Electric combi boilers / solar panels / eco heating solutions

wtf am I doing wrong

Trying to fit bleeding edge technology to shit old house? Probably a lot of faff like new rads, insulation, making an ASHP viable.

Apols if you house isn't shit and old 😹

I feel that’s realistic tbh if that’s doing everything

It’s pretty old (30’s) and pretty shit given the current heating situation. That doesn’t include any insulation to even make an ASHP viable. That’s all being done separately (loft, loft room, underfloor insulation), new windows (single glazed atm).

At that price it’s well out of our means so back to the drawing board for us.

That’s fair, I think I was pretty naive going into it seeing some other costs.

Your MCS heat loss calcs done by the ASHP supplier most likely don’t factor in any prospective fabric upgrades that you’re planning, and a 1930’s detached 4-bed will be a thermal nightmare until it’s insulated properly so will need a huge, thirsty and expensive ASHP system to keep warm.

How much are your heating bills currently? What’s your thermostat set to?

Post up your ASHP quote.

Love it when the UK British refer to heat pumps as ‘bleeding edge’ lol. We’re such knuckle dragging troglodytes when it comes to housing.

My Soviet nan’s dacha in a village on the outskirts of Kyiv has a generic Chinese ASHP which my uncle and I installed DIY around 20 years ago, bought off the shelf from the local equivalent of B&Q for well under £1K. Took a weekend to plumb it and the cylinder in. Still works now. Most houses in the village have ASHP, the ones that don’t just burn firewood from the forest next door.

Over here, the gas lobby have convinced everyone that heat pumps are some kind of exotic, fragile tech from the future which can only be handled by a crack team of cyborg heating engineers. The £7.5K grant has only exacerbated this by encouraging installer companies to spawn for the express purpose of harvesting the grant and bumping up prices for everyone.

Our heating bills are a little hard to figure out, we've not long moved in but we're paying about £300 a month for Gas and Electric and as mentioned its a split system with oil for part of the house, I would estimate we're using about £80 of oil a month just for heating (based on a refill we did and how much we're getting through on the oil monitor jobby)

I'm a little confused by the 22 rads, I count 15 and that includes one additional one in a bathroom that doesn't have one at the moment (its just a toilet/sink that we'll convert to shower room).

"Thermostat" is via the oil and gas boiler which are set to pretty low - range from 1-7 and they are on 2.

I'd be asking what £7k in "ASHP materials" is. Anti freeze valves, copper, basic controller, low loss header, pumps etc can't be £7k, especially if they're not re-piping.

I'd also get someone who knows what they're doing to do a proper heat loss survey + projected heat loss calcs for post-insulation.

There will be a majority of re-piping, we're on 8mm in over 50% of the house and that is useless for ASHP.

22 rads feels like a hell of a lot of rads for a 4 bed house, must be why you need 2 heat pumps!

I'd start with your loft insulation and windows for now, lots of big improvements to be made before an ASHP.

• also that quote doesn't have any of the grants in it?
  

I know I thought 22 rads was a little excessive!

Loft is being done as and when I can (mixture of PIR on loft room walls, earthwool at ceiling/joist level and thermafleece for awkward sloping ceilings) windows go in ~6 weeks from now. We have just got confirmation on floor insulation so should be about 6 weeks away for that.

No grant applied to the quote, this is Scotland and we may be eligible for a rural Scotland grant (slightly by more the 7.5K as we're a way out of Glasgow)

I am wondering about getting a supplier who is not part of the green deal whatever to come and quote as I can't help but think the quotes are so high as suppliers know a grant will be included. Maybe that me just being synical.

Just cancelled my heat pump install with Octopus.

Pathetic process from start to finish which ended in them trying to cancel the installation and rebook it for April because the surveyor put down the wrong location for the heat pump which required a re-survey which they couldn't book in before the original install date.

Add that to the planning permission fuckery, the bad system design and the lack of cost reduction despite using cheaper parts and they can get to fuck.

Now I'm out an install and will likely have gas heating until much later in the year which is disappointing but at least I'll end up with a decent install. I'm luckily out £0 as they will refund the £500 deposit.

