The first thing that needs doing is to insulate homes properly. We need to have more grants available for people to put in closed cell foam insulation. Make the homes as air tight as possible and ventilate them with HRV systems. It will be much cheaper in the long run. After we have that setup we install solar battery systems and heat pumps. We have the potential to take most of every home off grid if we do this correctly. IMHO - building regs are still not up to scratch and leave a lot to be desired.

My house was all electric with storage heaters and an immersion heater using about 14500kwh. I now have an air to air heat source mini split which only struggled to heat the whole house in those -10degC. I also have a dehumidifier and have banned the tumble dryer. I now use 9500kwh per year. And have bonus cooling on those odd 35degC days. Only cost £2000 fitted. Sorted

I know its a little different in the UK, but in the US most people have forced air already have air conditioning (AC). Upgrading these AC configurations to heat pumps isn't very labor intensive since they swap in pretty easily with the existing AC systems. Nice to see what you're dealing with over the pond.

Hey, agree with you on a lot of stuff regarding heat pumps. You often give balanced and nuanced responses. That said in my experience the removal of gas utility connections isn’t necessarily going to materialise as a cost saving in new builds. We had 200 homes where we were following fabric first, MVHR and all electric design that were made commercially unviable due to electrical grid reinforcement costs. So it isn’t that simple unfortunately.

Hi, Please remember that not everybody who bought a Heat Pump received a single penny from the government. I was told I would receive £5,000 towards the initial outlay. At the end of the day I was invoiced £15k+ and told I would not get any government subsidie. I know of other people who were treated the same way by the companies selling heat pumps. They turned out to be cowboys, but you dont know that until the day they install the system.

As the genius said, I changed my gas boiler just as it was at end of life, my water tank was also leaking, and my radiators were 35 years old, and a few of them were starting to rust. I had a quote to change my gas boiler, plus move to an unvented system, and to swap 15 radiators, it all came to £9,500. So I went with a heat pump, after the grant it cost just a little more than swapping out for another gas boiler. I also have solar and batteries, so my running costs are much lower than gas. Sometime it all just works out.

I recently had to do a gas safety course for work, not related to domestic equipment. Where I work we have a lot of gas fired furnaces. We discussed hydrogen as an alternative to natural gas and our trainer said that the primary issue with hydrogen is containing it. Hydrogen molecules are small, so small that they can pass through many materials and jointing methods currently used to safely contain the larger molecules of natural gas. He had recently moved to this job, having previously worked as a trainer for a boiler manufacturer. He said their R&D department were struggling to make hydrogen equipment safe enough to be used in domestic environments and and so are the distribution companies.

Had a heatpump fitted for a year now and very happy with it. Max bill in winter (max usage) £280 3 bed semi 100sqm 1950s house.

It amazes me that people try to heat badly insulated houses. What a waste of money. Insulate your houses first and foremost. Start with the attic and then board the interior walls then worry about heating the place. In the meantime buy a good heavy tracksuit and a heavy duvet.

For everywhere off gas you're looking at replacing oil boilers and tanks, or LPG, which are both more expensive than gas grid, and you have to have a smelly oil tank! I replaced my knackered oil boiler and tank with an ASHP, and while not a cheap move, definitely worth it.

Maybe I've missed something but as far as I know there is only a plan to add 20% hydrogen to the gas system so they can say it's hydrogen but actually it's almost pointless. Also although we talk about net zero 2050 there is actually no plan to anywhere near eliminate methane.

Sadly less than 50% of Scottish homes are suitable for heat pumps. Effectively installing anything built before 1970 is simply too difficult/expensive. You really need to examine the housing stock outside the southeast a little more.

FYI in other countries you can buy an install a heat pump (mini split a/c and heater unit) for less than $1,000 per room.

The funny thing is that since the 70s that companies like Mitsubishi, Itachi and many other Korean and Japanese companies have been making cool air conditioning units that are basically heat pumps that move the heat out, with a good insulation, a solar heater and a large water storage tank, it should be possible to keep the house warm during the night and recharge the hot water tank during the day (the solar heater needs to be snow free) while using the same technology that Mitsubishi has been using for 50 years, but in reverse.

Thanks for touching on the labour costs. I had a thought about that too and figured that the main reason why ground source heat pumps cost more isn't the material (though it plays a part), but its absolutely the labour which will probably go up in price I'd love it if a GSHP cost less than 10K for a vertical drop but sadly that costs 30K currently. I don't have the space for horizontal loops

Very well reasoned, we desperately, desperately need more of this kind of rational thinking if we are going to solve our current energy problems.

