A colleague decided to investigate installing a heat pump for his house. He concluded that the Subsidies available allow installers to charge vast sums for installation, hiding the charges in the small print, and he was quoted about £13,000 to supply and install a £3,000 system. Consequently, he is sticking with his existing oil heating, reckoning it would take about 20 years just to break even if he went for the heat pump.
Longer still if you include all the maintainence it will need and the surprisingly large amount of electricity the compressor consumes. An elderly couple not far from me were conned into buying a system and were horrified that their electricity bill was enormous afterwards.
They changed to avoid "high" oil prices a few years ago. I bet they are regretting it even more bitterly now as 10% annual rises are the norm.
Air source heat pumps have somewhat better economics but are not so hot in the UK where damp winters tend to make them ice up.
I think it's generally accepted that heat pumps really need to be combined with underfloor heating and that is expensive to retro-fit.
If used with conventional radiators they need to generate much hotter water which seriously dents the efficiency of the whole system.
Tim
No surprise there. I saw several iced-up ones in the US when I lived there, I think the first one was in Kentucky, not a notably cold State.
On 25/10/2013 11:38, Martin Brown wrote: ...
One of the three I had in my factories would very occasionally ice up, perhaps a couple of times each year. The other two never did.
Colin Bignell
What did "install" involve? Digging the 2 m deep 1 m wide "trench" to put the hundred or so meters of collector pipe in or drilling a bore hole or two. As has been mentioned heat pumps really only produce "low grade" heat suitable for underfloor heating, did that need to be installed? You can get two stage heat pumps but they are expensive and I'm not sure what the overall COP is.
Can't remember what the RHI payments are likely to be for heat pumps, but then the RHI will only last 7 years(?). Ought to make a reasonable dent in the the capital cost though. Trouble is to get the RHI you have to replace any fossil based space heating with the heat pump system. So no simple fall back when the lights go out...
They are greedy on electric so finding the best tariff for that is critical. I'd look at a hefty heat store and E7 charging the heat store during the cheap rate period but it would need to be a big heat store, 1000 l or more.
The money is made by the RenewableHeat Incentive.
When and if it starts.
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