Heat pumps.

Any body got one?
I've heard they don't work very well also you need to change all your radiators.
Might even have to run some other kind of heating along side it in cold spells.

They don't sound like the solution to me.

 

The 'new' offer is not as good as the one which is already on them. Problem for most folks would be the size of the unit as well as the other things mentioned. One certainly would not fit where our Gas boiler lives.
The cost is rather high too!

 

I can envisage what high rise buildings will look like in the UK in the future.

 

Some one over the back from me has had one of those for a few years, at first I thought it was air conditioning but I twigged it must be one of these after a while.
Yes they do seem to fit them on walls, I assume they have to be out side.
I've heard they never get the water very hot so you have to have much bigger radiators fitted all round the house.
Certainly looks like a massive upheaval having it fitted and are they actually going to make the existing gas network surpless to requirements, bearing in mind they have spent billions renewing most of it.
I heard heat pumps described as the Beetamax of the heating world, which I think won't be far from the truth, hydrogen will win in the end I think.

 

On todays news, the government are offering 5k to swap a gas boiler for a heat pump. Guess it's worth checking out if you've got an old gas one.
I like the fact that they air condition in the summer as well as heat in the winter. Ok you need good insulation but that's a given these days.

 

That was what made me think about starting the thread, but I'm still thinking £5k is not enough.

 

And since there are 25 million gas boilers and this grant will only allow about 90,000 heat exchangers to be fitted, it is not going to make that much of an impact.
The money might be better spent on insulating houses.

 

Interesting comment on the bbc 1pm news from an elderly gent who has had one for several years describing the room heating as "adequate" - not what you might call a thrilling endorsement.

 

Heat pumps are reverse fridges. They need electricity to work - what's the point if the electricity is provided by a gas/coal fueled power station?

Fat Controller had a graphic on his signature which explained it perfectly.

 

I've got one. Not air/air or air/water, though. Refrigerant gas in 400m2 of captor pipes buried a metre deep under the chicken run, and wet underfloor heating and 200l hot water tank. Good insulation was de rigeur and the spec for the slab (before and after the heating pipes) had to be followed meticulously. It's a beautiful heating system...comfortably warm all over the house. Always plenty of hot, hot water. BUT...It's becoming less economical to run now the price of electricity is going through the roof here. Prolonged power cuts would be a problem. The tiled floor heats up and cools down relatively slowly, so it's not what you'd call 'instant heating' .
We had the option of air-con and pool heating, but decided not to risk overloading it

 

Any foum of heating here must heat the house with out elec, we have to many power cuts so all our heating come form heating oil and log burner

 

Well yes, that applies to all these so called green ideas, they all seem to need electricity to work.
The only thing they seem to come up with to counter how we make that electricity is more and more windmills.
But on a prolonged cold foggy spell around January we could all be freezing to death, unless they keep up backup from nuclear or fossil fuel power stations.

But you have the land to do it, not sure I'd be allowed something like that under my allotment.