by Sallust
It may come as a surprise to the most dedicated eco warriors that heat pumps don’t last forever. Those installing them now are in for a nasty shock 15–20 years down the line when their costly noisy power-hungry government-subsidised outdoor heat exchangers come to the end of their lives and need replacing. There won’t be any grants or subsidies around then.
According to the Telegraph some of the early birds are already suffering from buyer’s remorse:
Peter and Anne Watts made headlines when they became one of around four British households to have an air-source heat pump fitted in 2008.
That Mr and Mrs Watts, 88 and 82 respectively, had installed a heat pump a decade before the likes of Boris Johnson seized upon them as the future of home heating was highly unusual.
“We had a reporter up from the local paper asking us about our solar panels and our heat pump,” recalls Mr Watts. “In the days afterwards, we got a call from the BBC – I thought it was a prank call from the neighbours.”
Yet 17 years on, the pump is nearing the end of its lifespan – and the price tag for a replacement is £17,000, around £10,000 more than they paid for their original.
Mr and Mrs Watts are in a highly unique quandary – one that shines a light on the shortcomings of the Government’s heat pump drive.Households currently benefit from a £7,500 grant to install a new pump, thanks to the generous Boiler Upgrade Scheme run by the energy department. But no such generosity exists for early adopters whose systems are now nearing their end.
It begs the question: how do households – who relied on low prices or government grants to get their heat pump fitted the first time around – afford its replacement?
Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Watts can’t retrofit a gas boiler because a) they’re not on the gas grid and b) because the house was expensively renovated with the installation of a heat pump in mind. Now it seems they haven’t the cash for a new heat pump. That’s an interesting development since it’s often the well-heeled retired who have the resources and time to fit a heat pump in the first place. Unfortunately, if they live long enough their dwindling incomes turn the ageing heat pumps into a time bomb:
The couple, who ran a business selling animal feed and now live off a private pension, cannot afford a new heat pump. They have already stripped back on holidays since electricity prices first rose.
It is a problem that the pair, who live in a four-bedroom detached house in Buckinghamshire, did not foresee when they became one of the first British households to have an air-source heat pump installed.
Back when they installed the pump the whole idea was to future-proof their bills by investing in more efficient and cheaper-to-run equipment. Moreover, there were no grants back then though they did enjoy an advantageous scheme of selling the power they generated from solar panels back to the grid. Mr and Mrs Watts make around £900 per annum that way.
However, the cost of electricity has soared and heat pumps use so much it’s difficult for a domestic solar panel system to do more than make a dent in the running costs:
Almost two decades later, Mr Watts is doubtful the switch saved him much money, because in more recent years, so-called all-electric houses like his have been hamstrung by high electricity rates. “We don’t save a lot relative to oil and gas, but I would still recommend any house with a heat pump also gets solar panels,” he says.
Since they have no choice but to replace their heat pump or wait in trepidation for their existing one to break down, Mr and Mrs Watts are hoping their early loyalty will make it possible to obtain a discounted replacement:
After being approached by the Telegraph, a spokesman for the company said: “We value Mr Watts’ loyalty and appreciate his contribution to promoting heat pumps. If Mr Watts wishes to upgrade his system, Daikin has offered to supply a discounted heat pump.”
A Government spokesman said: “Heat pumps are three times more efficient than gas boilers, enabling families to save around £100 a year by using a smart tariff.”
£100 a year. If Mr and Mrs Watts can get a discounted heat pump for, say, £10,000 (a very optimistic prospect) they should be able to recover the replacement costs in only 100 years when both are over 180. Except by then they’d have had to replace the new heat pump at least five times.
It’s highly unlikely anyone currently buying a heat pump will find their installers lining up to offer them a discounted replacement in the 2040s, having been prompted by the Telegraph to do so.
With VAT imminent on heat pumps, the government has some solutions up its sleeve. One of them is to lock householders into debt to pay for them. The Government spokesman went on:
There is zero VAT on heat pumps until March 2027. Overall installation costs are coming down and will continue to do so for all consumers as the market develops. We are also exploring private finance options, such as loans, to support homeowners with the upfront costs of heat pumps.
It can be safely assumed that the cost of servicing those loans will exceed the nominal savings from a heat pump of £100 a year. Presumably, the loans will run the risk of still being paid off when the heat pump needs replacing, necessitating further loans for a new one.
One day there may be millions of pensioners living in houses with failing or failed heat pumps that they cannot possibly afford either to run or replace or obtain loans to do either.
Worth reading in full.
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There’s no let up with Miliband
Miliband urged to make gas boilers more expensive to boost heat pumps
Campaigners call for an end to ‘de facto subsidies’ for fossil fuel heating systems
…
Energy suppliers have urged Ed Miliband to charge households more for running a gas boiler to boost the uptake of eco-friendly heat pumps and electric vehicles (EVs)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/02/miliband-urged-make-gas-boilers-expensive-boost-heat-pumps/
Who knows where flywheel will be in 10 or 15 years time? We’ll all be up the Swannee unless a stop is put to this insanity.
