British Gas Heat Pump installations

matelodave

Although you have a 5 year warranty, thats usually conditional on having it serviced annually by an approved engineer.

We've had a Daikin heatpump for 14 years and had it serviced during the warranty period (three years) The installer offered an up front package for three years which I paid - it cost £200 for three visits for but since then I've had it checked over every three years as TBH there's not a lot to do except check connections and the water pressures and safety valves as well as inspecting the outside unit for dirt and dust. They still want around £200 a visit now which is expensive for what they do

fatwelshbuddha

@matelodave - thanks for your input - understood.   

I've dug into this a bit deeper and BG state that the warranty will cover repairs provided it's serviced annually but it won't cover an annual service which will come as a cost - currently £199.   I guess no service comes cheap these days!

It would also appear that Heatforce didn't comply with all installation recommendations although these don't affect performance.  But some minor changes/upgrades are needed so the engineer has reported these into BG and they will come out in due course to do these.  

FreeBear

I'd suggest contacting Daikin and see if they can recommend an engineer in your area that can do a regular service.

matelodave

Have a poke around t'interweb as well - just doing a search on heatpump servicing gets me 7 installers within a 25 mile radius and I live out in the Cambridge Fenland.

I did check with Daikin a few years ago and the wanted £350 to come and do it but they did offer me several local  authorised companies as well.

oliver1951

fatwelshbuddha said:

oliver1951 said:

British Gas have told me they are not providing maintenance after the initial first year. Looking on the web and because I have the three systems, Daikin, mixergy and the hive controller, it’s looking like an annual cost of around £700 for maintenance. This is crazy, what are you guys all finding and or doing regarding maintenance?

Did you actually resolve anything here?   We've just had our ASHP 1st year (warranty) service completed and wonder what people are doing for maintenance contracts as BG's Homecare plan doesn't seem to cover them unless things have changed recently.  I understand they can do one-off future servicing for £199 and my Daikin installation comes with a 5 year warranty but that doesn't give me confidence if something happens in the next 12 months - service contracts and warranty do not necessarily go hand in hand!  

I have been offered a contract via Heatforce who installed the unit under contract from BG but I also understand that Heatforce are no longer an installer.  The BG engineer who did the ASHP service says that Heatforce's work wasn't up to expected standards so they were removed although I've had no problems with mine.

So the situation with BG is still as I said, though I have been emailing  jana.siber@centrica.co.uk Who is the CEO of a lot of the BG companies. I haven’t had a reply from her, but I did get some movement on the system issues, and they were finally resolved just last week. They removed the hive and the additional pump and converted the buffer to a volumiser. It’s so quiet now! My cop, based on total consumption and production since install from the MMI, is ~4.2, and latest figures are showing a marginal improvement on that. So the regional manager called after that had been done and he confirmed that they are not currently offering a maintenance contract but they ‘ are still looking into it’, umm. As mateloave Dave says, they are offering individual call outs at around £200. But that is subject always to availability. Daikin offer a service and they have 3 levels, take a look at their site. The only thing is this doesn’t cover all the radiators etc, nor in my case the cylinder as that is a mixergy, that’s an additional cost. BG said try getting a local plumber to look after the plumbing aspect of the heating system. You couldn’t make this stuff up! However maybe they will get their act together, the regional manager told me that they are training a lot more ‘heat pump  maintenance engineers’, mostly they are experienced gas boiler engineers being retrained. But the volume for them is still tiny compared to the massive volume of the gas boilers. 

Now things are settling down I think the system is working well. Never been so cosy and the house has no real cold spots any more. When they did the install I ended up with 3 more radiators, 2 of which I thought were probably unnecessary. However it is comfortable so maybe they were right. I have it on 7/24 and January was , to my mind very expensive, but if I consider it over the whole year maybe it’s reasonable. AND the whole house is useable. This time last year I was hunkered down in the living room. So January I had a total usage of 521kwh total electric of which 487 kWh was for the heat pump. Would be interested in how that compares to others.  My heated floor area is 133sqM.

I’m going to continue to chase BG re the maintenance contract. My install was June 13th 2024, so I’ve a few months before I need to decide. Also BG , supposedly, will do a service at the end of that first year, so that keeps the warranty whole, into the second year. At least as far as the Daikin heat pump is concerned. Even though BG spec’d the Mixergy they seem to ignore it totally. Fortunately it just seems to work well. So fatwelshbuddha let me know how it goes for you and what you decide. 

FreeBear

oliver1951 said: BG said try getting a local plumber to look after the plumbing aspect of the heating system. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

If it helps, central heating plumbing and radiators rarely give any trouble. You might get a radiator springing a leak after 20 years or so. Pipework should be good for 50+ years.

No idea what is involved in servicing a Mixergy cylinder - Presumably, they give it a visual inspection and check the expansion vessel. Can't see that there is anything more that you can do to one.

For comparison, I used ~630kWh of gas in January to provide 600kWh of heat. But I've probably been heating this place to a lower temperature than you have.

oliver1951

FreeBear said:

oliver1951 said: BG said try getting a local plumber to look after the plumbing aspect of the heating system. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

If it helps, central heating plumbing and radiators rarely give any trouble. You might get a radiator springing a leak after 20 years or so. Pipework should be good for 50+ years.

No idea what is involved in servicing a Mixergy cylinder - Presumably, they give it a visual inspection and check the expansion vessel. Can't see that there is anything more that you can do to one.

For comparison, I used ~630kWh of gas in January to provide 600kWh of heat. But I've probably been heating this place to a lower temperature than you have.

Wow. So on that basis you’d have paid about £40 for your gas and I paid £120 for the elec for the heat pump. Both figures exclude standing charges. Though I got , according to the MMI, 1,948 kWh of heat. So on a per kWh of heat we had about the same cost, nominally. My heat loss   Was calculated at 8kw at -2c. Which seems about right. I have an open system, so typically downstairs is around 18c , before solar gain, and upstairs around 15c. Although since last week, with the changes, both those temps have moved up a little. But that still seems to be a massive disparity unless you have a much lower heat loss or are running at significantly lower temperatures. Any thoughts?

FreeBear

oliver1951 said:

FreeBear said:

oliver1951 said: BG said try getting a local plumber to look after the plumbing aspect of the heating system. You couldn’t make this stuff up!

If it helps, central heating plumbing and radiators rarely give any trouble. You might get a radiator springing a leak after 20 years or so. Pipework should be good for 50+ years.

No idea what is involved in servicing a Mixergy cylinder - Presumably, they give it a visual inspection and check the expansion vessel. Can't see that there is anything more that you can do to one.

For comparison, I used ~630kWh of gas in January to provide 600kWh of heat. But I've probably been heating this place to a lower temperature than you have.

Wow. So on that basis you’d have paid about £40 for your gas

£40 is about right. Can't give a figure for heat loss as I haven't done a proper survey (really ought to pull my finger out on that one). But during the daytime, heating will kick in every hour or two for ~30 mins producing 3kWh of heat. This is sufficient to maintain the temperature at a steady 19°C (thermostat has a tight hysteresis of ±0.1°C).

Also have a wood burner in the lounge which gets used in an evening when it is cold outside - This probably cuts my gas consumption in half.