When looked at in the round the use of hydrogen for domestic heating is a non-starter. There are several reasons for this: 1) green hydrogen is enormously expensive to produce and requires vast quantities of renewable energy (note that blue hydrogen can never be zero carbon and unfortunately our government has committed billions to blue hydrogen production - a very costly mistake we are all paying for in our electricity bills); 2) the thermodynamics of hydrogen generation and distribution render it too expensive for large scale domestic heating.

The gas pipes in my area (south Birmingham) have just been upgraded to pvc. I wasn't sure why they were doing it, given that there weren't any significant problems in the area. Do you think they could be starting to make the infrastructure hydrogen-ready?

No Govt can force future Govt to uphold prior commitments; that is written into our legislation. Therefore the fines from Paris Agreement and COP (which were agreed in a very different world from today) are not set in stone. When people start to see the personal fuel costs, I suspect that there will be much greater scrutiny into AGW

I wish there was something similar to you guys in Germany. It is impossible to find a good installer here sadly. Keep up the good work!

great video, i have recently installed soalr and battery and am considering heat pump, my current gas boiler is still going dtrong 26 years old, regularly serviced, my question is can ASHP work with a pressurised hot water cylinder as that is what we have so need for 'electric' power showers

I would argue, that it would be better to invest in insulation first. Top priority should be to limit the amount of energy houses loose. Then most likely we would be able to get away with smaller, simplified and thus cheeper system.

I see myself never getting out of my largish house too large for my needs. Apart from the normal horrors of entering in to the chain of people selling and buying a house it would need to be certified green and probably the electrics are not up to modern standards. The cost of modernising it is just too prohibitive and I am sure a raft of certificates are required now meaning a lot of money outlay. 25 year paybacks far exceed my life expectancy especially considering the disappearing medical care available as the NHS withers away. These grand plans the government has really are unfundable by both the general public and the government itself. The government already taxes us to the hilt with services being continually downsized so where it all goes is a mystery. We are now having to pay for our green waste collection. The inexorable closing down of public transport whilst a green agenda is promoted beggars belief; 1 in 4 services have disappeared in a decade. I am afraid the mention of climate change means hitting the mute button as you can only absorb the same message repeated endlessly so many times. I would say every man for themselves nowadays as thing become seriously threatening. It is a matter of concern if civilisation will actually survive the end of fossil fuel with all the hairbrained flaky schemes around at the moment..

Hi we have a new build (two years old ) house. Under flooring heating down stairs. Radiators upstairs . The house is gas heated now . Would it mean renewing all this to install a heat pump?

Can’t see us going down the ASHP route again. Had one installed in previous home. We didn’t have great expectations but were attracted by the RHI scheme and wanted rid of the oil boiler. The MCS approved installer spent a good deal of time at the property doing the calcs and sizing radiators. Pump worked fine and we were fairly happy with it (probably because we didn’t have high expectations), yet I don’t think it ever reached a cop of 200%. This was also being supplemented by a hybrid masonry wood burner. Cost 13.5k (including extra radiators). Oh and the RHI payments don’t follow you when you move home! 😮

When you say poor heat pump installation will cost more what do you mean? How is it installed poorly? At the minute I'm putting a heat pump in my house with a small extension, upgrading from storage heaters so everything is new but I'm doing the radiators around the house and underfloor heating downstairs and I don't want to install it poorly! Thank you for all the videos on heat pumps, they have really helped me out!

When considering Green Hydrogen what about the additional cost of building out additional solar and wind capacity for home heating . Hydrogen should only be used for hard to directly electrify applications.

I have a Daikin Altherma EDLQ-CV3 air source heat pump, and I'm confused. I have the heating and water on 24/7 but don't need to use much water every day. So, i set my water reheat to 46°c, next morning it was at 62°c. My room temp is at 18°c overnight and 19°c during day. Why is the water getting so hot?

