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We ended up paying ~£3.7K (exc rads/UFH) in total for this, obvs including the £7.5K BUS grant free money which the installer dealt with entirely on our behalf.
So in our specific case, at least £2K cheaper than an equivalent gas system.
Wasn't that mate's rates though?!
Your installer's quote to us for pretty much the same deal was £17,258, which after the grant would have left us £9,758 to pay. I'm pretty sure I could get a new gas boiler system for less than that.
I wish I could find someone to install a Vaillant ASHP for £3.7k!
Fox-
Ah shiet, busted blol !! 😳
Yeah, our installer is a mate but his initial quote wasn’t far off yours… Man’s still gotta eat. We whittled it down by getting our builder to dig the pipe trench and lay the slab, and by deleting a few bits like the buffer tank. The labour is the prime cost, our installer is a designer & coordinator who subs out all the actual work, so shaving off the groundworks made it affordable.
I’ll admit that being able to negotiate these things is a very privileged position to be in…
British Gas will do a Vaillant system if you ask for it, worth a shot.
ectoplasmosis
Sure!
Our situation was that we had to rip out and completely replace the entire heating and plumbing system, including all radiators and pipework, as it was all ancient & fucked, none of it re-usable, and the boiler etc was in a part of the house that had to be demolished anyway.
Gas: Vaillant system boiler, 250l Vaillant unvented cylinder, all controllers & ancillaries, all new plumbing, all new rads and UFH designed to 50deg max flow temp. Quotes we had for this gas system ranged between £6K and £7K, excluding rads/UFH.
ASHP: Vaillant 7kW ASHP, 250l Vaillant unvented cylinder, NO BUFFER VESSEL (kills efficiency), all controllers etc, all new rads and UFH designed for 45deg max flow temp. We ended up paying ~£3.7K (exc rads/UFH) in total for this, obvs including the £7.5K BUS grant free money which the installer dealt with entirely on our behalf.
So in our specific case, at least £2K cheaper than an equivalent gas system. Our builder ended up digging the trench for burying the external flow/return pipes for the ASHP and constructing the slab for it to sit on, which saved the £5K cost that the installer wanted to charge for this, but this is basically aesthetic and not required (can happily run the pipes above ground). We also deleted the buffer vessel from the original design, which is completely unnecessary and hinders performance, which saved another ~£1K.
Rads/UFH: as both systems were designed for a similar max flow rate, the cost difference between rads sized for 45deg vs 50 was negligible, and the UFH was similar (100mm pipe centres as much as was possible in both cases). We had a couple of different plumbers install the UFH, rads and pipework around the house to a spec dictated by the ASHP designer, as again the quote from the ASHP installer to do this was unaffordable.
The actual rads, copper piping and pipe insulation etc were all purchased via the ASHP installer as part of the install job, saving the VAT.