Air Source Heat Pumps

exeastender

I am looking for some advice about ASH. I live in a council house and have the option to have ASH along with solar panels on the roof. At present the house is heated by a coal fire which heats up the rads. I love my coal fire, although it has its cons i.e. price of coal the house being cold until the fires gets going the dirt and going out for coal in the pouring rain! I have no idea what type of system the council will put in, from my understanding I will have a machine in garden, another in my airing cupboard to replace my hot water tank and larger rads. My worry is that I have only heard people who have had them put in by the council say thats they are cold and ended up with hughe electric bills. I do not need to worry about the amount of hot water as we have electric shower anyway. Its a 3 bed house with 2 adults and 2 teenagers. We would be moved onto economy 10 also.
Any advice would be really appreciated - just worried we will be cold and paying through the nose to be cold!

Peterg

To Samtheman1K
Hi, I have read your original article with much interest and as you have now had the system installed for some years, would it be possible for you give an update on running costs and performance during really cold weather as this is info. impossible to get via manufacturers and installers.

[Deleted User]

Peterg wrote: »

To Samtheman1K
Hi, I have read your original article with much interest and as you have now had the system installed for some years, would it be possible for you give an update on running costs and performance during really cold weather as this is info. impossible to get via manufacturers and installers.

Have you seen this???
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3699835=

gneiss_2

exeastender wrote: »

I am looking for some advice about ASH. I live in a council house and have the option to have ASH along with solar panels on the roof./ we will be cold and paying through the nose to be cold!

We had the same choice although we had storage heaters, my advice would be to make sure that the council's installers know waht they are talking about, as council tenants we have been side lined given excuses and just lied to.
We did have storage heaters, open fire with small back boiler(useless given the size of the hw tank) and a hot water tank of 210ltrs up till 20/4/2011. Although we didn,t have an overall warm house we were comfortable and if it got really cold we lit the fire. For the year 20/4/1010-20/4/2011 it cost roughly£1200 for all our electricity, we still had the old white meter, thats with five people in the house and myself and wife(retired) in all day.
This year its has so far cost £1400 on economy 10, the house is warmer but we have virtually no control on the heating. If we want the living room at 20c we have to have the whole house at the same temp.
We have no control apart from switching the heating off completley to stop it running at the higher rate, we have never had a 165 ltrs of hot water without using the immerser.
This cost reflects the fact that we have not left the two immersers on as instructed by the installers, £8.50 a day on a week trial. The council must have realised this as the two house that they fitted these into have had 8k electric showers fitted aftewards.
We only get enough hot water for 1 half bath full of step in hot water. Before the 210 HW cyclinder supplied enough water for all of us to have baths and other household use.
This is from my spread sheet.

13/03/2013 5400 £838.08 4608 £393.06 13 £93.1 £1,324.22 325 £4.07 £1,487.20 £1,383.10
The solar panel is a laugh as it onlys supplies hot water in the middle of the day (the installers said have showers in the afternoon, a far better idea would have been PV panels.
The whole idea of fitting these ASHP into council properties is to reduce the councils emmissions, they collect the fead in tariff as well! If there is mains gas near you that is the best bet otherwise modern storage heaters or just stick with your coal fire. Some modern coal fires are very efficient.
In a modern house, proper insulation, a GSHP, underfloor heating other tenants have reported electricity usage of less than £20 per week. My advice is to thoughly investigate before agreeing, find someone with the same house type and ask them.

Ally74

Hi gneiss,

Sorry to hear about your problems. Do you know what make of ASHP you have had installed?

[Deleted User]

gneiss wrote: »

The whole idea of fitting these ASHP into council properties is to reduce the councils emmissions, they collect the fead in tariff as well!

Great post but I think this bit is incorrect.

Cheers

gneiss_2

The heat pump we have is a Nibe fighter 2015, 7 radiators three bedroom radiators have thermostatic valves, a powerflow tank from macdonald engineering ( nothing wrong with tank)
AS far as the feed in tariff those in charge of contract say the council does collect the money, I have asked how if they don't know my electricity usage, as I said not the most knowledgable people dealing with this.
A better designed system with control over the immersers(timers) and a larger heat store for the heating, 120ltrs is not enough might improve things.
If we don't have the system running at peak electricity time then we have no heating between 1630hr to 2030hr.
Retrofitting theses systems into a 40+year old house was not a good idea. We now have no other means to heat the house and have experienced a 8hr power cut in Jan, just lucky it wasn't like the winter of 2011.

OXLADE

There is still so much confusion in the marketplace which is due to heat pump manutcafturers trying to sell their offerig into the market place with a tailor made approach that suits their product rather than offering a genuine comparison with other products on the market.

COPs at an ambient of 7 degrees and water temp of 35 is as useful as seeing if the product is MCS accredited. Its a snapshot in time not a realistic annualised average Seasonal COP figure.

The main questions that all prospective ASHP customers should be asking are;

1) Have you trials to show the annualised COP of your heat pump over a 12 month period.

2) What can your x kw capacity heat pump (which is always shown in the literature at an ambient of 7 degrees at water 35) deliver in the colder conditions for example minus 7 degrees ambient (some ASHPs can only deliver half their output at this temp which means they will be topped up by electric heaters. There are a select few that have less less than 10% drop off in capacity those are the ones you want unless you want to be running off the electirc heaters in the cold conditions when you need the heat!)

3) is the product inverter driven to deliver optimum efficiency. any ASHP manufacturer that debates that a non inverter (Direct On Line) product is more efficiecnt does not have the technology and will be working towards getting it.

4) what is the core business of the supplier, what is their knowledge of the heat pumps as this is what you are looking at buying not a boiler but a heat pump.

These 4 questions will make sure that when looking for a heatpump your expectations are met and you will be able to enjoy the efficient technology for what it is.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum: Nice post.

The problem is that the manufacturers sell their products to any plumber who wants to set up as an ASHP installer and then the manufacturer takes no further responsibility.

The best test is No1 on your list -COP for an annual trial. However unfortunately a, say, Mitsubishi Ecodan might work well in one installation, but not in another. It really is pot luck!

I take it you have seen the EST annual trial of 29 ASHP's? A manufacturer might be happy to quote details of the system that achieved a COP of 3.0 but not not those that achieved a COP of 1.2.

Another difficulty is the customer proving the performance is unacceptable; how do they measure? All they can do is complain of sky high electric bills.

[Deleted User]

Cardew wrote: »

The problem is that the manufacturers sell their products to any plumber who wants to set up as an ASHP installer and then the manufacturer takes no further responsibility.
/QUOTE]

As regards the EcoDan you can only buy one if you are a Mitsubishi accredited installer.

In saying that I have seen a couple of shocking installs that in no way even point a nod to the install instructions...

Cheers