Octopus Heat Pumps

mickyduck55

They quoted my son and I £11500, we have similar size properties so no issue there.
His install finished last week and it does look like they have taken care and done a very good job.  Every radiator changed and they removed his redundant gravity feed hot water tank from his loft  The final bill was £2800 so the actual price including the BUS grant was £10800.. 

michaels

I am a bit torn as we would probably qualify if the suggestions to offer free install for low income families come into force - I can certainly see this happening under the incoming Labour administration but wonder if the Tories might enact it sooner - given the current green scepticism though I suspect not.

Nick_Dr1

michaels said:

OK - got a sales call from Octopus Heat Pumps today because I had previously expressed an interest.  Said a full heat pump install to replace my 20kw modulating gas boiler would be £4.4k after the 7.5k grant and this would include any rads that needed upgrading (I suspect at least 6, there are also some vertical ones that I'm sure wouldn't be included) plus a hot water tank (I would actually rather keep my own pressurised indirect cylinder if at all possible as it is in the loft and would be hard/impossible to get the Octopus one there) 

However I would need to pay a refundable £500 deposit to have an actual survey - apparently they are capacity constrained and only want to spend time surveying serious customers.

The £500 deposit is refundable if you choose not to go ahead. I think its fair enough as the survey takes several hours. Our survey came out with the same prices as the initial web quote and actually then reduced by £250 as Daikin are offering that off the prices of the heat pumps at the moment. The other result of the survey was that the loft insulation needs topping up to 300mm to improve the EPC. This would be necessary to get the grant (which Octopus claim for you!). Now awaiting an installation date.

Shildongirl

Interesting about the £250 discount. Will enquire. Date for our Octopus(O) heat pump instal is 5/2/24. Re the instal date. O initially said stuff about shortage of installers and gave a vague time of approx 3 months. I didn’t hear for a few weeks so i rang them up to chase and a date had been set internally but nobody at O had told us. It’s reassuring to read that someone’s O instal was well done. 
Our first toe in the water 3 years ago to replace our 23 year old Vaillant boiler with an ashp using a local
installer went very badly. Nothing to do with O of course. But we did get our £8k deposit and £500  survey fee back thanks to a stiff Which? legal letter.  (nb gals and guys, our key learning from that is you need to inform yourselves re the proximity to doors/windows guidelines and other regs like sound and boundaries as your installer may not know a thing about heat pumps! Challenge your installer or it could cost you very dear. Drop them if you have the slightest doubt but they can be very persuasive!)

So we were interested when Octopus started installations. Their instant online quote was £6300 - now £3800 not much more than cost of new gas boiler. O surveyor who did our 1930s 3 bed semi (solid walls, dg, no Ufh) knew all the regs and O won’t do an instal that doesn’t comply. The downside is that the O system is a standard system with no scope for upgrading the spec. So for instance we couldnt upgrade to a better cylinder that would accept solar thermal. And they won’t  mount the pump at height on a wall for example. But given our previous experience we were still happy to go ahead. We will be getting an 11kw low temperature monobloc Daikin. Their surveyor calculated that the sound level would exceed pdr levels so planning permission was needed. This took months (particularly the drawings which took husband hours and in the end he took a Friday off work and eventually finished them on the Sunday. It would be good if O could give more help with these) and council specified sound insulation sheet to be added to our fence at cost of approx £100 diy. The problem I haven’t seen mentioned much in this thread is the dratted condensate. Is it really as much as 12 litres an hour? We are on lovely yellow sticky London clay and nothing drains away in the winter and we don’t want a slippery ice slick on the  shared drive behind our heat pump. We refuse to inundate the lovely downover neighbours nor the charming neighbours at the bottom of our garden who already have had to install a water pump under their house. (NB the Vaillant Arotherm Plus uses propane so you can’t connect it to a drain. There has to be a soakaway. Without a soakaway would Vaillant honour the warranty? So for us the Vaillant is not an option). We can drain the Daikin into our house drain with a tracer heater as the refrigerant is not propane. But our garden slopes away from the house and the heat pump will be 4m from the house, so we have to build a 65cm concrete plinth to raise the heat pump. It’s a real pia. Anybody any insight about condensate or maybe a better solution? 

