Did anyone see the BBC programme on heat pumps?

With a registered hmo 5 residents and my own space. I have found complex and confusing the subject, as a rule simplest is best.My Baxi gas wallheaters low cost to run one in my one bedroom self contained area is 45 years old passes annual inspection have not even had to replace spark ignition used every day in winter. More controversialy I will keep the two brittony 2T gas water heaters and refurbish even given high gas use. I insulation dry lined the property 20 years ago, three wall heaters now redundant; total gas and fuel cost £3500 annual, two kitchens three bathrooms less£1000 approx PV feed in tarriff, cost already covered. How long will heat pumps last what will they cost to maintain? Incompetent installation and problems already widely reported little long term experience.Factor in the required cost of insulating old houses if you pay someone to do this?,high cost, few really competent installers are essential. All things considered gas is nationaly the most sensible option unless affordable electricity storage can be devised for wind production,maybe thorium reactors otherwise nuclear too dangerous.

Reply to the comment left by Tony Edwards at 30/01/2025 – 12:09I know that this is an old thread although it may be that there could be more interest as there was a programme on TV last night (29th January 2025) on Channel 5:
https://www.channel5.com/show/heat-pumps-are-they-really-worth-it
The gist of it was (in terms of what they quoted in the programme) that gas boilers are typically 80-90% efficient but (air source) heat pumps might be e.g. 300% efficient (as the programme put it) because you are putting energy in to harvest energy from the air. So in terms of energy output from the heat pump you get more energy out than you put in.
But in order to get the thing to work and keep the house at a comfortable temperature you have to have the pump putting energy into the house all the time, your insulation must be good and you may need to change the radiators. You cannot turn the heating on and expect the house to be at a comfortable temperature 1 hour later so heat hygiene must be good as well.
One of the people in the programme installed a heat pump – basically replaced an old gas boiler with an air source heat pump – and had to replace a lot of the radiators. I think the figure they quoted in the programme was £20K to upgrade their property. Some of the people in the programme seemed to be making a lot of investment for (if I correctly remember what they said) to achieve an energy saving worth about £200 per year. There was some discussion about having better electricity tariffs available if you had installed a pump and that you needed to make the most of these to make it all worth while.
Somebody else in the programme had a three story Victorian or Edwardian house and chose a ground source heat pump using bore holes. In his case he had to use four bore-holes. His cost was far higher even after deduction of the available grant, which itself was far higher when he installed his system than the grants are now. The last time I looked at bore holes it was £5,000 per bore hole and that was before you added in the cost of the system itself and any alterations you needed to make in the property.
One interesting thing about the programme was that it highlighted the fact that the government charges far more tax on electricity than it does on gas. I think it was about 30 pence more per unit on electricity than on gas.
So all these people had to invest tens of thousands of pounds to upgrade their houses and seemed to be happy with the result (although in some cases they were moving from very old gas boilers i.e. not from modern gas condensing boilers); but they all seemed intelligent enough to be able to ventilate their properties, open and close windows appropriately and generally follow good heat-hygiene measures. I cannot really see this working for tenants yet.
A modern condensing gas boiler is £2.5K-£3.5K, you can just connect it to your existing system and give it a flush, the performance is good, it is reliable, and it will rapidly bring your house up to a comfortable temperature.
I still think that if the government actually wants this to happen then it needs to make it worth it. Sort the EPC system out, allow you to offset the capital cost against your rents, stop charging more tax on electricity than gas.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 30/01/2025 – 13:49
As other online debates from the informed have advised if you take the whole energy supply system wind and solar are not consistent and to meet spikes in demand gas is the only economical way to do this we do not have much hydro.and lifting water up to release when peak demand is to be met is costly. Battery storage is also very costly and such as is planned cannot provide enough. New technology yet to be devised may do this,thorium reactors
could may be developed to fill the gap.The huge nuclear power station being built on the south coast will be very costly as well and where to safely store the accumulating waste and at what cost so far no credible answer. So gas is the viable way to meet surges in demand here in the UK.So much for Milibands all electric future that is greenwash dream.

