Air Source Heat Pumps... Questions!

[Eric12]

Funnily enough I was watching couple of youtube vids about heatpumps yesterday.. Make what you will out of these, not looking favorable for heat pumps thou !

 

[plugsandsparks]

Great video, his last comments are a lot more realistic. People, regardless, will work out that wearing more clothing indoors is much more cost effective..... back to caves then, lol

 

[Zerax]

Correctly designed systems work, but the more a house looses heat through lack of insulation the bigger the heat pump needs to be.
It works in Scandanavia because they've had triple glazing and wads of insulation in their timber buildings for years...

That's why the sooner the Building Regulations are changed the better !

 

[LastManOnline]

Heat pumps can work very very well... BUT they need to be implemented correctly. I'm led to believe that they are very popular in Scandinavia... where it's a alot colder than it is here !

Lived in Sweden for a few years. Installed a heat pump which heated downstairs adequately, except for the coldest weeks(minus 30 ) when I would need to supplement with standard electric heaters.Found it to be economical Used standard electric heaters upstairs. If using for air heating only they are really handy to install and also are economical. Using for hot water is where it gets complicated and potentially very expensive.
One tip about heat pumps is to give consideration to where its mounted. Otherwise the noise can become an issue.

 

[Rockingit]

The argument for heat pumps is simply that they run off electricity, which can be produced cleanly (eventually….) whereas a gas boiler will only ever consume fossil fuels.

 

[adamstanly]

Firstly... you need to take what you read/hear about in the media with a pinch of salt... reporters are generally not technical and mis-understand alot of things... I think the plan is to ensure that boilers sold after a certain date can be easily converted to run on Hydrogen as well as Gas.

Yes! that's true,

The Committee on Climate Change estimated that the scheme will install 2.5 million heat pumps in new homes by 2030 in order to meet future carbon targets.

So if it’s not gas, what will it be? Well, hydrogen could play a valuable role as part of a heating solution. Combining hydrogen with heat pumps will allow homes to stay comfortably warm, without harming the planet. Everybody wins!

 

[adonis2]

What about reliability and cost of servicing heat pumps, will we have to find another 15 grand every few years to replace them?

 

[snowhead]

The Committee on Climate Change estimated that the scheme will install 2.5 million heat pumps in new homes by 2030 in order to meet future carbon targets.

So if it’s not gas, what will it be? Well, hydrogen could play a valuable role as part of a heating solution. Combining hydrogen with heat pumps will allow homes to stay comfortably warm, without harming the planet. Everybody wins!

The problem with with trying to convert the Country and the World to heat pumps is the shortage of chips.
That problem isn't going to be sorted in weeks months or even a few years.

Modern gas boilers can run a 20% hydrogen + 80% nat gas mix and that's the immediate future plan.
However it will have to be a localised changeover and injection of the 20% into the network as not all appliances can run on the mix and as with town to natural gas conversion all premises will have to be visited and updated if required.

 

[Zerax]

Getting the general public to like Heat Pump technology... faces the same problem as many other things... Gas Boilers are very cheap to run, are easy to install and everyone expects their house to have one.

It's similar to getting EVs against ICE vehicles... they are relatively cheap to run, plentiful, go 600 between fuel stops and everyone expects to have at least 1

Or getting people onto buses and out of cars... Cars take you from door to door, are often cheaper than buses, you can smoke in them if you want, comfortable and you probably won't have a smelly tramp say next to you !

If they want more Heat Pump technology in the home, and for us to move away from gas... they need to make the argument for gas much worse... I think all you can do though... is put the price up ! Imagine if gas wasn't <4p/kWh, but 15p/kWh the same as electricity. I think then... you'd see alot more people embrace the technology and see who they could implement it. I often go into houses where it's like almost 30°C !!.. the price of gas is too cheap...

 

[snowhead]

Of course now I've watched a couple of Youtube videos their algorithm is bombarding me with more Heat pump company installation videos.
I found this particulary amusing, obviously not run past the Company H&S officer before posting to Youtube.
Just to note as well the steps seem to be on crushed slate not on concrete or other firm material.