large tank, the tank size is specified to meet the occupants requirements. 200 litre tanks are typical, but smaller can be fitted if required. It could be fitted into exactly the same space as the current tank if a similar size tank was specified.

Tanks with a similar size as your current one are available. The heating coil inside the cylinder has little impact on the size (volume) of the tank. Buidling Regs require the water storage to meet current B. Regs, and they are based on occupants and bathrooms, there is no need to specify a 200L + tank if the Occupant doesnt want one.

You would find it hard to hear the majority of them at 10 feet away. The Building regs are being slightly loosened to allow the HP to be fitted closer to a neighbouring property, it still cannot cause a nuisance. The vast majority of them are so quiet that you'd never hear them anyway.

If for any particular property gas-heating costs are the same as ASHP heating costs, then any money invested (sic) in the latter will never be recouped, and the interest on the money used to fund it will be foregone. Electricity prices won’t fall for the reason that fabulous sums of money are being made on the back of high gas prices. It doesn’t make financial sense to install a heat pump, and they won’t save the planet either.

This conflicts with what I was told by a number of "experts" at the Everything Electric show last year. So, I had a new gas boiler fitted.