He Spent £23,000 On A Heat Pump. 3 Years On, Nobody Can Agree If It Works
Skill Builder
32,269 views
Andrei spent around £23,000 on a heat pump system for his Colchester home. That figure covered 18 new radiators, a water softener and other upgrades as well as the heat pump itself. Three years, one 19 day breakdown, a Section 75 claim and a huge dossier of performance data later, he still can't get a straight answer to a simple question. Is it actually working properly?
We went to both sides. Andrei gave us his records, his bills and his own measurements. The installer gave us a detailed written response defending the design, the installation and the performance of the system. We're not naming them, and this film doesn't try to decide who's right, because on the evidence available to us that isn't something anyone can settle.
What we can show you is why the argument exists at all. The electricity this system used came in close to what the original design predicted. The heat it delivered came in well below. Look at one number and the system is performing as designed. Look at the other and it isn't. Nobody ever put an independent meter on it, so there's no third figure to settle it with.
This isn't an anti heat pump film. The technology works. The difficulty is designing, installing, commissioning and measuring it in a real house, and then explaining it to the person paying for it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Ask your installer for the room-by-room heat loss calculation and the radiator schedule, then check that each radiator can actually deliver that room's heat loss at the flow temperature the system will run at.
A radiator's catalogue output is quoted at a temperature difference far higher than a heat pump will ever run at, so the real output in a heat pump system is a fraction of the headline figure on the brochure.
The SCOP on your MCS paperwork is a theoretical estimate for space heating only. Hot water runs at a much lower efficiency, so the blended figure you actually live with will be lower than the number on the certificate.
Electricity consumption on its own tells you nothing about efficiency. Without a heat meter measuring what comes out, there is no way to prove how well a system is really performing.
Asking for a higher design room temperature sounds like a sensible safety margin, but it pushes up the calculated heat loss, the size of the heat pump and the size and cost of every radiator in the house.
Paying at least part of a large job on a credit card gives you a Section 75 route that other complaint channels may not offer.
There's a second issue we're still investigating, around the published heat outputs for the radiators used in this design. We'll be covering that separately.
If you've been through something similar with your own system, tell us in the comments.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
1:15 Choosing an installer
1:40 Mitsubishi or Samsung
2:11 The pipework decision
2:41 19 days without heating
3:25 The bills and the 3.92 promise
4:02 Losing confidence
5:34 Bringing in Andrew Millward
5:59 Undersized radiators and the buffer
6:41 MCS and the credit card claim
6:55 Arguing over the data
7:23 Weather compensation and the settings
8:55 The radiator output figures
9:38 Advice for anyone buying a heat pump
10:54 The radiator that fell
11:41 The installer responds
13:32 Which data counts
15:11 The installer on the radiator incident
16:45 The installer on the breakdown
17:40 What the £23,000 covered
18:31 Where that leaves us
#HeatPump #AirSourceHeatPump #ASHP #HeatPumpUK #Retrofit #Plumbing #Heating #SkillBuilder
====================
👇 SUPPORT SB - BECOME A MEMBER
@skillbuilder
📪 JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
https://skill-builder.uk/signup
🛒 SEE OUR FAVOURITES ON AMAZON
https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/skillbu...
🎧 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST
https://blubrry.com/skillbuilder/subs...
🎬 OUR VIDEO LIBRARY
@skillbuilder
🔗 SEE EVERYTHING SB ON LINKTREE
https://linktr.ee/skillbuilder
Facebook: skillbuilderchannel
TikTok: skillbuilder
Instagram: skill_builder
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)
====================
OUR FAVOURITE CHARITIES
👷 BAND OF BUILDERS
https://bandofbuilders.org
⛯ THE LIGHTHOUSE CHARITY
https://lighthousecharity.org
💧 CHARITY WATER
https://www.charitywater.org
20 Comments
Now the boiler is only ever firing at 38c flow with the house constantly at 21c in all rooms except for night set back of 15c which would easily be covered by a 14kw Heat Pump but again hot water demand issues.
I am now looking at Andrei's and the surface compared to the size of the radiators is worse - they shouldn't have been fitted. The buffer is a waste as the system volume is more than enough with designer rads especially if it's open zoned regardless of the microbore. Effectively it has been restricted by no fault of the installer as they're doing it by the book the trouble is, every install is bespoke so the book is bare minimum guidance and not exactly appropriate for all installations.
Honestly it's hard, and many of us that have done Heat Geek courses could spend hours problem solving it but you have to have the data sheets in front of you. IE rads, the energy consumption data - though not open energy is good enough for fault finding.
Also designer rads fixings.. What the hell were they thinking. I went ballistic on my colleague when he used the ORANGE rawl plugs that get supplied with BEST HEATING DESIGNER RADS. Different job but it fell down in front of the customer, always use something like the Fischer plugs, preferably the ones that go all the way into the wall (metal sleeved). Yes it bridges the insulation but safety first. Having had to attend an 8ft tall column rad installed by someone else onto a dot and dab wall which fell off the wall and almost killed the girl sat beside it (the thud could be heard 6 floors down in the office block) I would never, regardless of size use plasterboard fixings or basic screws. Idiots.
3. If it’s set for 24C, it’s going to be running September to mid June. 4. Those radiators are inappropriate for a heat pump - I don’t even have a heat pump and I know this!
They're arguing over whose fault that is really, probably more to this story than we're being told.
I wonder why he needs the house so ridiculously hot? I couldn't function in a house like that.
Something important missing too, what were his fuel bills before the install?