The hilarious thing in the story. Electricity prices are so high (compared to gas) because of the green levies on the bills. The author never asks why these are needed. The reason is to subsidize the green electricity that the government wants to convert everyone to.
The real reason why UK electricity is so expensive is that it really is so expensive to generate now that wind and solar are increasing percentages of the mix.
So the solution is to tax gas and use that to add to the green electricity subsidies! But suppose it works, and everyone moves to electricity. Then where does the money come from for the subsidies?
Take all the subsidies and the forced purchases off wind and solar, and they would be out of business in days.
If he installed heat pumps and solar panels years before anyone else, he was super-green and highly subsidized, and a true believer of the CO2-is-evil hoax.
Now he, as a deluded/brainwashed businessman, is learning the reality of a government-run, socialistic, woke economy, which screws up all rational decision making.
The end result of that is the U.K. and Germany have near-zero-real growth economies, high energy prices, decreasing real incomes, plus the over-taxed, over-regulated people have to deal with tens of millions of “uninvited guests from all over ” , who are rapidly altering their native cultures for the worse.
These people should be helped in their own countries
I paid $24000 to have 3 heat pumps in my house.
My energy cost savings averaged $200 during the past five years.
My loan payments averaged $2000 during the past five years.
In Vermont, they do not work below 10 – 15 F, depending on sunshine and wind, so I use my existing propane system
We have very high electricity rates in CT. Assuming a PSF2 of 7.5 (BTU/Wh) for a heat pump, my ‘break-even’ price for heating oil would be on the order of $5.25/gal, excluding the cost of the condenser.
I did an hour by hour evaluation of my heat pumps during various outdoor temps, and made some graphs about 5 years ago.
My break even is at about 10 to 15 F, depending on sunshine and wind.
Electric rate at present = total bill/kWh is about 24 c/kWh
Five years ago, it was 19 c/kWh, which means my heat pumps are more expensive to run.
However, propane/gallon went up as well, because the government increased the tax
I get my electricity from GMP, a Canadian/French company
I get my propane from Irving, a Canadian company
I have designed and built my well-insulated house for passive solar back in 1985.
Heat pumps are good for AC in the summer, piss poor in New England winters
Socialism did not work in Russia for decades
Why would it work in the UK and Germany?
Their people will be sooooo screwed.
When will they revolt?
How will they revolt without their candidates, as with LePen in France?
Jordan Bardella
But it will work next time
The socialist motto:
This time it’s going to work.
Bernie Sanders, feel the Bern, celebrated his honeymoon in the USSR.
He was feted as an honored guest, free meals, stays and travels, many gifts.
He loves Communism, but will settle for Socialism
He was a dirt poor hippy from Brooklyn when he came to Vermont.
Now, he is a multi- millionaire with 3 houses, an $80,000 Audie (he drives an old car when in Vermont), plus he has a tax-free foundation with tens of millions of Pharma money, his family on the payroll.
He still SAYS he loves Communism, but we all know he is full of it
In discussions with the what was the U.K. Department for Business Enterprise and Industrial Strategy, and later the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. They would not accept that their claim that a heat pump is three times more efficient than a gas boiler is wrong.
You cannot use electrical input figures as a calculation for efficiency when comparing with heaters of a different fuel type. You must use the energy used to produce and distribute that electrcity.
I believe this mistaken opinion is the basis for pushing a far more complicated, less effective and far more expensive system. They also expect the grid to be low carbon (dioxide) which also I do not expect them to acheive.
I do not understand why they think they will get cheaper with times as demand for materials is raising prices, aluminium and copper being large parts of heat pumps. Installation cost cannot fall as wages and government taxes on business rise, it doesn’t add up.
It’s an article of faith – you have to believe…
According to the IEA heat pump sales in Europe had a large fall in sales in the first half of 2024. JP Morgan’s 15th Annual Energy paper (March 2025) says it was a decline of over 50%.
Even the most ignorant know the lie is in when money flies out the door.
Where will one get the steel, aluminum, copper, etc., when those resources are diverted to build Don Quixote targets?
Heat pumps, and the air conditioners that they are based on, are not new technology. The idea that there are huge undiscovered efficiencies in the designs is the kind of pipe dream that socialists have become famous for.
It fits with the novel idea that CO2 controls the weather (aka climate).
As a heat pump user in the US since 1988, our results have been mixed, to say the least. Our first was in 1988 at a SE Michigan lake front cabin with a ground water sourced unit that was provided with 52-degree F well water from our water well. The output was a pipe into the lake. It worked well when it worked but it had major reliability issues. It provided heat, hot water, and air conditioning for the house. The hot water and air conditioning worked best. I used an electric hot water tank with no electrical hook-up as the storage tank, and we never ran out of hot water (as long as the system was working). The air conditioning was a groundwater to air heat exchanger that could be supplemented with compressor assist. I never did bother to hook up the compressor assist, and the air conditioning is still working.