C'mon 9kw heat pump monoblock(easy to install) is abt 2000£ and you don't need to change anything in your installation. It's bogus claims. Install it as it is maybe buffer abt 200dm3 and you good to go. Total about 4000-5000£. Easy

For us in Northeast USA near Boston/Rhode Island we also have a unique problem that makes the heat pumps solo heating your home not a very good idea. They increased our winter electric rates to 30 cents a kWh. But our maine/vermont cousins have very cheap electric so they didnt notice this issue (back when maine was being used as the marketing research done on heat pumps). Flipside, alot of houses in the northeast do not have AC systems (most have window ACs) so the electric cost for cooling is usually higher here. So heat pumps help cool the house more economically and efficiently than those window AC units. But what is ending up is that heat pump users don't have natural gas to fall back on, and oils prices were much worse than the heat pumps. Instead alot of us are looking into wood stoves, which are getting a 30% tax credit for any purchased in 2022-2040. So the better heating/cooling setup is to buy/cut a couple of cords of wood and manage a 2k square foot wood stove that can burn for 30+ hours after about an hour of heating up the stove waiting for the burn mechanism to engage.

Great breakdown of the full picture, cheers.

The cost to the public of the boiler upgrade scheme, while significant, is peanuts in the bigger picture . In comparison the UK gov is estimated to have indirectly subsidized the oil and gas industry to the tune of almost £14 billion between 2016-2021, mostly through favourable taxation policies. And of course, the cost of doing nothing to mitigate climate change is essentially unmeasurably huge. I would like to see the upgrade grants biased much more towards the least well off though as they'll be suffering the most with high energy prices and can't afford an upgrade even with a 5k discount.

The government can't even figure out that leaving the money printer switched on leads to high inflation, let alone how to keep public toilets open - needless to say I have 0.FA% faith in them figuring out how to make heat pumps affordable...

Producing steel with H2 actually makes it cheaper to produce, not more expensive. And in that process you use a lot less H2 than you do with coal. Secondly their is now an option that does not use either.

I realize this is UK, but in Canada at the moment, there is a heck of a tax being applied to gas. By getting rid of gas, I save a monthly tax/delivery cost of $100/month. My hydro bill has a delivery fee of only $25/m. My overhead cost is only $9k over a simple replacement in place. BUT, the tax on gas is going all the way up to 0.33c/M3 by 2030. So my gas cost would skyrocket over the next 7 years. I would save that $9k in about 9 years when taking into consideration the coming higher tax rate.

In Australia Airconditioning heat pumps are in millions of houses. Problem is open plan houses and indoor/outdoor living with kids and pets having outside doors open. Power bills have become so excessive people are afraid to turn them on.

How much has already been spent replacing iron gas pipes with yellow plastic pipes over the last few years? I constantly see pavements being dug up and yellow gas pipes being laid where I live. Can iron pipes take 20% hydrogen mixed with natural gas?

Will hydrogen ever be viable for domestic heating? As I understand it to make green hydrogen you take electricity and split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which I have heard is only about 65% efficient. The hydrogen is then piped to homes and burnt in boilers to release heat at around 90% efficiency. So only 58% of the energy used to make the hydrogen actually gets converted to useable heat at the other end. Why not cut out hydrogen and just supply electricity directly to homes to power electric boilers or heat pumps? Assume 10% losses for the grid the still means 90% of the energy available to heat or run a heat pump. Hydrogen seems like a dead end for home heating.

And sadly all what your local MP will do is to ignore it..and keep focusing on filing its own purse 😕

Do you have recomended installers for traditional boilers?

Something else noticed a few off gridders are now installing solar, battery storage, for heating they are using under floor with small induction boilers, 99%+ efficient, these warm the floor and make use of solar dump also. They are not fast, it may take a week to get a slab to temperature but once there the system seems to settle down and the demand from the system is much reduced. Have you seen similar systems, have you installed similar systems?

Please mention replacing oil boilers which there are many in rural areas

Would the running saving cost of heat pump v oil be greater than heat pump v gas?

Have 2 heat pumps here in Norway, get my investment back in 4 years, even if electricity is quite cheap. They last normally 10-15 years (air-air). Most houses in Norway have them, in old houses it often saves you from upgrading your electricity system since you reduce the power need by 2/3 . I will never live without my heat pumps! Also have in my EVS. Efficent way of heating an ev.

Insulate the f#%k out of your house and totally reduce the cost of heating your house whatever heating method you use in a nutshell!