It would have been interesting to see what the monthly bills for gas heating were before the ASHP was installed to do a comparison.
Also was the customer shown as part of getting the quote what the new monthly electricity usage would look like after the ASHP was installed.
To get the most efficiency and lowest running costs generally you would want to size the ASHP as small as possible.
But it sounds like there were constraints. 18 new designer radiators sounds like it's a very large house. Also the radiators shown look to be only single panel, you would expect them to be at least double or triple panel to try and reduce the flow temperature and make the system more efficient.
It sounds like multiple things have impacted the heat loss and flow temperature therefore needing a larger ASHP and therefore larger electricity draw.
One way to save some money would be to turn down the thermostat and putting a jumper on inside the house 😂😂 24 degrees for a house is very warm 😅😅
My observation is just a comment on the installation company’s written response. How can they claim to have correctly specified or designed anything at all (with any credibility) when key parts of the design equation were either inadequate or unknown to them? To explain - yes they carried out a heat loss calculation for the property and selected a heat pump to meet the heat loss. That’s the good bit. But they literally have confessed they have no idea if the pipework in the property can transport the heat energy required and they just do not know if the radiators can transfer that required heat energy to the rooms - although they tried to avoid responsibility for that by blaming the customer for supplying designer radiators. They are not system designers because they have no design process and nor have they accepted design responsibility, they cannot delegate areas of system design to the customer.
He Spent £23,000 On A Heat Pump. 3 Years On, Nobody Can Agree If It Works
Skill Builder
32,269 views
Andrei spent around £23,000 on a heat pump system for his Colchester home. That figure covered 18 new radiators, a water softener and other upgrades as well as the heat pump itself. Three years, one 19 day breakdown, a Section 75 claim and a huge dossier of performance data later, he still can't get a straight answer to a simple question. Is it actually working properly?
We went to both sides. Andrei gave us his records, his bills and his own measurements. The installer gave us a detailed written response defending the design, the installation and the performance of the system. We're not naming them, and this film doesn't try to decide who's right, because on the evidence available to us that isn't something anyone can settle.
What we can show you is why the argument exists at all. The electricity this system used came in close to what the original design predicted. The heat it delivered came in well below. Look at one number and the system is performing as designed. Look at the other and it isn't. Nobody ever put an independent meter on it, so there's no third figure to settle it with.
This isn't an anti heat pump film. The technology works. The difficulty is designing, installing, commissioning and measuring it in a real house, and then explaining it to the person paying for it.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Ask your installer for the room-by-room heat loss calculation and the radiator schedule, then check that each radiator can actually deliver that room's heat loss at the flow temperature the system will run at.
A radiator's catalogue output is quoted at a temperature difference far higher than a heat pump will ever run at, so the real output in a heat pump system is a fraction of the headline figure on the brochure.
The SCOP on your MCS paperwork is a theoretical estimate for space heating only. Hot water runs at a much lower efficiency, so the blended figure you actually live with will be lower than the number on the certificate.
Electricity consumption on its own tells you nothing about efficiency. Without a heat meter measuring what comes out, there is no way to prove how well a system is really performing.
Asking for a higher design room temperature sounds like a sensible safety margin, but it pushes up the calculated heat loss, the size of the heat pump and the size and cost of every radiator in the house.
Paying at least part of a large job on a credit card gives you a Section 75 route that other complaint channels may not offer.
There's a second issue we're still investigating, around the published heat outputs for the radiators used in this design. We'll be covering that separately.
If you've been through something similar with your own system, tell us in the comments.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
1:15 Choosing an installer
1:40 Mitsubishi or Samsung
2:11 The pipework decision
2:41 19 days without heating
3:25 The bills and the 3.92 promise
4:02 Losing confidence
5:34 Bringing in Andrew Millward
5:59 Undersized radiators and the buffer
6:41 MCS and the credit card claim
6:55 Arguing over the data
7:23 Weather compensation and the settings
8:55 The radiator output figures
9:38 Advice for anyone buying a heat pump
10:54 The radiator that fell
11:41 The installer responds
13:32 Which data counts
15:11 The installer on the radiator incident
16:45 The installer on the breakdown
17:40 What the £23,000 covered
18:31 Where that leaves us
#HeatPump #AirSourceHeatPump #ASHP #HeatPumpUK #Retrofit #Plumbing #Heating #SkillBuilder
====================
👇 SUPPORT SB - BECOME A MEMBER
@skillbuilder
📪 JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER
https://skill-builder.uk/signup
🛒 SEE OUR FAVOURITES ON AMAZON
https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/skillbu...
🎧 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST
https://blubrry.com/skillbuilder/subs...
🎬 OUR VIDEO LIBRARY
@skillbuilder
🔗 SEE EVERYTHING SB ON LINKTREE
https://linktr.ee/skillbuilder
Facebook: skillbuilderchannel
TikTok: skillbuilder
Instagram: skill_builder
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)
====================
OUR FAVOURITE CHARITIES
👷 BAND OF BUILDERS
https://bandofbuilders.org
⛯ THE LIGHTHOUSE CHARITY
https://lighthousecharity.org
💧 CHARITY WATER
https://www.charitywater.org
We put everything Andrei raised to them and they came back with a long written response, which you've heard in full and unedited. On the technical arguments, neither side can prove its case with the evidence that exists, and nobody ever put an independent meter on this system.
Andrei is happy with that. He'd rather the lessons got out than turn this into a fight about one firm.
Please don't name them or guess in the comments. We'll remove those.