Thinking of buying a house with an ashp, thermal store and hw solar panels, what do I need to as

dharm999

We are looking at buying a house, built 2020, EPC rating B,  that has a Grant Aerona 3 ashp, thermal store, UFH, traditional radiators, and solar panels for hot water.  It has  propane gas cylinders for one gas hob, and also a wood burner.

I’ve read about ashp, and have a basic understanding of how they work, but don’t know much more than that.  We are seeing the house in the next few days, and wondered what questions I should be asking.  The things I’d thought about are

- what are the annual electricity costs
- are there maintenance contracts in place
- is there a hot water tank, and does it have an immersion

Thanks

Netexporter

Having solar thermal panels, for hot water, means there must be a hot water cylinder and that will almost certainly have a back-up immersion heater. However, that suggests to me that the ASHP is probably doing space heating only, unless the hot water cylinder has dual heating coils.

It's not the electricity cost that is most important, so much as how many kWh the heat pump uses, per annum. They usually have an individual consumption meter, so you can read the total and divide by the number of years to get an average. The main thing is to check the house has a working smart meter so you can get access the best tariffs for heat pumps. or an EV tariff which you could charge up batteries with, so you could run the heating at about 8p/kWh which would equate to around 2p/kWh of heat, or a quarter of the price of gas.

Heat pumps are generally more reliable than gas boilers, so most of the servicing is cleaning filters and checking additive levels in the water. Just find a local firm that installs heat pumps to do servicing if there is no existing contract.

Vitor

Was a proper heat loss calculation done room-by-room? Weather compensation enabled or not? Ask to see the Microgeneration Certification Scheme design paperwork. Was the system commissioned by an MCS-accredited installer?

If the answer to any of these is vague, that’s a warning light.