I had a heat pump installed on an annexe at my home and it’s been an utter disaster. The firm installing it no longer exists, we have had so many issues with failures on it, it’s unbelievable and the only ‘engineer’ we can get to visit is over 100miles away from us. It’s been in just shy of 5 years, in the summer we had the third complete unit put in, as it was not viable to repair it, thankfully the first replacement was under warranty, the latest one we had to buy again, 3700 quid! It’s meant to run an area previously heated successfully by our then gas boiler via 3 admittedly large double rads, and a bathroom electric towel radiator. The main house is heated still by gas boiler running 14 rads. The annexe now has underfloor, whole job was over 20k back in 2018, and in the current sub zero temps, the annexe is too cool to be 100% comfortable in. We’re so disappointed in it, I am sure technology has moved on in 5 years, but it’s been so expensive, so unreliable and at current electric prices, hideously expensive to run too in this very cold weather. I’m sure we have a poorly designed system and have had our leg lifted, but that’s part of the issue. It’s new tech and so few know much about it, so it difficult to get reliable info on it. I’ve been a user of heat pumps for 15 years, our last house had a ground source pump for the house and air source for a summer outdoor pool too. The ground source worked well but we had a lot of land to use and house ran very well on it. But the modern air source seem to be more of a ‘punt’ to me, I’m sure they work on modern new builds pretty well, but on a 70s stone built house with suspended floors and naff all insulation…? I can’t see 15k going too far when floors have to come up, kitchens taken out, new floor coverings, doors and thresholds if the floor height increases to get underfloor in etc etc. Could be 30k plus pretty easily. Great video btw, well put together and presented, as they all are. 👍

Very good - except I don't think you can also deduct that final £5k in a retrofit Heat Pump for property value increase - as there is no chance to receive this money till the house is sold, and even then the new purchased house will likely also have an increased value due to its already having an installed Heat Pump. So the saving is only £10k, but only till the BUS scheme shortly lapses, when the saving drops to £5k.

Recent updates to Building Regs Part L in June 2023 in the UK state new boiler installations must come with a maximum flow temp of 55 degrees. This means ALL new boiler installs will likely come with upsizing rads and (in horrible case scenarios) upsizing all the primary pipework in the house :( which means new boilers no longer cost 2.5k, as flow temps for most houses are around 75 degrees. Still, I know two heating engineers who have installed new boilers since June and didn't touch the emitters or pipework, flow temp still the same as it was before. Completely illegal... might be years before it starts biting installers in the backside, but it's building regs after all.

25% higher running costs would be fantastic at this point. How bad would an ASHP install be, to get a roughly 300% increase in costs? December electricity bill was 380 quid! Another local friend, spent 387 heating her semi-detached home! When the house was heated using kerosene and without the internal wall insulation, running costs might have been a third of the ASHP with a far better level of insulation. Electricity would need to be around 7p per Kwh, if you wanted to run at the same costs from my limited experience. Even Mitsubishi advised me that in December if your electricty cost for the ASHP was less than £20 per day, you were doing very well. I was also advised that people were phoning up to complain that they were spending £50 to £60 per day on electricity. I already thought, in my case, seeing £15 per day, on the smart meter was madness. On what planet, is £600 per month, "doing well"...?

The £15000 average price for a heat pump seems a little high? Where does that number come from?

Question. Are condensing boilers treated as preferential to air source heat pumps when calculating an Epc rating? Had a customer tell me he is being punished because he has a ASHP.

Hi, what are your thoughts on low volume radiators such as the Jaga compared to standard radiators? I am currently upgrading my house and am wanting to get my radiators heat pump ready as part of this so that when it comes to replacing my boiler most of the rest of the work has been done as part of the current upgrades.

no way am i convinced ! i live in a costal location by the sea , a guy just down the road has a heat pump installed . last winter it stoped working ! the heat pump lost preasure 4 weeks without heating and they had to replace the heat pump it was 4 years old ! the installer said to him it was the worst corrosion he had ever seen in any heat pump . plus the poor bloke had heating bills twice as much as my gas boiler heated house .