The mechanical system had major reliability issues and finally failed completely after ten years with a water leak into the water-to-refrigerant heat exchanger. It was no longer available but would have been too expensive to replace anyway. I removed everything but the AC heat exchanger. I wired up the hot water heater and installed a gas furnace.
My other experiences have been for the last 15 years in south Texas with air sourced units. They have been adequate but are now reaching the end of their expected life. I will replace them only when they fail. They’re more important for air conditioning than they are for heat. We did have an issue during the ‘great’ wind turbine power blackout of several years ago. Our part of the subdivision managed to have electric power the whole time, but the other half was subjected to rotating blackouts. This led to cold houses and frozen water pipes.
My biggest problem was snow on the roof. We actually had two snow “storms” during the time, and that left the roof covered with snow. When the sun came out, the snow started dripping on one of the heat pumps. It soon turned into a solid block of ice. We have 70-degree ground water, and it took an hour of flooding with water to melt all the ice. That had to be done twice.
Fascinating, thanks Tom. I have been using a ground source heat pump for almost 20 years. It has only needed minor maintenance (replacing capacitors and water pump impellers) aside from having to replace the main heat exchanger in the air handler unit a few years ago, which had rusted out. That wasn’t cheap, mostly for political reasons due to the artificially inflated price of the refrigerant I am using (global warming potential, don’cha know). It is a direct-exchange unit so it doesn’t have a water-to-refrigerant exchanger, and instead the refrigerant circulates directly through the air handler to the ground loops (4 of them). (The water pump impeller I had to replace was for the secondary domestic hot water de-superheater pre-heating loop.) It is also entirely indoors (and underground) so I don’t need to worry about snow and ice accumulating on it and gumming up the works. I don’t know how much longer it will last, knock on wood, and the replacement is going to be an expensive project, because I won’t be able to just drop in a new identical unit, for those aforementioned political reasons.
An interesting configuration choice Steven, due to the cost of refrigerant and amount required…Ground loop designs generally use a secondary fluid loop, glycol/water in climates that go below freezing often.
Heat exchange to the soil with a secondary fluid isn’t as good as heat exchange with boiling refrigerant and the refrigerant to secondary fluid exchanger uses up some temperature difference that would be nice to have heating your house on a cold day….so yours is more efficient than most.
Then there is the problem of soil not being a great heat conductor, itself being on the edge of the very definition of an insulator and you need a pretty large area of yard to extract enough heat from.
The contact area issue is why newer ground source systems use many vertical holes with the pipes going up and down. Thermal coupling is helped by filling the holes with bentonite clay that’s essentially the same stuff as well drilling mud.
Yes, all of those are important considerations. At the time, they recommended this direct exchange system as being the new hotness, so to speak, for all those efficiency reasons. But they don’t make them any more. I am not sure exactly why, although I would guess the cost of refrigerant is a significant factor. I have about 16 pounds of it. (And the R-22 currently costs around $100 per pound, for those political reasons I mentioned, and is not available new here at all, only “used”)
The heat exchange with the ground only works when significant amounts of water are flowing, since otherwise, as you said, static soil makes a great insulator. My geology here does have a high subsurface flow rate, fortunately. The HP manufacturer has provisions for adding a supplementary on-demand well water injection supply (attached to your house water system) if the pump detects that there is insufficient heat exchange, but I didn’t need to install that part. As far as total land area, my wells are vertical loops rather than horizontal. I have four of them, each 100 feet deep. They are only separated by about 20 or 30 feet of horizontal distance in my small-ish back yard.
(If the installation had been part of the house build, they could have put the vertical loops directly under the house foundation itself, but that wasn’t an option after the fact)
It doesn’t make sense why they could not install an oil boiler. They have all the pipework and radiators. Surely a small oil boiler (given the house is so well insulated) should work fine? You can get exterior ones, which ought to be able to connect directly to the existing system. But even an interior one should not be too complicated to install. They should maybe get a better plumber. Or am I missing something?
By the way – 20 years out of an oil boiler and you are doing quite well. So this is not a problem unique to heat pumps. The cost of buying and running them of course is.
What is the Oil Boiler Ban: 2035 Timeline & Facts https://heatable.co.uk/new-boilers/advice/oil-boiler-ban
My sister has one in darkest Dorset.
About these bans by…it assumes that people will wait until that time and then cry that they cant get a new one.
There will be a very healthy market in both boilers and installers prior and after the cutoff date.
Some insurers are now refusing to insure a property with oil heating.
Insurance acceptance/rejection tied to mortgage renewal is part of the WEF agenda.
