What to Expect During Your First Winter with a Heat Pump

[@JimLarsson-t8z]

Brilliant episode! Thanks guys

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

Thank you Jim. Thanks for watching.

[@alibro7512]

Brilliant guys, I'm learning a lot thanks

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

Thanks for watching.

[@MT-zn6tc]

We're entering our third winter and I feel I've got a handle on the way it runs. When it was -3°C a couple of weeks ago we paid £4.00 to maintain a steady 21°C throughout, with plentiful hot water. Most days we are paying between £2.00 and £3.00. I also accept Jan & Feb will hit us more, but we've still spent about 2/3 of what we were paying when we were on gas. No battery or solar.

[@vindeballs1]

Thanks chaps...just had ours fitted this week...looking forward to a long winter all nice and cosy, instead of boiling/freezing and water hot/ cold when having a bath/shower 😅. Great tip heating the water at night now knowing the temperature depreciation in twenty four hours is negligible.

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

Sounds great! Thanks for watching,

[@Allegedly2right]

Anti freeze question that you said you would answer.Never materialised yet,can you have ago please.

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

I do have an answer. It’ll be in our podcast that goes live on Wednesday.

[@Allegedly2right]

@@RenewableHeatingHub Good answer haha it is appreciated you even devoting your time to read comments,especially grumpy auld Jocks I only see straight lines like most Jocks.

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

Antifreeze question addressed here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2TMiZeqltanmZY

[@timadams1097]

Totally agree about weather compensation. In my case installer placed controller that included the internal thermostat in a warm bathroom. Useless for weather compensation! Installed for installer convenience not for user. Sadly a regular problem i believe. I have not moved it as weather compensation works sufficiently well based on external thermostat. May in future

[@albertoporras04]

I have an ASHP and a much smaller 10kwh battery. I use Octopus Cosy tariff as it gives 3 periods of cheap rate power (4am-7am, 1pm-4pm, 10pm-midnight). I find that by charging the battery during the three cheap rate periods I can get through the rest of the day with no premium rate and and very little standard rate power. It's a question of balancing the cost of the much bigger battery against the additional savings of running entirely on cheap rate. For me it made sense to get the smaller battery, but everyone's circumstances will vary.

[@civti]

Great stuff, currently in the process of navigating architects, builders, and even our local heating engineer. Renovating and extending a 1930s council house currently on storage heaters. As it is going to require a full central heating system anyway, I see it as the perfect opportunity to go for a heat pump and set up for the future. The resistance is amazing, but I quite enjoy it. Oddly, my fiancé who has zero interest in home heating is dubious as to whether a heat pump can run a hot shower… This isn’t her fault, this is national dialogue. I find the whole thing fascinating, I’ve never known a technology so poorly adopted in the UK. The only step worse would be to ban them entirely. I will perceiver and have one installed regardless, prove it’s not rocket science. Be warm and not spend a fortune on heating, probably save a polar bear in the process.

[@GIddyUpRetep]

Let's go heatpumps!

[@Pete-rf6zz]

This year I'm trying weather dependent only, so all rads open and no temp control, right on the edge, temp does vary, bit cooler in the morning drops 2c, normally 21c, but the heat pump leaving temp is super low and costing nothing, not got that cold yet so be interesting when colderz but the leaving temp will increase but dropped about 10c from last year. I find it fascinating. And cheap

[@RenewableHeatingHub]

Sounds great! Please keep us posted.

[@robbenson4598]

I have a mid 1990’s house with oil C/H. I’m considering installing battery storage of around 25kwh, charging it on an overnight cheap tariff, then shortly after getting rid of oil c/h and adding a AHP, with the intention of achieving 21c. I don’t have solar as my house doesn’t have roof space. Am I on the right track?