For a new build it surely is a no brainer, but I would not opt for an air sourced heat pump if I had the choice. For the replacement of a functioning central heating system on natural gas, the situation is completely different and I seriously doubt the validity of the reductions you mentioned. I agree with the deduction of the price difference in case you actually need to replace the existing installation, but if it is still functional this is not a valid deduction. Also the replacement of the copper cylinder is not something inherent to a every heating installation. We do not have a separate cylinder for warm water and simply do not need to replace it. I also don't understand how you can get to a deduction by moving things around or upgrading your radiators. Looks to me that this will only generate a higher cost. How about maintenance cost? A heat pump is a lot more complex than a simple gas installation, meaning that a lot of parts can break and moving parts will inherently results in wear, lubricant usage etc...... My own installation (natural gas and a HR+ condensing Junkers boiler with maintenance contract) is now 10 years old and the total maintenance and repair cost over this period comes down to 175€/year, including the mandatory inspections, repairs and replacement parts. Prior to my retirement we installed an air sourced heat pump for the heating and cooling of our office building, which had a volume of about 4 times the volume of my home and the yearly maintenance cost alone was more than 2000€ (repairs not included). I have no idea of the cost for a home installation, but if this is proportional to the volume or the output, it's an additional cost of more than 300€/year. To put this in perspective, my yearly bill for gas at home was, until last year, between 800 and 950 €/year. (Currently it's about triple and I expect that we will never see the low prices again thanks to our political leaders.) If the existing installation was properly calculated, the radiators will for certain be undersized and need to be replaced. It's even possible that you also need to replace the piping and adapt the electric wiring to cope with the new system. The value of your property is very subjective and you will only get that benefit when you sell your home. Most people do not buy or build their home with the intention to sell it and will remain in the same house for the rest of their live. If your installation is 10 years or older at the time you put your house on the market, the buyer will take in account that he will eventually need to replace it, no matter if it's on gas or a heat pump. Also the life expectancy of such an installation needs to be taken in consideration. The average life expectancy of a heat pump installation is comparable with a gas boiler, but the replacement cost is a lot higher. A high end gas boiler cost between 1200 and 2000 € while a heat pump is 3 to 4 times more expensive. Subsidies (lower in my country than in the UK) may reduce the cost of a heat pump by a few thousand €'s but it still remains way more expensive than a gas boiler. If you're forced to go for an air sourced heat pump, there is also the matter of noise. A friend of mine changed from a gas heater to a heat pump and had to move the outside unit further away from the house due to the annoying sound the thing makes and it turned out that the losses due to the longer distance were too high to heat his house properly in winter.

The worst thing I added to my new home build was a heat pump. It costs a FORTUNE to run in the winter. Mr cool 4-5 ton.

Hiya, So i am looking into buying a house (build in 1980s) I want to get it insulated with external insulation and cavity wall insulation with Triple glazed windows. Ideally I would like underfloor heating on the ground floor and probably radiators on the upper floor as I'm not sure if the upper floor can be done still researching. it also needs solar panels too. Ideally my aim is to not use any gas in the property at all. Kinda doing research into what companies to go with. is there anything you can recommend near the midlands?

What an excellent honest video. Well executed, engaging, branding on point and every point well made and backed up perfectly. Some serious efforts clearly gone into this. Well done heat geek 👏

I had a government subsided hot water heat pump installed. It lasted 6 years. The tank started to leak and shortly after the heat pump failed. I contacted the installer who came out and his verdict was to buy a new one. I went for a cheap electric hot water system instead with a warranty of 10 years and Made in Australia, not China!!! I'll wait until these heat pump configurations are more robust and longer lived. Hopefully, Made in Australia where we still quality check and there is still pride in products that are made here.

Hi Adam, thanks for another excellent video. I wondered if any of your clients have chosen to install air-to-air ASHP systems for space heating AND cooling? Climate changes seem to suggest that cooling is going to be an increasing requirement in homes over the coming years.

Heat from Electric is 5 times higher in the USA than natural gas. The average "delivered"(please look at your bill) per KHW is around .20. There is 29.3 KHW per 1000,000 BTU's. 1 delivered CCF is less than 1 dollar. The efficiency on a new boiler is about 83% to 92% depending on water temp. Average around 85% which works out to approximately $4.98 for electric vs 1 dollar for Natural gas.

There is no green hydrogen. Hydrogen is brown. 130 billion for hydrogen gas network upgrade is ridiculous waste of money. It would buy another 4 or 5 hinckley c size power stations.

Including the increase of house value is a nonsense. If you sell the house and achieve an extra 5k because of the heating system you now have to buy another house. If that house has an upgraded system you'll pay a premium for that. If it doesn't you'll have to spend to upgrade 🤔

When comparing costs I was expecting to see something like "And if you already planned on adding an aircon, that price can be deducted from the heatpump installation, since modern heatpumps pumps heats in both directions"

If you already have a hydronic heating system and install a monoblock HT heat-pump, you can get rid of the gas and all the associated costs on your gas bill. Monoblocks are really cheap to install because there are only 2 water lines and electrical service. No HVAC technician needed.

