She recently decided to ‘put her money where her mouth is’ and replace her gas boiler with a heat pump. It’s the final piece of the renewable puzzle at her Derbyshire home, which already has solar panels, a storage battery and electric vehicle charge point.
While it’s early days, Laura is impressed with her home’s reduced energy consumption and how warm and dry it feels.
Yet despite being in the industry for 14 years, she admits she was nervous about moving away from gas. So we asked Laura to share her experience of decarbonising her home.
Tell us about your home renewables journey
The first thing that happened was the solar PV. We were having our roof removed as part of a loft conversion and it was the obvious thing to install solar while the scaffolding was up. That was in May or June this year. At the same time, they put a battery on, which is on the outside wall of my house. And then a Myenergi Eddi, which is the solar diverter for hot water, ready for when we would eventually add a heat pump.
Prior to that, I had my electric car and a Myenergi zappi charger, which has been in about two and a half years.
The final piece of the puzzle was getting the gas boiler out and putting the heat pump in, plus the cylinder and controls etc. We are having a few teething problems, but we are now fully off gas.
What prompted you to replace your boiler with a heat pump at this particular time?
It was two things. The gas boiler was 12 years old, so although it was still working fine, it was obviously coming towards end of life. But the second thing was the loft conversion, this is what drove it all really as our gas boiler would have been physically stuck in place. So we had to make the decision to do it now or not at all.
You’ve probably got more contacts and knowledge than the average consumer, but how did you go about deciding which heat pump and installation company to use?
On the electrical side, the solar, I just went with a local company. My husband’s a builder and he knew an electrician who did it. But for the heat pump I went to IMS Heat Pumps because they are on the Ground Source Heat Pump Association council with me. They then recommended the heat pump.
I originally wanted a propane Vaillant because Vaillant is only up the road from Derby, but – and this is one of many things I’ve learned – because the location was near to a water drain, I couldn’t have a propane heat pump. So I went for an R32 heat pump instead, which is a Samsung.
So you did learn something new?
Yes, I learned loads of new things. I’ve been doing heat pumps for years and I learned loads just from this process. It was all a learning curve. For example, I live in a detached house, so I’ve got four external walls. And there was only one place that the heat pump could go. I couldn’t believe it. We nearly didn’t get it anywhere, and that’s on a detached house.
It was things like proximity to opening windows, opening doors, how far it is from your neighbour’s boundary, the maintenance widths, or the size of the heap pump. I didn’t know any of that. I got to the point where I thought we were not going to be able to have one because we can’t find anywhere to put it.
Some of the rules did feel over-zealous and might make it difficult for people to have a heat pump put in.
[Changes have since been announced to planning rules around boundary proximity].
Do you think people have to really want a heat pump to overcome these various obstacles?
Yes, and after it’s been installed, we are still having control issues. This is the reality. But the bottom line is you can overcome the obstacles and it is definitely worth it.
You decided to keep your radiators – how did you arrive at that decision?
I knew that we were going to have a heat pump about two years ago. So I did the heat loss calculations for each room and upsized some of the radiators myself.
When IMS came, they also did a heat loss assessment, because they have to do that for MCS, and it turned out that the ones I had replaced were not as good as the old rads that were taken out, which are the single panel, big steel rads.
So we’ve kept all the other radiators and we’re just going to go through the winter and see if it gets cold and if it does, we’ll replace the rest of the radiators. But at the moment, it was 2° last night in Derby and I woke up this morning and I was boiling.
However, the whole of our landing is now taken up with a hot water cylinder, buffer vessel, expansion vessels, control panel – it’s a lot bigger on the landing than I thought it was going to be, for the hot water side.
It’s under our new stairs that go up to the loft. Whereas your boiler might only be a small thing on the wall, this is substantial, like maybe two metres by two metres or something. So you need the space for it.
What about your existing insulation? Did you have to do anything there?
We had our cavity walls blown about 12 years ago for free by whoever it was at the time. Our loft conversion is all up to building regs, our windows are all double glazed, so no, we didn’t have to upgrade any of that.
What was the level of disruption of the works?
No disruption because they came in while we were on holiday, took the boiler out, put everything in upstairs, and when we came back, it was switched on. There was hot water, no disruption at all.
You managed to secure a grant from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme towards the cost of installing your heat pump, how did you find that process?
That was so quick and straight forward. They sent me some questions, I wrote back and the next thing was I’d been approved. The grant was £7,500, and I paid £8,000 on top of that including an 8kw heat pump. I had to get an electrician in and that included their electrical connection works as well.
Do you think that’s enough of an incentive for people, or do they really have to be motivated by the environmental benefits?
Probably still the latter. If I said to my friends, you can spend £3,000 on a new boiler or £8,000 on a heat pump, most of them would still say well that’s an extra £5000 so no. However, I do know for a fact that even though it’s only been in a few weeks, my bills are going to be lower. And my house is warm all the time, 24 hours a day, and I’ve got loads of hot water.
It’ll never pay back, but I am saving money on a monthly basis. So it depends what people’s drivers are. I think you have to come from a carbon motivated point of view to start with.
You mentioned there have been some teething problems, what were they?
It’s just all the technology. Different types of technology trying to talk to one another and it’s not yet working as it should. At the moment the heat pump is running, I’m really warm. I’m very happy with my Octopus app, which tells me how much I’m spending on a 30-minute basis, so that’s fine. But I need them to be able to get into the controls to get it working optimally, so it’s not just running all the time.
I’ve now got eight apps to run my home but when I was on grid electricity with a gas boiler and a diesel car, I had none.
I mean, I don’t have to do anything. Obviously the battery does what it does. The solar does what it does, but trying to control my car when I’ve got three separate apps for that now, has been quite stressful.
But if you take it back to ‘am I warm?’ – Yes, ‘are my bills less?’ – Yes, ‘would I have one again? Yes. I love it.
I went out this morning at 6AM and I took a video of the heat pump running, at the coldest it’s been yet, just to hear the sound, because it’s quite a nice sound. It’s not like noisy, vibrational.
What sort of things do you think need to change to encourage more people to have a heat pump and enable a wider roll-out?
I think people need to be able to find a good installer and know they’re going to get a good job. So it needs to be really, really clear who’s good and who isn’t. People also need to understand the impact of going with a cheaper solution; you might end up with a cold house, and high bills. How do we do that? I don’t know.
And then it would be great to have one app that enables you to easily control your heat pump and other technology to see what’s going on. I know there are things being developed, but they’re not ready yet.
The technology
- Samsung EHS LNHT 8kW air source heat pump
- Joule Cyclone 250l indirect hot water cylinder
- Nibe UKV 40l buffer vessel
- Jinko solar 435W solar panel x 10 = 4.35kWp
- Solis inverter
- Puredrive PureStorage II Battery 5kWh
- MyEnergi Eddi power diverter
- MyEnergi Zappi car charger
Image credits: Laura Bishop.