[@christianfaversham3766]

Keep in mind that an inverter's efficiency is approximately 90% when charging an AC battery to DC, and about 90% when converting DC back to AC. You’ll need to do the math to determine whether the cost of battery storage is a viable long-term investment. I’ve recently switched from oil central heating to a 5kW Vaillant ASHP for my 3-bedroom bungalow. Currently, the central heating consumes 9.9kW per week, and domestic hot water (long showers) uses 9.8kW. We removed the old sagging cavity wall insulation and replaced it with glued polystyrene beads, and also upgraded to 270mm loft insulation. Our previous Grant outside oil combi used 0.6 liters of kerosene per day just on standby, waiting for a call for heat. The boiler was on its last legs, and the tank was rusting, so switching was a no-brainer for us. Now that we’re gathering data on energy consumption, we can plan for solar panels, battery storage, and possibly an EV and charger, depending on how well the panels perform.

[@robbenson4598]

@@christianfaversham3766 Thanks for the help Christian, much appreciated.

[@robynrox]

Got to be honest - I'm looking at getting a heat pump installed now (I'm having a survey done in 1.5 weeks), and my position on locking out controls is that it's MY heat pump. It's what I've spent MY money on. So I want FULL control of everything. I'm happy for warnings to be in place to tell me that I might be doing something silly, but I don't want to be reliant on heating engineers to sort out my problems. The flip side of that is that I'm a geek, and I recognise that my approach may not suit everybody. But if there's a code required to access parts of the system, I want that code.

[@alibro7512]

Is there any way of guesstimating an approximate average figure for kWh required per day through the winter? I ask because I have oil heating at the minute in a 20 year old 250sqm detached house and would like to switch to a heat pump. I also have a battery that I charge at night on an EV tariff.

[@Gnarturtle]

I have a well insulated 250m house and I'm using about 100kwh per day on GSHP.

[@dennishaggerty463]

It’s videos like this that put me off heat pumps (sorry) due to the nature of the occupants of the rental properties I maintain for the landlord. Most tenants are very budget conscious but not in the least bit technical or interested in fine tuning their heating. I think the same issue arises if you have elderly relatives, who may be prepared to pay out to future proof their home or replace a failing gas boiler with an ASHP, but you know you will get endless phone calls about why it doesn’t work instantly like their old gas boiler. I need a f’it and forget’ installation, even if it loses 10 percent of its peak efficiency. No one has the time to mess around. Geeks (and me for my own house) would happily see their heat pump as a hobby, investigating the best tariffs etc to suit the profile of their ASHP usage - but not my 80 year old relatives or tenants who would be more likely to complain demand a rent reduction. So I’m still having replacement gas boilers installed, despite knowing it’s fundamentally short sighted and the wrong thing to do.

[@alexanderahman4884]

I don't understand. A heat pump is very much "fit and forget". You turn it on and set the temperature. Done. No need to mess around.

[@Lewis_Standing]

Call it an eco property and rent it to middle class people happy to pay a premium for the ASHP. gas boilers are going to be regulated out in the UK. New builds can't have one fitted from next year, retrofits in the future and the date might be brought forward. It's likely that any rules may apply to rental properties first too. You will just need to inform the tenants how it works, just like you do with a boiler. You can actually get weather compensation controls fitted on boilers but most don't bother. If they want cheaper bills, they can set the thermostat at 18c. They want to be warmer and happy to pay more wet it higher. Tell them on off won't work well. If you are going to get ASHP for your rental properties, do get a trusted installer and not necessarily the cheapest quote. A good well designed system will be cheaper than gas to run. A poorly designed system will be much worse.

[@priestesslucy]

Perfect at 21c, 'bloomin cold' at 18c Wow automated heating has made humanity weak. Try living in a wood cabin with a woodstove. Go to sleep at 25C and wake up at 5

[@alibro7512]

Agreed! I set our thermostats to 18C evening and 14C during the day and night (basically off) and supplement it in the living room with a wood burning stove. With the fire lit the burner hardly ever kicks in for downstairs and the rest of the house stays at 18C and TBH I wouldn't want it much warmer. We have an old oil burner and it would cost a fortune to heat the whole house to 20 or 21C.