Heating home with a Heat Pump - any thoughts ???

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After receiving shocking bills for both electric and gas totalling £750 for a quarter! I am now considering replacing my gas heating with some afforadable Heat Pump costing no more than say a grand to £1500.00 and plumb it to my central heating and leave the boiler for hot water as I don't like storage cylinders.

Any thoughts on Heat pumps, has anyone used it to heat a large 3 bed home? any pitfalls, or downside to it?

I worked out that if a highly efficient unit consumes 1Kw and provides 5 kilowatts of heat (cop of 5) then it could half my heating bills!
 
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How much is the gas alone?

Brother has 3500sq/ft property heated by gshp.
6 adults in residence.
Yearly total average electric bill = £1100
 
Both bills are with meter readings taken, so not estimated, and both bills are roughly same , gas just a tenner higher than electric, I heat through lounge that has two large rads 22' x 12' , 1 medium single rad for the kitchen dinning, 16' x 15' and a back extension that has two medioum rads and is 20' x 12' where I do most of my sitting and watching tele or on my computer facing the rear garden. and only 1 bedroom upstairs is heated with a medium single rad, (1.2m long)

Heating is topped up by an electric fan heater in bedroom and rear extension, and in the bathroom I have a oil filled electric heater, that mainatains a 18 degrees.

Besides this I do have heavy electrical usage as the rear extension has 4 x 55watt 5 foot long tube lights and runs from about 10am in the morning to about 4am into the small hours of the next day!

And I took out a 2.5meters long double rad in the passage years ago and never felt the need to reinstall it and my passage always feels very warm, loft had been insulated well this year to 300mm!

The truth is Gas and electric prices have simply gone through the roof!

Average temperature throughout the house is 18 degrees C, with room where I spend more time topped up with an electric fan heater 1Kw to about 20 degrees. ( Strted to wear two or three layers of clothing and no more tee shirts like I used to !
 
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Spend the £1500 on insulating the property

That is on the books definitely, it will be external wall insulation, though i hate to cover up bricks, but hell no chance I am not paying out this sort of heating costs, I have even started to take a lot less showers 2 per week rather than one every day! (please excuse that smell! ;) )

But much rather be smelly than be skint! :LOL:
 
so looks like no one is in favour of Heat pumps, these are used all over in North American countries, and also provdes cooling in very hot summer! and due to their very high efficiency, up to 600%, do they not makesense as oppose to condensing boilers and its associated risks with gas and anual servicing reuirements, whereas heat pumps only ever need cleaning filters, and no regular servicing necessary. just needs fixing when it breaks down, usually a circulating pump.
 
It is just that your bill is average for a large house (i assume you have solid walls) if you sorted your plumbing/central heating out and stopped wasting money on electric heaters, you would be much better off.

If it has got to the point that you are fearing taking a shower at least once per day, then you might want to look in to the ECO scheme (Energy Company Obligations)
 
Indeed I had my loft extra insulated through this new ECO scheme, but as for the boiler replacement I told them I was quite happy with my current one, and I would probably not qualify for one, as I am sure those on benefits or lower household income may qualify and I am just outside the limits!

I expressed my interest in external wall insulation and so far this item is not on the cards under the ECO scheme, only the cavity wall insulation is. But this may be forth coming.

However, before next winter sets in I much rather spend my money on external wall insulation this summer than cough up another huge bills for six winter months! I remember my last years bills were also huge, but this years are even more due to rise in the price of gas and electricity, my consumption compared to last year was about the same.

Another guy in my street oppsite told me how they heat their home for 4 hours a day and his bill was not much worst off than mine, about £20 less and yet I saty at home and work from home so my heating is expected to be on most of the times. (literally 24 hours on except I reduce the flow temperature to 35 degrees when I go to sleep and day time increase it to 45 to 50 degrees flow temp.

(I also heard that running these appliances at very low temperatures like 30 to 35 degrees flow can cause condensation issues within boiler, not sure how true this is, but I have not seen any signs of condensate in my boiler)
 
Besides this I do have heavy electrical usage as the rear extension has 4 x 55watt 5 foot long tube lights and runs from about 10am in the morning to about 4am into the small hours of the next day!
That level of lighting for a 20x12 room is excessive. Does this extension not have any windows?
However even at 16 hours a day, it's about 3.5 units of electricity per day - a small percentage of your total use.

For properties with gas heating, the electricity costs are typically far less than the gas during the winter - often less than half. As yours are virtually identical, your electricity use is far more than it should be.

Heating is topped up by an electric fan heater in bedroom and rear extension, and in the bathroom I have a oil filled electric heater, that mainatains a 18 degrees.
May as well just burn £5 notes. If you need to use electric heaters, there is something very wrong with your central heating.