Reply to the comment left by Tony Edwards at 30/01/2025 – 18:23
Certainly for rental properties I can’t see tenants wanting to move away from gas or it being of any benefit for landlords right now to do it. Gas boilers are cheap, efficient and effective…you turn the boiler on, the house is warm 1 hour later, and the gas hob still works during a power cut. They also still work really well when the outside air temperature is very cold. The last time that I had a gas boiler installed the engineer told me that it costs money to go green….it’s for rich people.

As an owner occupier this is something that I could afford to do as I am close to retirement age although I would have struggled to afford it when my children were younger. But of course you watch these programmes and ask yourself ‘is it worth it’.

One of the couples in the programme went to a lot of expense and proudly said that they were saving a couple of hundred pounds a year on their energy bills. So a £2,000 saving after ten years? For an investment of tens of thousands of pounds?

The couple that invested £20k in their property (air source heat pumps and new radiators) seemed happy with it. But they were comparing their new air source system with a very old gas boiler, not a condensing boiler. And the amount of plant that they had to install effectively took out what in many properties would be a room equivalent to the size of a bathroom. In their property they could do it but many rental properties would have to sacrifice a small bedroom, bathroom or toilet and that’s a really big negative in a rental property. In comparison the condensing gas boiler in my house takes up the space of a modest sized cupboard and it works really well.

The man in the Channel 5 programme who put in 4 boreholes in an older Victorian or Edwardian three-storey property seemed happy and told the programme that he’d increased the value of his house. He appeared to be about my age.

So this is what it boils down to when you consider the net effect on the numbers. The people in this programme seemed to be saving a couple of hundred pounds a year but were spending tens of thousands of pounds to do it. This is something that I could do on my own property…spend tens of thousands of pounds…dramatically decrease my energy usage…increase the value of my house. What would the net effect of all that be at my age?

The comparison is a modern gas boiler costing £2.5-£3.5K that works well (because they do). So let’s suppose that instead I spend tens of thousands of pounds on my new installation and this increases the value of my house. This is tens of thousands of pounds that I cannot gift to my children to help with their education, their own housing costs, getting on the housing ladder itself, or childcare for their own children when that becomes important.

Apparently this will increase the value of the house and the effect of that is that Rachel Reeves will take far more money off my children when I die in inheritance tax at 40%. So it’s not really for rich people…it’s for the deluded and for the families that are so VERY rich that they don’t even have to care about inheritance tax.

On top of all that, according to the Channel 5 programme, the government taxes electricity per unit far more than it taxes gas. And if I increase the value of my house the council might well decide that the increase in the value of my house means that they need to move my council tax band and take more council tax off me.

So, labour government, if you really want us to do this then make it worth it!!! Enough of the hypocrisy: “…we are going to grow the economy…” goes the cry…but then employers’ NI goes up. And the labour climate tsars tell us “We are facing a climate emergency!” Really? An emergency? Well then why don’t you make a radical change that will make a difference like sorting the EPC system out and then lifting band A properties out of the inheritance tax net. Your hypocrisy is no less offensive than Donald Trump’s “drill, drill, drill”….in many ways your lies are more hypocritical.

The key to lowering emissions is the tax system. Labour hot air is no better than Trump’s hot air.

Yes, I did watch the programme 29 January, carefully.
It is more expensive to install but you wouldn’t hesitate to spend £20K buying a decent car which loses it valve before it’s taken off the forecourt. I think some have lost the true reason for heat pumps. Forget Miliband, an idiot when primer minister. £25 billion for carbon capture, rubbish. Reason? Unless you are a Trump follower there is climate changes. Agreed, no point wasting lots of money. But this is for the future health of our planet. That’s what you are leaving to your children etc.
We have four ground source heatpump systems(15 Years old) and three recently installed air source units; these have solar panels & battery storage. Which IS important. My wife & I are in our mid 70s.
ECP needs to be properly sorted out. Thank you

Reply to the comment left by John Grefe at 31/01/2025 – 12:10
That’s interesting. One of the things that I have had difficulty finding out (for my principle private residence) is the performance of ground-source heat pumps. Are your ground source heat pump systems running from trenches or from boreholes? And what’s the performance after 15 years? Is there any deterioration?