My boiler was 35 years old when I had to replace it. The reason was unavailability of. parts not because it couldn’t be fixed. If you don’t crack the casting oil fired boilers can run for 50 years. My replacement is now 25 years old and going strong. The only major items were a firewall and igniter a few years ago.
Our current oil boiler is at least 40 and sadly probably only has a few more years at most. Of course our boiler techs have been saying that for the last decade…
They could invite in a few Muslim refugees and pay them for their body heat.
They tend to bring their ‘baggage’ with them….
Perhaps I’ve been misinformed, but my understanding is that one of the problems with current heat pumps is that they can’t get water hot enough for baseboard hot-water (around 70C) much less radiators (100C I’ve been told). That means they only work with forced air heating. The other big problem is that the “cold” side of the pump needs to be at least a bit above 0C so that it doesn’t entomb itself in an insulating block of ice. That means that as outside temperatures approach freezing, air-to-air heat pumps have to cease “pumping” and switch to resistance heating which is quite inefficient. It seems to me that would largely restrict heat pumps to the tropics and subtropics.
Anyone care to straighten me out on this?
I concur. Heat pumps are not a one size fits all.
We had a heat pump when we lived in Atlanta. Whenever the outside air got below 50F of so, the heat pump would about once an hour, go through a defrost cycle, to melt the ice off of the outside unit.
Its a bit more complicated. In the UK radiators are heated with hot water. The boiler is set so that the heat of the working fluid gets well under 100C. However this working temperature is well below that which a heat pump generates. You therefore have a problem with adequacy of both pipework and rads to transfer enough heat to give the same warming. So you typically have to replace at least the rads with larger ones and perhaps the pipework as well. Expensive and disruptive.
You also have the problem that its impossible to heat the house up fast. In the UK the temperature varies greatly with little notice, so this is bad news. The best use of a heat pump will be low temp under floor heating on continuously. What the usual UK homeowner wants and needs is a responsive system. Heat pumps are not it.
Then there is the hot water problem. Normally the UK has either on demand hot water heating (requires higher temps than heat pumps can deliver) or stored hot water tanks, which are heated with the high temperature working fluid being routed through them, using a system of valves. Neither method works well if at all with heat pumps so you have to use direct resistance heating. Expensive.
And finally there is the cold weather problem. The UK is very humid, which means air source heat doesn’t work all that well. So its always being supplemented by resistive heating, which again gets expensive.
Its completely unlike the standard US system, where, at least in older buildings, radiators are very hot indeed, and heated by steam.
Add to all the above the need to heat the hot water to 70 degrees C in order to kill off Legionella bacteria.
A plumber told me that the way this is usually achieved is to have an immersion heater installed which comes on once a week for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. (When asked, he said he wouldn’t have a heat pump in his house.)
The boiler is set so that the heat of the working fluid gets well under 100C. However this working temperature is well below that which a heat pump generates.
Sorry, this is a typo. Should be
this working temperature is well above…
As written it makes no sense.
The problem is the heat pump doesn’t generate high enough temps to work properly with existing small bore piping and existing sized rads. So to get better heat transfer with the lower temp water you have to have bigger rads and often that means bigger pipes.
The “inverter drive” mini split heat pumps can extract heat down as low as -5F. But they also need to be able to detect when the outside environment has icing conditions. That’s fog when the temp is below freezing.
In such conditions the heat pump has to periodically stop heating for a couple of minutes to run the outside unit in cooling mode to defrost.
Old style constant speed heat pumps do that too, but with less sophistication. They do the defrost on a fixed cycle when outside temp is below freezing. Doesn’t matter if the outside humidity is too low to cause icing up.
One concept that is intriguing to me is a ground sourced heat pump with the main home heat exchanger being water pipes under the basement cement floor. The upper floor heat is delivered by either natural or assisted convection. The basement floor is a toasty 75 degrees F, or so, and the upper floors cooler for sleeping. I am friends with the installer of one such design, who says the homeowner is quite satisfied with the result. I grew up in a home with a similar system, though the heat source in the basement was coal.
I remember many Christmas gatherings where the elders would gather in a circle around the cast iron grate in the floor of the dining room, and us kids would play all around the house.
You say they have all the pipework and radiators.
Do they? They did extensive renovations when installing the heat pump.
In addition, it has been 17 years. If those pipes, etc., are still in place are they serviceable having been unused for nearly 2 decades?
Remember, when articles like this refer to a heat pump, they mean an air sourced heat pump water heater. They’re using it to heat up water for their central heating system. That’s why they say they have all the radiators and pipework; such a system requires wider radius pipes and very large radiators in order to output the same amount of energy as a regular gas central heating system.
I was referring to post above re. reconversion back to the oil boiler system.
So your clarification is that the pipes were used. However, your point about larger radius pipes seems to make such as restoration back to the oil boiler problematic.