The £7.5K grant has only exacerbated this by encouraging installer companies to spawn with for the express purpose of harvesting the grant and bumping up prices for everyone.

Well, I agree with this.

Sounds like you dodged a bullet there.

Last I heard, Octopus were fitting Daikin R32-based units, which are less efficient and much louder than the newer-gen R290-based models like the Vaillant Arotherm Plus.

As mentioned previously here, the 7kW Vaillant unit I experienced running at full-chat was significantly quieter than either of the two Mitsubishi Ecodan and Daikin units I also looked at.

@Soul Find a decent independent local installer who’s up for showing you around previous installs, chat to the owners. It’ll be more expensive than an Octopus install, but you’ll get what you want.

Love it when the UK British refer to heat pumps as ‘bleeding edge’ lol.

Well, the underlying heat exchange tech is ancient, but don't the current generation have to be bleeding edge to meet packaging, noise (or lack of) and energy efficiency requirements whilst also working with shitty UK houses and legacy plumbing installations?

A lot of standard tech has been forced into the crappy bleeding edge zone where to meet new standards durability has been sacrificed - see modern gas boilers and ICEs, particularly diesel, for example.

Find a decent independent local installer who’s up for showing you around previous installs, chat to the owners. It’ll be more expensive than an Octopus install, but you’ll get what you want.

When you say more expensive; I just got back a quote from a well reviewed local installer. It was £10k more expensive than Octopus which makes it 5x more expensive post BUS grant.

Sorry Octopus pissed you around. Were you down to have a Daikin or one of the 'Cosy' 6kW units?

The tech in the Cosy units is meant to be good because they're designed by Jason Cassells who Octopus poached from Red, and who pioneered heat pumps which can reach super high flow temps, which is good for true retrofit. But if you don't need that they don't make sense and I can't get my head past how they look - the Red units look like Daleks but the Cosy 6 just looks very, er, purple.

From what I've heard Octopus installs are gold plated - i.e. overspecced to ensure zero chance that the system won't perform - so they insist on replacing radiators which other installers wouldn't, temps people don't actually need and so on. Which seems to conflict with the whole ethos of the Cosy pumps but hey ho, they wouldn't consider me anyway until our place is finished which doesn't work!

Currently on Scottish Power but looking to switch, maybe to Octopus. My Gas and Electric comes to about £380 a month (large family here) but has been going down - in fact they're showing me better deals for around £300. Was also paying £14.5 for boiler cover. Two call outs in the last few months so another £99 for each.

The extra electric/gas used following the incidents cost me an additional £150 in usage. Both were small-ass jobs where I knew the problem but lacked the know-how or confidence (or rather, was sensible enough not to attempt) to fix... Defo cancelling the cover as I think it's a rip-off.

Octopus quotes are even lower. From what I can tell, both are offering solar panel installations, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to go, though I rather pay for panels than stupid energy prices.

Is it worth the switch to Octopus, or should I just take the best deal with SP?

Sounds bonkers, or that they don’t really want the work right now.

What was the quote for? Do you have a massive, un-insulated house?

Daikin - they don't currently do a Cost unit that's a high enough output for house size.

Honestly, their spec was terrible. They suggested 50 deg flow rate to avoid having to replace lots of radiators. They didn't consider the relocation of the water tank and required flow rate and from an install perspective, were looking to box in pipes along skirting rather than lift carpet / floor and do a proper job.

I have a 5 year old highly insulated house with wet UFH on the ground floor.

Itemised quote...

1 Attachment

No the other Cosy models aren't out yet.

Interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what others seem to have experienced!

I read plenty of disgruntled octopus heat pump owners on Twitter, all similar to souls complaints, cheap installs with low operational efficiency and poorly optimised

Woah! That's mad! Get a heat geek in?

I've no experience with them myself, but understand and like the ethos of the guy who owns the company. We're thinking about investigating a heat pump soon, and that's definitely the route I'm planning to go down. If after getting a quote from one of them it's still not financially viable, of course you're gonna just stick with gas for now.

Has anyone got experience of the Nilan Compact P? It seems to be an MVHR and heatpump all in one package so that the remaining heat in the waste air is the source of heat to the heatpump.