When comparing the costs of our refurb and retrofit of new heating system, I keep referring back to environmental benefits of going all electric with solar. But then wheat the the long term environmental impacts when all that kits eventually goes into landfill. We are looking at insulating as well as possible, installing MVHR system, infrared heaters with mixergy water boiler supported by solar panels. I am still trying to get costs from suppliers to work this out.

Good presentation of the costs associated with heat pumps to the consumer, the government and the planet. I am already signed up for a Heat Geek assured heat pump installation and in order to get the BUS grant had to have a new EPC done to reflect recent cavity wall insulation and upgraded loft insulation. In the video you say that property values will be increased partly due to a resulting EPC improvement. My EPC assessor told me NOT to get a new EPC done after the installation because a heat pump will make the EPC score worse!

Really interesting video. Thanks

So the conclusion is; if you dont need to upgrade your heating system and only need to replace the boiler; dont go for a heat pump as it would take >50 years to earn it back; replacing your old heat pump in the end will also cost more (1500,- in your calculation); increasing the investment time an extra 7 years. Go for it if you totally renovate your house tho.

Hi, I'm just wondering why can't get BUS grant for old badly installed EAHP? They are not as efficient as ASHP.

I work in the industry and Heat Pumps do have their place, I would like to know what the future hold for Terrace and Back to Back houses. Where are we going to fit an Heat Pump in a very small or none existing rear yard. Back to Backs only have a small front garden surely Hydrogen or Electric Central Heating is the only option. I would like to see some other options for these types of properties.

As always I enjoy your content. I agree with a large proportion of your points. However I do have a few issues. (1) "offsetting" the cost of a heat pump into the house price increase/decrease feels a little spurious for most people. There will come a time when it factors into the decision but probably NOT until around 2035 when the law changes (assuming there isn't a U-turn). (2) Cost of installing gas to buildings, in fairness that's a valid argument however new builds should all be built with 3 phase electric supplies to be able to adequately provide the houses with bidirectional electricity supply - which will increase the cost - probably still a saving but less than £30k. (3) Third there is a huge amount of housing stock that doesn't have adequate electricity supply into the property. Either on 60A supplies or looped supply. Who will ensure that the DNO's carry out the work required in a timely manner? They still haven't completed the "smart meter" installation that was originally due to be completed by 2020 but got pushed until 2025! (4) Again housing stock issues e.g. Terraced houses, typically have limited space at the rear with electric supply to the front of the house. As far as I am aware, it is not permitted to install ASHP onto the front of many houses so where would you install them? That being the case I can see a terrible future where "Electric Boilers" are installed by those on low incomes, landlords who want to comply with regulations on the cheap and, sadly, disreputable councils (of which there are many!). (5) EPC's if you speak to the 'experts' about how an EPC is calculated its mostly a calculation based on the size of your rooms and the fabric of the building. Yes there are some % points for using LED bulbs etc but the weighting for things such as Solar PV at best move you up the scale by 1 point but they always give an estimate of the cost of doing this. I had an EPC done when selling my house it cost me £50 and the guy was present for 30 mins maybe tops (the estate agent wanted £75 and would have used the same person but charged me £25 for the pleasure). How much work doe you think is involved for £50? The biggest issue that faces the industry is the government. Doesn't matter who is in power they are only interested in monetary policy in 4 year stints of governance. Solar PV has been in place for over 25 years now and it still isn't LAW that ALL new builds should have Solar PV installed. We still have an overly complicated process with DNO's being able to charge or outright refuse to permit larger Solar PV installations and with a bigger draw on local electric distribution hubs that is likely to get worse as the phase balancing on transformers gets more difficult. Lets provide some context: The government bailed out the banks in 2008. When they sold the shares in Lloyds TSB Group they lost money on the deal. How does that work?? We should have recouped our costs at the minimum or remained shareholders until the paid dividends offset the cost to the taxpayer. Why did they permit the banks, who all took public money to keep them afloat, to continue to pay bonuses whilst they were effectively shareholders. As someone further down has mentioned we subsidize the Oil and Gas industry to the tune of billions of pounds per year, why? The rail networks have been subsidised by the public for the last 40years (or more). So why, when we are paying something like 30-40% per ticket price are we giving them money to allow them to pay bonuses to management? When COVID loans to keep them afloat were made the Scottish government chose to re-nationalise them. The English government had the exact same opportunity but instead decided to give them low or zero rate loans AND permit them to continue to "make profit" and pay bonuses in the following years. I heard on the radio today the a large number of councils across the UK have suspended Summer Holiday meal vouchers for low income families. We are talking about £15 per week per child for the lowest income families in England (Wales has maintained the payments across all regions). Some, but not all, councils are offering activities and meal groups as an alternative. How is that even permissible when inflation is up 13% and energy will have tripled in cost come October. Sorry got off topic there a little but I think you get the gist.