No problem at all, larger pipes means more heat can be transported, to reduce that as the temp is higher from an oil boiler is reduce the pump speed so flow is less.
I have allowed my speculation to show my expertise in this area is sorely lacking. Thanks for the information.
Yes, or reduce the working temperature by the boiler controls. Will lead to more cycling, but it will work.
The follow up story though not directly related to the Watts heat pump dilemma is in the DT today.
Our one and only Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is looking at making gas much more expensive so heat pumps are able to be competitive…..
Now that requires a special mindset to progress such an idea, especially when you remember, Ed Miliband said he would reduce energy bills to UK households by £300/year in the Labour manifesto prior to the election last July.
Uplifting tax/standing charges on gas will do exactly the opposite of reducing household energy bills.
Then again fitting heat pumps and retrofitting insulation to UK houses is also going to increase energy bills?
Maybe the best option is simply to throw £22billion down a black hole called carbon capture, ED is up for doing that too.
As an aside Rebel Energy one of those companies set up to offer competition in the energy provision here in the UK has just gone bust. Ofgem (the energy regulator) has discovered money specifically drawn from green levy/tariffs has disappeared, the missing £4.9 millions is unexplained.?
Eighty thousand customers and 10,000 businesses without a supplier….
Maybe more economical to burn the 22B in a steam turbine electrical generator instead of buying wood pellets.
The missing money was the eco levy to pay the wind turbine subsidies, ohh the irony 🙄
Not only that. If you combine heat pumps w solar panels you will rely on the money you get from putting electricity back into the grid in summer. Those schemes are ending everywhere. And of course you need much more energy in winter when the sun is at its lowest. You cannot overcome that anomaly..
Hmm yes, very wise.. On the basis of one couples experience we should ditch the most efficient means of building heating ever discovered (>100%). I’m not quite sure about the love UK WUWT readers have for gas boilers. In my time there they proved to be unreliable, expensive, troublesome, polluting, and occasionally, dangerous. But I guess they burn fossil fuel, so that’s OK then.
Unlike heat pumps that chew through electricity like there was no tomorrow in cold weather?
Forced air natural gas heating HVAC is one of the most economical and best working for Colorado where extreme cold can be -20F in winter and 100F in summer. A partially underground house might be a little better.
But this is not Colorado, but the UK, where temps are not so extreme. Nonetheless they are still the best there too: https://coloradosun.com/2023/01/26/heat-pumps-work-colorado/
I’m still confused as to why WUWT readers would embrace such an inefficient form of heating, again, I can only guess it is because most readers have a love of fossil fuels. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise, by facts, rather than rhetoric, and insults.
Could it be because heat pumps cost >10x an equivalent gas boiler to install, don’t save the homeowner any money, don’t do a good job of heating, and aren’t suitable for a many houses?
Just a thought.
Your idea of “best” completely ignores personal preferences and comfort. Might a heat pump be a better deal financially in some location than other kinds of HVAC systems? Yes, that’s possible. But I would never have a heat pump in my home (where I live in the Mid-Atlantic) simply because #1, I much prefer hot water heat over forced air (it does not usually require humidification). #2, if I must have forced air, I want the air coming out of the registers to be hot air. I’ve spent time in homes with heat pumps and they are always drafty and, depending on what the thermostat is set at, often chilly. I keep my heat at 67 degrees (I have an oil fired boiler) and I’m quite comfortable. I’ve been in homes with heat pumps where the thermostat is set at 70 degrees and higher and I’m cold. Worse yet is to walk by a window and wonder why I’m feeling a cold draft. I check to be sure the window is closed and then I discover the origin of the cold draft, which is the register in the floor!
In winter I want actual heat, even if it was to cost me more (which it doesn’t, as electricity is fairly expensive where I live). I could deal with a heat pump if I lived in the deep south, as the need for heat is much reduced in those latitudes.
Then there are other issues, like if the power goes out. When that happens, I can run my oil heat (which also makes hot water) off my generator. Therefore, I have heat, light and hot water, where my neighbors with heat pumps have nothing…. OK, yes, you could run a heat pump off a generator, but that would necessitate a much larger and more powerful (and thus more expensive) generator. But a simple, portable generator will run my heat.
It’s because we are still open to reality and don’t believe everything the party tells us to believe.
The Green party in Germany think along your lines so they decided to “upgrade” there energy system at their headquarters in Berlin, it hasn’t gone well and cost a lot of Euros.
One of the reasons was that the building is very old with poor insulation, my house in the UK was built in the 1950’s and would not be a good candidate for a heat pump and I thank the German Green party for showing me that it’s not a sensible option.
In my area, the heat pump is not effective in winter when the outside temperature falls as it does in winter. It is also unusable during a snow storm until I slog out and shovel the exterior unit to allow air flow.