Things I’m nervous about: 1) the plinth 2) the noise  level as neighbour upover is a sharp p/t developer and he says the hp will be too noisy. 2) how experienced the Octopus installers will be. 

My husband did engineering at a top uni and he says stuff like he’s ‘reasonably confident about the design of the system’ and ‘we won’t know what mistakes we’ve made til the system is installed’ and ‘hindsight’ and ‘we might make a mistake but get lucky’. I don’t think he’s trying to be funny! Will keep you posted after instal. Any advice you can bring about condensate or anything else will be appreciated. 

Reed_Richards

My heat pump was originally fitted without a "condensate" drain.  There was never a lot of water under the heat pump (nothing like 12 l per hour's worth) but it tended to run towards the house and get the exterior brickwork a bit damp.  Fortunately there was a downpipe from the gutter nearby so we just connected into that (my heat pump is three years old and does not use propane).  

koru

Interesting to read all these Octopus quotes, because they quoted me £500 for the full installation (net of the grant). I was assuming this was their normal quote, but judging by the other quotes here, it is unusually low. I can't understand why, as our house is a 4 bed detached. I'm waiting for them to come and do the full survey, but the quote is supposedly fixed, even if they decide we need a higher power pump or replaced rads.

In a way, I'm encouraged, because my price seems too good to be true, so I'm reassured that they usually quote higher.

shinytop

koru said:

Interesting to read all these Octopus quotes, because they quoted me £500 for the full installation (net of the grant). I was assuming this was their normal quote, but judging by the other quotes here, it is unusually low. I can't understand why, as our house is a 4 bed detached. I'm waiting for them to come and do the full survey, but the quote is supposedly fixed, even if they decide we need a higher power pump or replaced rads.

In a way, I'm encouraged, because my price seems too good to be true, so I'm reassured that they usually quote higher.

I would assume that very few extra rads/pipework/electrical work is required. Let us know how you get on.

michaels

shinytop said:

koru said:

Interesting to read all these Octopus quotes, because they quoted me £500 for the full installation (net of the grant). I was assuming this was their normal quote, but judging by the other quotes here, it is unusually low. I can't understand why, as our house is a 4 bed detached. I'm waiting for them to come and do the full survey, but the quote is supposedly fixed, even if they decide we need a higher power pump or replaced rads.

In a way, I'm encouraged, because my price seems too good to be true, so I'm reassured that they usually quote higher.

I would assume that very few extra rads/pipework/electrical work is required. Let us know how you get on.

But the point is they give the quote prior to the visit to assess these factors so presumably is just based on any info they can get remotely (age and size of property, EPC etc).  Mine is 4.4k, perhaps older property and lower EPC means they assume more pipework/rads and a more powerful heat pump?

Netexporter

michaels said:

shinytop said:

koru said:

Interesting to read all these Octopus quotes, because they quoted me £500 for the full installation (net of the grant). I was assuming this was their normal quote, but judging by the other quotes here, it is unusually low. I can't understand why, as our house is a 4 bed detached. I'm waiting for them to come and do the full survey, but the quote is supposedly fixed, even if they decide we need a higher power pump or replaced rads.

In a way, I'm encouraged, because my price seems too good to be true, so I'm reassured that they usually quote higher.

I would assume that very few extra rads/pipework/electrical work is required. Let us know how you get on.

But the point is they give the quote prior to the visit to assess these factors so presumably is just based on any info they can get remotely (age and size of property, EPC etc).  Mine is 4.4k, perhaps older property and lower EPC means they assume more pipework/rads and a more powerful heat pump?

The initial estimate depends on how accurately the applicant has answered the questions. A major component would be the hot water system, which I'm fairly certain many people might misidentify. How generously the installer of the existing heating sized pipework and radiators could also make a major difference. I imagine the large developers cut the radiator sizes to the bone.

Reed_Richards

Netexporter said:

.... I imagine the large developers cut the radiator sizes to the bone.

Unless they buy just a few sizes in bulk and use those throughout.