My heat pump: a personal story about a broken heating industry
My heat pump: a personal story about a broken heating industry
It was a freezing Friday evening early in February 2023, when my boiler broke. An engineer was called, several cold days passed, and his declaration came in sombre tones: ‘uneconomic to repair’. Li…
It was a freezing Friday evening early in February 2023, when my boiler broke. An engineer was called, several cold days passed, and his declaration came in sombre tones: ‘uneconomic to repair’. Li…
You're viewing a single thread.
It's weird that heat pumps are seen as so exotic and complicated when they're really just air conditioners plus reversing valves.
- Air conditioners in UK houses are pretty weird and complicated
- Potentially having to rip out aall the (usually underfloor) pipe work and replace all your radiator is pretty complicated, compared to switching out the existing gas-fed box on the wall
- Working out the capacity needed to heat your home is pretty complicated
- Finding the space outside in a small urban garden than can take the unit, without annoying the neighbours next door with the noise can be pretty complicated.
The capacity calculations and potential noise complaints are the big ones imho.
I can definitely see issues with installers not giving a toss about noise, and having to be chased later.
Calculating capacity isn't that complicated, you can look everything up to work it out (wmk losses, etc.), but it is a step up from the current "slap a new boiler in" mentality.
And I wouldn't be surprised if most heating techs don't consider requirement at all when changing a boiler, they'll just put in a big one, and run the rads at 70 if the client complains.
There is talk about ASHPs that can still maintain efficiency at higher temps, which may help a lot of households avoid changing the radiators too. But it's still early days.
You can leave the pipes there. They're not doing much. Radiators aren't much threat either, unless you trip into one.
Not really. Since the radiators operate at a substantially lower temperature, you may well have to replace them - you need larger, more efficient radiators than may be typical with gas-fired systems
Oh, using the same system, instead of switching to forced air.
... why does efficiency matter if the heat stays in the house? They're just always-warm instead of sometimes-hot, yeah?
We don't tend to use air/air heat pump systems in the UK, even for new builds, always air/water.
Because of lower water temperature output of heat pumps compared to the gas boilers they replace, usually you need to increase the size of radiators to be able to achieve a room temperature change in a reasonable time. What is being referred to as efficiently, is actually just a measure of performance of the radiator, not actual energy efficiency.