It is not, NOT, the most efficient in all places in all seasons.
Another point. How efficient is it when power goes off?
The only places where heat pumps work “well”, are those places where you barely need any heating in the first place.
It’s a lot more than one couple.
The claim that heat pumps are efficient has been disproven, over and over again. But the myrmidons don’t care, they have an agenda to push.
Over 22m households on the gas network in the UK would not agree with you.
Plus we have 13m terraced houses most of which are totally unsuited for heat pumps.
Maybe each of us have preferences based on our individual experiences and circumstances.
As I said above earlier, “heat pump” in this context is an air sourced heat pump water heater. Even setting aside the environmental conditions, heat pumps are not well suited to this use and have to be supplemented with expensive resistive heating.
You are not thinking this through. In the UK they first generate electricity, mostly and critically from natural gas. This is with installations of around 40-50% efficiency. You then transport the electricity to the user, losing at least 10% along the way. So you are getting 30% efficiency on the gas burned.
What about a local boiler? Well, they are typically 85%+. Cpndensing boilers have been mandatory in the UK for decades now, and 90% is not unusual. Ask a plumber who does annual boiler servicings, its one of the things they check.
What about the increased efficiency of the heat pump? You will get, compared to using the electricity for direct resistive heating, about 2.5 times the heat. But that has to bee balanced by its poor function to heat water and in very cold damp weather.
OK, , though, suppose you get a factor of 2. That brings you up to 60% of the original gas you burned to generate the electricity that runs it. And that is not accounting for the defrosting and the water heating and the times you have it on when you don’t really need it because it takes so long to warm up the house, and the times when its cold and damp and uses some resistive heating to supplement.
Burn the gas locally, don’t go through all these tergivisations, and get high efficiency, not water and a warm house when you want it. Have a cold spell blow over, warm up in a half hour.
You need to talk to plumbers and to people who have installed heat pumps in normal British housing. Its more expensive to install and run and it delivers less comfort. This is why they are not taking off as wished, and this is why the Government is thinking about, and being urged towards, more varieties of compulsion.
Where are they buying their HP from – solid gold from the Trump empire? we have ASHP installed as replacement for oil heating – no gas. this is saving us about £800 + per year and the house is a more constant temperature (ASHP more efficient that way). The tele4graph and mail in the uk are not known for accuracy!
Mliband was supposed to be saving us 300 quid a year. Bills have shot up.
“Energy bills to rise in April as new Price Cap is announced” If only that were an April fools prank.
Shutting down the North sea and banning fracking won’t help when it comes to global prices and having to buy the gas in.
ghalfrunt is quite obviously… gag halfrunt and it seems the gag part is firmly on.
By the way, how are Zaphod’s brains?
Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?
It works for you? Great. That does not mean it universally works for everyone everywhere.
Care to depend on a heat pump in Antarctica? Just making a point, I know very few live there.
The widely reported “lived experience” of folks with heat pumps all around the world reveals that these reverse-cycle airconditioners do not live up to the claims of their promoters.
I know. I have a similar system and a pelonis space heater.
I can’t think of a more perfect naming than “Mr. and Mrs. Watts” as the real-life characters in this story. Was it ever a good idea to suppose that electrification of home heating would work just fine as the low-cost, reliable, long-life coal-fired power plants were being demolished, and as drilling for more natural gas for heating and for gas-fired power generation was being banned? No. And where better to keep exposing this lunacy than on the Watts Up With That site?
When we bought our first house decades ago, our area wasn’t installing gas (some sort of shortage or something) so we were all electric. The solutions were electric or electric and electric meant heat pump (for heating and cooling). Heat pump for heat was supposed to be cheaper to run … unless it got real cold in which case the system used plain old resistance heat just like our oven and toaster. That’s the expensive way to heat.
Then two miracles — gas was installed on our street and the heat pump died. We installed gas to the house, a gas-fired furnace and a new more efficient but still noisy heat pump. As far as I know everyone in our neighborhood installed gas as well. Great for our local HVAC vendors.
I’ve been wondering, how does having the heat pump run for two or three times as long as the gas heater, impact the heat pumps efficiency claims?
Growing up during the 70’s here in Middle America (Ohio, anyway), I recall a big ad campaign about the wonders of all electric homes. Of course, power came from coal-fired generating plants back then. Fast forward 30 years, we needed a bigger house for 3 growing kids and buy one built in 1979 equipped with an air source heat pump and an electric water heater. I was cautioned about the “cold” heat from heat pumps and their much diminished effectiveness at 0 deg C and below, but we liked the house and I thought it was no big deal. Not very smart, as it turned out. During cold months, the heat pump runs almost continuously. I suspect that duty cycle has something to do with the fact that we have replaced the heat pump twice in the last twenty years. (A recent data point: during this past cold January, our electric bill was $482 at 6.9 cents per kW-hr. At least we have cheap power in Ohio, mostly due to widespread use of CCGTs.) Gas conversion is not an option, since gas lines were not run to this neighborhood Lesson learned – kids are grown and we’re looking to downsize into a smaller, gas-heated house.