And I took out a 2.5meters long double rad in the passage years ago and never felt the need to reinstall it and my passage always feels very warm, loft had been insulated well this year to 300mm!
This just results in the heat from other rooms being used to heat those without - the whole idea of central heating is that you heat the whole property.
Removing radiators or switching certain ones off will not save money unless the walls, floor and ceilings to those rooms are insulated to the same level as the external walls and the door to those rooms is sealed shut.

so looks like no one is in favour of Heat pumps, these are used all over in North American countries, and also provdes cooling in very hot summer! and due to their very high efficiency, up to 600%, do they not makesense as oppose to condensing boilers and its associated risks with gas and anual servicing reuirements, whereas heat pumps only ever need cleaning filters, and no regular servicing necessary. just needs fixing when it breaks down, usually a circulating pump.
The risks of gas are tiny, annual servicing is a small price, heat pumps can and do fail just like any other device.
They most certainly will not run for years with no maintenance or repair - air conditioning and refrigeration repairs is a major industry.

Air source models are also very noisy and will annoy everyone who lives nearby, and unless you have several acres of land which you are prepared to dig up to a depth of several feet, ground source is not going to happen.
The COP of 5 or 6 will also be the maximum achievable in ideal conditions - which you will not get for a majority of the time.

so my heating is expected to be on most of the times. (literally 24 hours on except I reduce the flow temperature to 35 degrees when I go to sleep and day time increase it to 45 to 50 degrees flow temp.
By doing what?

Heating systems are controlled by devices which sense the air temperature and control the boiler or other heating appliance appropriately.
Changing the flow temperature is NOT a usual method of operation, and will likely result in vast amounts of gas being used.

If you really need the heating on 24 hours a day, there is something severely wrong with the heating system, the insulation of the property, or both.

Rather than waste money on a heat pump you need to:
a. find out exactly where the vast amounts of electricity is being used - electric heating being one of those, but there must be other things.
b. insulate the property - including the walls, which is probably where most of the heat is being lost
c. get radiators of the correct size installed in all rooms, and probably have the heating controls upgraded.
 
(I also heard that running these appliances at very low temperatures like 30 to 35 degrees flow can cause condensation issues within boiler, not sure how true this is, but I have not seen any signs of condensate in my boiler)
You are just wasting gas doing this, have it hot or turn it off.

External wall insulation makes an enormous difference.
 
Thanks for your advice, I sure do need to make some radicle chanmges to both my lifestyle and my heat losses.

Just been to see another neighbour, a retired couple who paid £340.00 gas bill , his Daughter living in another house nearby also paid similar amount and she puts the heatimg on for 4 hr a day, the retired couple stay indoors most of the time so use it more still the same amount of bill, mine is just a little higher to £360.00 and is used 24/7 except I alter the flow temperature, this maintains background heat and stops the house going completely cold during the night.

However i am going to try to see what difference using a room stat makes when I set it to say 20 C and allow the boiler to run at higher setting like 60 degrees.

I will compare the amount of gas used both ways. and average over a week.
 
I am responsible for maintenance of an office building which is approximately the size of a large 5 bed detached house. It is heated with a central 'air source' heat pump. (Mitsubishi City Multi) I can advise as follows:

Heat pumps do not reach the same temperature as a boiler, so they only work in really well insulated properties. If you connected a HP to your existing radiator system they would become tepid only. That is why heat pumps are used with either underfloor heating which gives a lower surface temperature but over a much larger surface area, or to a ducted blown air system. The advantage with the latter as you say, is cooling in the summer and this is what they use in the USA.

The system has two parts, one indoor and one outdoor. In simple terms one part gets warm the other cool, so during the summer the outdoor unit gets warm and the indoor unit cold. In the winter this is reversed so that the indoor unit is warm and the outdoor unit cold, so cold in fact, that when the outdoor air temperature falls below 4 degrees C ours freezes up. This needs defrosting. So for up to 20 minutes in every hour, all of the heat it generates is used to thaw the outdoor unit. None is available to heat the property.

Also the colder it gets outside the less heat it generates, when it's below freezing ours has to be left on 24 hours a day 7 days a week to keep 21 degrees indoors and even then it can still drop to 19 during the night, so much of any efficiency saving is lost. I should add that the property is 7 years old and won an award for its high levels of insulation.

A ground source heat pump overcomes this in some measure as the ground is usually a few degrees warmer than the air, but the installation ground works are very disruptive, expensive and can require a lot of land.

I believe that the installation cost of our air source system, which includes a ventilation system with heat exchanger was just under £30,000 a gound source system would be considerably more

I can't comment on the running costs of the system, because the same electric meters also supply power to a small industrial unit with a standard electric heating system.
 
Interesting info on ASHPs.

Can I ask what rating the HP is and the floor area in m2?

I'm thinking about kW/m2.

Thanks
 

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