BEIS poised to shift policy costs onto gas bills.

spot1034

From what I have heard, heat pumps are very slow to work so it takes several hours to get a house warmed up, as opposed to a gas boiler which will have a very noticeable effect within half an hour. This surely means that many people who are not at home a lot will not be able to just put the heating on for a few hours, say, in the evening if they're out all day, but would need to leave it on all day to be effective for those few hours they need it. Hardly a great saving there, either financially or in use of resources.

brewerdave

spot1034 said:

From what I have heard, heat pumps are very slow to work so it takes several hours to get a house warmed up, as opposed to a gas boiler which will have a very noticeable effect within half an hour. This surely means that many people who are not at home a lot will not be able to just put the heating on for a few hours, say, in the evening if they're out all day, but would need to leave it on all day to be effective for those few hours they need it. Hardly a great saving there, either financially or in use of resources.

Reading between the lines , for most retrospective installs the heating can never go off in a cold Winter because very few houses built in the past ,can be insulated well enough to be comfortable with the low grade heat provided by a heat source pump.

Liku

spot1034 said:

From what I have heard, heat pumps are very slow to work so it takes several hours to get a house warmed up, as opposed to a gas boiler which will have a very noticeable effect within half an hour. This surely means that many people who are not at home a lot will not be able to just put the heating on for a few hours, say, in the evening if they're out all day, but would need to leave it on all day to be effective for those few hours they need it. Hardly a great saving there, either financially or in use of resources.

Not quite hours for mine but it does take about 90 minutes. The radiators never get too hot to touch like with gas. They are now ripping out all the ground ones to replace with air ones since ground ones have much higher service costs. But yeah you'd have to set it to come on a couple of hours before you get home so it is not freezing for so long.

QrizB

A heat pump is a source of heat, just like a gas boiler or an immersion heater or an Aga. A 24kW heat pump will produce 24kW, just like a 24kW gas boiler does, and will heat your house just as quickly and in the same manner.

However heat pumps themselves are quite currently expensive to buy and lower output ones are cheaper. People who might have had a 24kW boiler might instead choose (or be recommended) a 12kW heat pump. This will take twice as long to heat a room from cold as the 24kW gas boiler would.

(Most of the cost of "installing a heat pump" isn't the heat pump, it's the rest of the system [not helped IMHO by the extra costs of complying with the RHI scheme if you want to claim the payments].)

Verdigris

spot1034 said:

From what I have heard, heat pumps are very slow to work so it takes several hours to get a house warmed up, as opposed to a gas boiler which will have a very noticeable effect within half an hour. This surely means that many people who are not at home a lot will not be able to just put the heating on for a few hours, say, in the evening if they're out all day, but would need to leave it on all day to be effective for those few hours they need it. Hardly a great saving there, either financially or in use of resources.

It is a matter of adapting to a slightly different way of working. We (mostly) all drive different cars from time to time. It feels very strange for a while but it is remarkable how quickly we adapt to the indicator stalk being on the opposite side etc.

To get maximum efficiency from a heat pump you want the flow temperature to be as low as possible. This means warm up times are longer so timers have to be set accordingly, so the heating may come on at 05:00 instead of 06:00. If your return home time tends to vary you can control the heating from your phone so that the house is warm when you get back.

phillw

tghe-retford said:

Now they like everyone else will face an effective "gas tax" for having the most efficient and cost effective form of heating.

You missed out the bit where it dumps CO2 into the atmosphere.