The worst thing anyone can do when it comes to the energy supply to their homes is to think of electricity. It is a carrier of energy and not an energy source, which puts it at a large disadvantage compared to oil or gas. It is impossible to store electric energy in a practical sense, so consumption and production need to be simultaneous, turning it into a service instead of a good like oil or gas. BTW this is the core of the WEF ideology: own nothing, XAAS: everything as a service.
The production and transport of electricity are extremely complicated, expensive and wasteful. Only a few percent of the energy used at the start of the electrification process is available for it’s intended output.
This is not rocketscience but simple facts. The continuing pressure by certain groups to electrify everything can only be explained by nefarious motives.
Malthusian motives
O/T George Monbiot’s war on agriculture
“Guardianista eco-warrior George Monbiot was out defending Just Stop Oil with typical zeal on Politics Live this morning. When it was pointed out that the group probably had to hang up their hi-vis after public support ran out of steam following their vandalising and road blocking, Monbiot argued that this is what protesters are supposed to do. He then pivoted to slam people for not attacking the farmers’ protests in December, which he said “blocked the roads in London… delaying multiple ambulances…ambulances were stacked up.” Not true…
Guido Verify suspects Monbiot may have been referencing a report from fellow left-wing outlet Byline Times, which falsely stated that the farmers’ protests in December caused ambulance delays. As Guido pointed out two months ago, an FOI request to the London Ambulance Service revealed no recorded incidents of delays attributed to the farmers’ tractor protests. Not the first time Monbiot’s got it wrong…”
https://order-order.com/2025/04/02/guardianista-monbiot-parrots-false-claim-farmers-protests-delayed-ambulances/
It won’t be the last time, either.
The truth? You can’t handle the truth!
— A Few Good Men
Popped into mind when I read your post.
Applies to Monbiot.
Does George EVER get anything right?
Not on purpose.
There is no info on the local climate in the article.
Maybe air pumps are good in some areas and bad in others.
Buckinghamshire is 40 miles northwest of London with a Marine west-coast, warm summer Cfb climate.
https://weatherandclimate.com/united-kingdom/buckinghamshire#google_vignette
This sounds a lot like the notion that the tax savings on a mortgage is a driving reason to buy a house.
Simplified math:
30 year mortgage interest is 2x the purchase price.
Tax savings is 1/3 the interest paid.
So instead of costing 3x (P & I), the buyer with tax savings pays 2.67x.
This is sold as a good plan.
There are many good and valid reasons for buying a house. The tax deduction is not one of them..
Yes, but look up the time value of money. Its a bit more complicated than that. You cannot just add up the payments.
“when their costly noisy power-hungry government-subsidised outdoor heat exchangers”
Apparently the writer needs a little help. How about this instead.
“when their costly, noisy, power-hungry, government-subsidised, outdoor heat exchangers”
Huzzah for the grammar police.
FYI, I believe accuracy in language is vital in science and engineering, so this is just a little teasing.
I believe it’s also vital when presenting an article to the world.
Story tip
https://www.khon2.com/local-news/hawai%CA%BBi-sinks-as-greenland-rises-new-study-from-uh/
Hawaiʻi’s sinking islands: 7 facts that aren’t about climate change
The article starts out correctly stating the sinking is not due to climate change (first sentence), but later on goes into how climate change will make it so much worse.
Part of island is sinking at 0.6 mm per year with the south shore of O’ahu sinking at 25 mm (~1 inch) per year.
In central Washington State with hot summer and cold winter:
I have a heat pump that was installed 23 years ago for a 1980s house intended as all-electric and a wood stove as emergency & winter heat. The alternative would have been propane** because the property is 7 miles from the nearest gas line. Electric rate is 10.21¢/kWh plus a monthly “facility” charge of $26.
** search images for – painted propane tanks
Story tip
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2025-03-07-nauru-pacific-island-sells-passports-climate-crisis
A Sinking Island’s Bold Plan To Escape Rising Seas: Selling Passports
Climate change, specifically rising sea levels, are threatening to “swallow” homes.
It then goes on to discuss king tides, storm surges, and coastal erosion being the endangering phenomena, it is still climate change is evil.
Heat Pumps are widely misunderstood.
1) Their supporters often quote a COP of 6 or so which will make using them price competitive with natural gas. Yet, they never explain, nor do they likely understand, that a COP of 6 is not a reality for any heat pump without a source of heat, the ground generally, with a temperature of 45F or so. Air sourced heat pumps will spend most of a cold winter struggling to reach 2. COP is a function of both the source and delivery temperatures.