The climate is changing, as it has done for millenia, but human-produced CO2 is a minute fraction of the total CO2. The UK is one of, if not the world leader in reducing our CO2 emissions, but they were miniscule compared to countries like China and the US even before we started. Are we to believe impoverishing ourselves and destroying our industrial base in the UK, just so politicians can virtue signal at COP, will actually make a difference to climate change?

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 31/01/2025 – 13:08
This is all true. However I am happy to consider proposals to upgrade my property with an open mind…although one of the problems we have is that rich people tell those of us that aren’t rich that we have to save the planet but don’t permit us the wherewithal to actually do it.

Ed Miliband for example reportedly earns £130K, his wife earns £200K, and he lives in a £2.3M house with only a £400K mortgage. He’s rich.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213675/Ed-Miliband-A-2-3m-house-400-000-mortgage–Labour-leader-Ed-Millionaire.html

I’m not rich. I’m a small businessman, a small portfolio landlord (mortgaged) and a family man…I have kids. Ultimately I hope that they will inherit from me in order that my grandchildren may benefit.

So if somebody tells me that I have to save the planet (this won’t), inevitably I’m going to ask “…what is it going to cost my family…me, my kids, my grandchildren”.

I have looked at the cost of ground-source heat pumps for my principle private residence. It appeared to be approximately £5K per bore hole although I couldn’t work out the number of bore holes I would need. I asked one of those companies that assesses you for grants and the company told me that I could not have a grant unless I installed cavity wall insulation. CWI would damage not only my principal private residence but also my rental property. The company responsible for policing whether I got a grant (and which also sold cavity wall insulation) told me that ground source heat pumps were unreliable and expensive to maintain. I looked online and the only information that I could find told me that their performance deteriorates over a ten year period. This may be right but I have no idea. Either way it looks like a £30-40K investment and maybe more to get something that actually delivers an acceptable level of performance.

And if the Channel 5 programme this week was right and it would significantly increase the value of my house that would (a) mean that I would have less money to gift my children in my lifetime (b) cost my children a lot of extra money in inheritance tax when I eventually pass away.

So that’s what I know.

That of course and the fact that a condensing gas boiler costs £2.5-3.5K and it really works well.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 31/01/2025 – 14:12
It’s not just the cost to install the heat pump, but all the work you may need to do to ensure it is anywhere close to effective. This may include under floor heating on the ground floor, larger radiators (and you can’t use micro-bore pipework), double glazing, CWI… Also, a gas boiler for backup!

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 31/01/2025 – 15:35
I know. The last time that I looked at it my guess was 3 boreholes at £5K each, so £15K but might be £20K, the unit itself at £3.5K, a lot of extra radiators and pipework. And I might need photovoltaics as well. My best guess was £30K but could be £50K. For a variety of reasons an air source heat pump was not an option but even with that I think I would still have been looking at £20K plus even without the photovoltaics and I’d have been sacrificing a lot of extra space for the plant room.

My last gas condensing boiler was just over £3K and it works fantastically well.

Carbon capture is delusional nonsense….I suspect that the people promoting it are probably either trekkies or Star Wars fans or perhaps somehow gain financially from promoting it even though they know that it will not work.

We now know that soils do a better job than trees at carbon capture and increasing biodiversity, restoring wetlands etc. will probably be the most effective solution to climate change. My accepting £7.5K to throw away my gas boiler and having to spend tens of thousands of pounds on my property will not do anything at all to save the planet.

I am interested in ground source heat pump technology but can’t find any reliable figures on long-term performance. Either way as far as I can see it’s not justifiable under the present regime because the net effect will be to cost my children tens of thousands of pounds in tax.