As heat pumps are far more expensive and really need major work done to the house (much bigger rads or underfloor heating) for efficient and effective operation, won't everyone without mains gas just keep flogging old oil boilers as long as they possibly can? Typically they are used to heat older, rural, houses which are much less easy to upgrade.
I thought they'd at least harmonise the sunset dates for gas and oil. Heat pumps absolutely terrify me.
Had a heat pump for 9 years now, after replacing an oil fired combi boiler as no gas supply in the village. This is a 1930s detached bungalow with more modern extensions. Had to upgrade the energy efficiency of the house first but tbh all stuff any sensible person will already have done by now. We had to add some extra loft insulation to bring it up to the standards at the time from the 100mm or less it had in place, replaced missing draught excluder strips, adjusted leaky doors and windows to fit the openings correctly and upgrade the halogen lights to led. All these measures were sorted in a weekend of DIY and would have paid for themselves within a couple of years regardless of the heating system used.
The heat pump installer did the calculations for heat requirements of each room and recommended I upgraded 3 rads to larger sizes, I kept the same dimensions just replaced singles with doubles/triples. Not a difficult diy job or a massive cost although I had the installer do it in the end because I took the opportunity to have them move a couple of other rad locations while they were at it to ease later building work that I had planned. The biggest cost apart from the pump itself was installing a hot water cylinder which the house did not previously have. Our biggest complaint about the oil fired combi was that it simply couldn’t produce a decent hot shower at more than a trickle. Whatever solution we chose had to solve this problem which means I massively overspec’ed the tank to keep Mrs JellyLegs happy and probably doubled the cost of that element.
The heat pump was significantly more expensive than a replacement oil boiler but the RHI payments over 7 years pretty much covered the full cost of the installation plus a chunk of the additional plumbing work I detailed above as well. The annual running costs of the heating for the 9 years have proved to be slightly less than the cost of the oil it replaced, with no need for a smelly oil tank or oil boiler, and no worries about theft of the oil or oil leaks. The heat pump has less of a footprint than the oil tank although in a different location and the hot water cylinder sits where the boiler previously lived.
Once we got used to the different way of using it, and a faulty part was rectified which could have as easily been a faulty boiler part, the heat pump works very well, no real issues with getting adequate heat or hot water, even in the coldest winter we have had.
Of course, that’s my experience only, your mileage may vary but I would have no qualms about going with a heat pump again if I moved house.