2) The electrical supply system is not currently constructed to handle universal use of heat pumps. My neighborhood is quite modern, yet the transformers and likely the distribution wiring will have to be upgraded in capacity for us to use heat pumps — not to mention other proposed new uses of electricity.
What other uses, Kevin, you mean like re-charging dodgem cars?
Water heaters and stoves/ovens.
When I bought my little bit of heaven back in 09, the house on the property was a little 270 sq.ft. cabin, with very few amenities. I added another 200 sq.ft. –real kitchen, plus laundry room, and had what are known as ductless mini splits installed through out —three interior air handlers (one per room) and one external unit that drives the whole thing. Very efficient air conditioning as I can isolate which room is being cooled at any one time rather than having the entire place being cooled or heated. First winter on the system I got a shock with the Jan bill–about 5 times what my monthly average had been. It was then that I learned how inefficient heat pumps are when it really gets cold and stayed that way for a period of time. I believe the unit has electric heat strips in it to provide the heat when there is none in the surrounding atmosphere to pump. My solution was to buy a little oil filled radiator space heater, which I use during the cold months with the mini slits acting as back up. Jan, Feb bills are still a little higher than the other 10 months, but nothing like the breath taking bill that first winter with the system. BTW, I keep the thermostats at 63-65 when in heating mode, and 78 when cooling–don’t want to get too comfortable now—especially since I’m in and out many times, all day long.
Have installed 3 units for friends that were on or mostly on electric heat. They work well till minus 15 /20. What amazes me the most is the huge increase in costs for both units and install that seems to coincide with the timing of the availability of subsidies.
An air heat exchange heat pump below a temperature of 40F is the same as using a electrical resistance heater. There is no gain in efficiency. It works fine as an air-conditioner, though. The folks in Britain should have known that and left their fireplaces in place.
Get the government out of the energy business and all of this stupidity goes away.
I installed a mini split heat pump myself and spent less than $3000. The space it heats and cools was formerly cooled by a window air conditioner. The electricity bill with the heat pump has dropped a lot, even with using it year round for cooling and heating.
The heat pump Peter and Anne Watts had installed in 2008 is most likely the old style one with a constant speed compressor and fan in the outside unit. The newer ones use variable speed so they can run almost all the time, providing variable amounts of heating and cooling.
It’s more comfortable and more efficient to cool or heat continuously at the needed level VS doing periodic full temperature blasts then waiting for the temperature to drop a bit below the target then blast it again for a bit.
Another point for the newer heat pumps is many models are capable of extracting heat from outside air as low as -5F. Most of the old style ones conk out well before the outside temp gets down to freezing.
Sallust is another naysayer who latches onto something old and “debunks” it while ignoring all subsequent improvements.
Owners of older heat pumps may be in trouble even before they wear out. I asked Perplexity AI about the refrigerants used at the time and got:
============================================================
Refrigerant Use in 2008 UK Ground-Source Heat Pumps
Ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs) installed in the UK in 2008 likely used R410A or R22 refrigerants, depending on the system design and manufacturer specifications. However, historical evidence suggests a shift toward R410A in the 2000s due to its lower ozone-depleting potential compared to older refrigerants like R2213. R22, a hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), was phased out earlier under international agreements, making R410A a more probable candidate for systems installed in 2008.
Current Availability for Recharging
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I have two A/C units installed in the early 2000s which use R-22. On the just-completed Spring service one of the units was low and needed a recharge at over $150 per pound. This absurd price is due to the EPA deciding that after they mandated R-22 because the older R-12 (freon) refrigerant was bad for the environment, R-22 was even worse so in 2010 they banned it as well. No new R-22 can be manufactured or imported; people need license to possess or use it, and everyone trying to maintain older systems is competing for a diminishing stockpile of R-22 at an ever increasing price.
If you bought a home A/C system in the US after 2010 it used “transitional” R-410A, which will be restricted to 15% of current production by 2036, when you will be forced to use the just recently available R-458B.
Systems manufactured to use R-22 cannot be upgraded to R-410A or R-458B; they must be completely replaced. Native R-410A systems require some component replacement to use R-458B.
And of course there is (or hopefully was for those of us in the US) the prospect of ever-tightening efficiency and “green” standards which will require newer refrigerants and more expensive systems designed around them.
Meanwhile, the two gas furnaces installed at the same time as my A/C units are still compatible with the natural gas piped into my home today — that formulation hasn’t changed in over 100 years. 🙂
They can just shut the old heat pump off and continue using the heater.
I have a heat pump, in my back room, as a winter supplement of the gas fired in-floor system (rest of the house uses 120 year old radiators off a gas fired NTI boiler). It warms up that room well, and is used for a couple or so of hours on cold mornings. It is certainly cheaper to run than an electrical heater, but was installed more as an AC than a heater. I note that it is not terribly efficient when it drops below -15C, struggling to provide heat, but great when the outside temp is above -5C.