Cheap night time energy IS NOT, repeat NOT environmentally motivated. It's purely financial. Power plants do ONE thing. They generate power. They also cost 100,000s to run daily. If they aren't generating power they are making a loss. Thus, every single operating power plant WANTS to run 24/7. So they are in the business, for profit, to encourage people to use more power at night so they can continue to operate, even if they are charging slightly less. It's still making money, were as shutting down a few dozen plants overnight and powering them back up in the morning would be far better for the environment.

You come home from holiday and your heat pump is gone! Its been nicked haha.

Just had our home insulated, heat pump and solar panels install, fully funded under ECO scheme. I first thought it was a con but definitely not so worth anyone chasing this up! We live in 3 bedroom house with 2 children any energy usage during the day is cover by 2.8 kw solar panels and our electricity usage reduce by 40%. It even works on a cloudy day. We use to have a bulk LPG with combi boiler and to reduce the usage we reducing flow temperature and water flow. I set this at 36 and water get very hot due to water rate being reduced. I hope this tip will help someone out there. Ps we need to see more of you on mainstream media to help people reduce their energy bill.

After the BUS grant my installation/upgrade cost is going to be £700 by Octopus. I’m swapping out a ~40 year old gas boiler. My ROI will be about 3 years I think. Woop!

I love your videos and explainers. And I totally get the no panacea message. Heat pumps sound like a no brainer for the vast majority of detached and semi detached houses in the UK. But I'd like to hear what you'd recommend for a terrace house with very little garden space, or an apartment with no / shared garden? Ie nowhere sensible to put the heat pump outside. I've heard comments about community heating on your channel before but I'm not convinced that a row of terrace houses will get that without significantly more council / government help. Which doesn't seem to be a topic of discussion from either. And I'd have thought that community heating basically means someone loses their home so it can be converted into a boiler room of sorts. So we lose a terrace house on each street in a country with not enough houses?

Thank your for this wunderful summary and Greetings from Germany.

The 600 pound gorilla in the room is the professional cleaning of the heat pump coils and the high coat of service when needed. Especially with Inverter mini split air to air heat pumps in my neck of the woods, Vermont USA. I really can't believe that installers and service companies are not aware of this so it points to dishonesty or ignorance.

Is it even possible to get time of day tariff at the moment?

Would it better to use a water tank for storing hot water and use that to heat the home instead of an battery to run the heat pump?

Hi as we are aware that global warming is happening should we also be looking at air conditioning as an alternative to an ashp, if either a house has got small radiators sizes or storage heaters and panel radiators, as air con appears to have a higher scop and perhaps have a water cylinder heated either by solar pv or thermal panels or a heat battery instead of a cylinder what do you think of this idea and do you have any idea of cooling and heating costs ?

Heat pump manufacturers suggest they are kept on all the time,so trying to use ‘cheaper’ electricity cost periods doesn’t apply. Also, at the moment some electricity companies are offering cheaper electricity rates for heat pumps, in the future if everyone has changed these rates will obviously disappear. You obviously sell heat pumps😂

I am beginning to wander if modern night storage heaters are a better solution in conjunction with Solar, batteries and off peak tariff

All the energy used by cars and all the energy in gas for cooking and heating can be put onto our existing electrical grid with no upgrades. I can't be the only one that thinks we are heading for some huge electrical bills to upgrade the national grid.

If like us in our 70's with not much disposable income then heat pumps are not a consideration the extra cost of running our gas boiler is not an issue, but in all other instances the Heat Geeks advice is worth considering.

Heat pumps are also too expensive and ineffective, to be use widespread. Resistive is actually much cheaper to install and only a little worse in the cold winter where were use 80% of our heating energy. Geothermal district heating would probably work for cities. The first thing is insulation of course, why we are not throwing money at that makes no sense. My last 2 rented homes had empty cavities and minimal roof insulation, as well as exceptional drafts, all fixable of course. I think the main thing to concentrate on is draft proofing and to setup a test requirement like that used for new build and passive houses, maybe include MHRV. Setting that up and forcing the testing will eventually cause the draft proofers and insulators to improve their skill.

