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.
I would like to formally retract that comment about going with a heat pump again. It looks very possible I will be going back to oil. Nothing to do with the performance of the heat pump technology which was great, while it worked. The unit died last week, just over 10 years from installation. The basic story is neither the installer nor the manufacturer can tell exactly what has gone wrong. The best the manufacturer can do is suggest I replace various PCBs from the internals, one at a time at £400+ each and if I replace them with no joy then they will give me a list of the next bits to try. They obviously realise this is not an acceptable solution as their recommended action is to “upgrade” to a newer model, the controller board, mounting rack and wiring for which are not compatible with my current version so must all be ripped out. Unbelievably, the replacement cost I am being quoted is actually more than a complete new installation. Taking up this offer would swallow all the ten years of savings I made on my running costs, the Govt grant I received and more. I can save a substantial amount (over £3k) of this extra cost by reinstalling an oil boiler and tank. Not sure I can afford to do anything else.
That’s a downer - what make?
They’re sold as having a 25 year life, rather than the depressingly short 7-10 years you can expect from a condensing gas boiler (ours is 9 this winter…). On that basis and given the costs, there probably ought to be a requirement, or at least an enterprising manufacturer, to provide a c.15 year warranty.
Given current daytime electricity cost vs gas, I’d need a winter COP of 4 to break even in running costs. That, of course, is because I don’t benefit from the less expensive electricity I buy due to the marginal generators setting the price.
I’m sure that a government that considered it important, that actually had the capability to get stuff done and wasn’t in hock to fossil fuels and swivel eyed science deniers could actually make some progress on the, very real, problem of install and repair competence. You could do it with incentives, it wouldn’t have to be hard lefty…