You ask fitters from countrys that have been fitting them for a few years ask them if they have them fitted and a lot will tell you NO! waste of time and money a con unless you put it in a new build house you are wasting your money.

repayment times of 25 years (your shortest projection is crazy ) I'm 57 and probably won't live that long, over the years I have replaced / removed many heat pumps with most not lasting 10 years some under 6/7years real running costs in my customers homes, yes I have a heating business too with average 20 staff and 35 year's experience, were over 30% more with many people who are installing now also having to pay from 10 to 30,000 for insulation required for almost 75% of our housing stock without which very few homes can be heated to the temperatures we are used to with the HPs. I admire your attempt to inform but even manufactures that I talk to state at present people will see a running cost increase of 20 to 25% against a condensing gas boiler doing the same job and they are on the conservative side. as for cost in future replacements boiler straight swap 2,000 ish needs replaced in 20 years hp 4,000ish but replaced twice in 20 years so yet another 6000 on top of original conversion costs region 15000 not taking into account most homes with a good electric shower and induction hob are already being fitted with switch gear to prevent both being on at once due to domestic property electricity supplies new upgraded supplies required again for our existing housing stock it will take more than 13 years to up the power generation for future car charging let alone this this is a major factor in the use of hydrogen boilers running alongside gas till 2050 at least according to the power suppliers.

QA brilliant presentation. Very impressive!

Hank Hill's unbiased review of butane

why assume radiators are part of every heat pump install???

Octopus gave me a quote I would have to pay only 3000£...not convinced... especially not sure would work in my home 😔 I have 3.2 kWh solar with 6.5 kWh battery already but it does absolutely minimum at winter time.

Excellent bit on the upcoming costs from carbon charges if we don't act in a concerted fashion.

Your arguments make sense, if, and ONLY if, there was sufficient manufacturing capacity for retro-fits on all houses AND there were enough engineers to carry out the retrofitting?

Great video many thanks. Might be useful to take a look at the Green Gas pilot scheme that Ecotricity are building near Reading? They are still building it. Gas milled from localy grown grass, that it 100% compatible with the current Gas infrastructure.

Where do air to air heat pumps sit in this? Me and my partner are buying our first home. It's a bungalow that has storage heaters and an immersion tank. Installation costs for hydronic radiators don't make sense compared to wall AC units (that can heat too), plus I think that the SCOPs are higher because you're only transferring that energy from refrigerant to air rather than adding water as an intermediary stage where losses can accumulate. I know that not all properties will be like mine, but a significant number are like this. It would make sense to open up the BUS for air to air heat pumps - and you get the benefit of air conditioning at the same time (I have MS which is a health condition made worse with heat so this is a great upside for me - many disabled people are in a similar situation and I believe there's scope for separate incentives to provide disabled people with air conditioning and heating at the same time). Domestic hot water heating is still an issue - I wish there was a heat pump cylinder system that could be connected to the same outdoor unit as the room heating units, but you can get stand alone heat pump water cylinders that are relatively cheap. I've gotten quotes for both kinds of system and found this split air to air/water cylinder system will be cheaper for us to install even without the BUS scheme.

How does solar hot water help ashp. The solar will switch the ashp off for 6 months a year?

Increasing EPC with a heat pump will increase property value?? I don't actually think so. There are people (especially those with 2 or 3 kids) who are not a big fan of heat pump, worrying about its insufficient supply in the winter. Also, a heat pump works best in the south-facing garden. As far as I know, the heat pump will have to be at least 1 (or even 2 m) away from the boundary and should not be under the shade as well. So, it is not recommended to install it on the side unless you got a detached house with a big empty space at the side (how many of that kind of house in UK?). Now, if you plan to extend the house to the garden space in the future, it is not a good idea to install the heat pump . It means you have to pay for its installation again when doing extension!!! So, if you buy a small house that is not extended but have a heat pump, it won't increase the value of the property! Also, if you think about building a pergola or deck attached to the back-wall of the house, then the heat pump will get in a way (that thing is huge)!!!

The problem isn't having more government help (paid for by us) its the way the installers are fleecing the system. The government should have created set prices for what they can charge for a heat pump when getting a grant as if they increase the grant the installer just increase the price. Charging 15k for what is 5k in material is ridiculous. One day to spec system, one day labour for install and profit should not be 10K!

It’s ok saying heat pumps can be charged up over night on cheaper electric but when everyone does that the overnight price will go up , so make heat pumps more expensive, like the government asking us to not cook etc until 8pm , but want us to have electric cars, most people plug their cars in when they get home so around 6pm