I Was Terrified Of Getting A Heat Pump From Octopus Here's Why

I've had an online quote from octopus energy to fit me a heat pump and I am definitely terrified about changing a Combi boiler system to a heat pump in this video I'm going to be explaining the process from octopus energy to get that done what my concerns are and how I'll only be getting a heat pump if it's from a certain brand of heat pump manufacturer and also we'll be telling you what that price is from octopus energy to change my boiler system now if you click this video because it's about heat pumps it might be worth clicking subscribe down below because I'm going to be following my journey on here right down from the actual physical quote where octopus come around because at the moment it's only an online quote telephone quote and then if I do go ahead with the heat pump the installation process and then reviews of how the system is performing so if you're thinking of getting a heat pump from octopus energy or another provider and you've got genuine concerns about how it might work it might be worth watching this entire series now I do some other videos on my Channel about solar battery storage and electric cars and other Tech so if you're interested in that sort of stuff as well maybe check out some of the other videos that I've already done about solar and battery storage and even reviews on EV Chargers now let's back get back to my house and tell you why my home isn't suited for a heat pump now my house is a new build I bought it new myself about 6 years ago and it's designed was about 7 years ago which means it's got fairly decent insulation in The Loft space fairly decent insulation between the walls which is like a blown in gas Pearl thing that they put in so it's a very well insulated home so you'd think oh perfect Nick perfect for heat pump insulated perfect however because of the way new builds build homes it has some flaws to it which is that the radiators are extremely small in every single room and there are only single panel radiators with a single fin on the back now this isn't a huge concern some of you may say because you can change radiator sizes but you are a little bit restricted because it might encroach in the room if you're going for a free panel radiator and they look bit ugly and a bit horrible looking in a room so you could go for a uh double fin radiator which might improve the heat but you're also restricted on how long you can go in my rooms because some of them are under windows or in doorways so there is some genuine reasons why there might be a problem with changing radiator sizes in an existing build like this which has been designed to fit these radiators in next we move into the next a concern which is to do with the pipe sizes to my radiators and that's because the pipe size in my radiators is microbore now microbore is typically used in newb build homes for quite some time now because it's cheaper and easier to fit it comes in at two different sizes 8 mm microbore and 10 mm microbore microbore pipe does not carry as much water and therefore not as much heat or flow rate through it which means that you don't get the Heat heat dispersed into your room at lower flow rates which heat pumps work on so heat pumps work on a colder temperature than your gas boiler they travel more sort of 45 C temperature 50° temperature water around your home to heat it rather than what a boiler would typically Carri it might be 65 70 and even some older homes maybe even a little bit hotter than that so because of that the the the pipe restriction does mean that less flow around my house means that the heat pump could struggle now octopus have a solution for this and until recently they weren't doing any microbore homes but if you have 10 mm micr ball they do have a solution for fitting in a heat pump now I luckily have 10 mm micr ball not 8 mm micro ball if I had 8 mm back ball they just couldn't do it I also at the moment run my house in open firm with tdo system so that does modulate the heat at the moment in my radiators now it doesn't always run at a very hot hot temperature it does typically tend to run at a much colder temperature I do need to do some maybe more tests on looking what that is but I think the moment I'm I'm hoping it's around about 50 55c and it does get warm you know it just takes longer to get warm but my house is warm but I have some other concerns over the radiator piping size because of Facebook before we go back to the Facebook issue I just mentioned let's talk about another issue we have and that is that I'm on a Combi boiler system now Combi boilers heat water for your shower on demand that means that when you have a shower or a bath they heat that water as it's passing through the pipes now heat pumps have stored energy of of of heat so they store it in a big tank now because I've got a Combi system I don't have a tank it's always been a comie system so there's nowhere a tank could go now if you already have a big tank then it's much easier for you to have a heat pump but if you're on a comi system you need somewhere to put a tank now luckily for me I don't have a converted Loft space which means I can put the tank in the Loft now there is a limit on what octopus will install in The Loft um and depending on how many baths showers and Taps you've got in your house it might not be possible to get one done without an engineering report to find out if your Loft can take the weight of that stored water cuz water is pretty heavy so that is another concern but I do have one final concern and that is where do I physically put this huge unit of a heat pump now they're not the most attractive things in the world so we'll get back to Aesthetics and my P with Aesthetics later on but we also don't want it in the back Garden because I want plenty of play Space they're quite big units and I kind of want my son to grow up and have plenty of space in the garden to play toys and put things and not have this heat pump in the way so what I have an idea of I do have a small space uh in between my house between the pavement and some land I own at the side of my house and I'd like to put it there now the problem is under current planning rules you can't put a heat pump so close to a public accessible spot like this now luckily the planning laws are about to change so hopefully by the time I get my heat pump installed these planning conditions have gone if not it will require a separate application under planning rules to apply for planning to get that done now A couple of years ago I was extremely lucky to be invited to octopus Energy's heat pump R&D Center they spent several million pounds in building a heat pump training center and R&D Development Center For Engineers to learn how to install heat pumps for them to try new technologies and new tech and I was completely blown away not only by the investment but the the hiring of extremely intelligent knowledgeable staff and doctors professors of all sorts of stuff around heat pump and heating technology to work out the best Solutions and planning of how to install heat pumps at a lower cost now octopus's Drive is to bring down the cost of heat pumps which they are definitely definitely doing in fact we've even seen British gas and other energy companies start entering the race to install heat pumps but octopus energy I said to them at the time and we this wasn't unfortunately recorded on camera I said there's no way you can drive down the total cost of heat pumps without making a heat pump and they smiled and went yes that's true which was obviously a big hint for what happened a couple of months later which is when they bought out Red Energy red was a heat pump manufacturer in Northern Ireland that oxus energy purchased and this year octus energy have announced their own heat pump in the Cozy 6 and this is the heat pump that I want installing for many many reasons one of them is definitely Aesthetics it's a much better looking unit but also some of the way that going to work and the technology that it's combined with to work now you think arm with this knowledge I would be completely happy with getting a heat pump but unfortunately I have the same concerns as everyone else and the first concern which is the only reason why we have a heating system is will it keep me warm because if it's not going to keep the house warm then you don't want to heat pump you want to be warm in your own house you don't want to get cold and having a heat pump that doesn't keep you warm is a real concern now these micro ball pipes even though octopus they can have handle them it was a real concern because you he about people talking about how micropore pipes don't work with heat pumps so I was wondering if the branches from my boiler had thicker pipes running down this you know basically corridors of my house and they were only tapped off the smaller pipes when they went to the radiator so I asked in a local Group which was to do for our estate about you know does anyone have the floorboards up as anyone knows what the size of the pipe is and a plumber lovely lovely glass gas engineer F replied and basically told me heat pumps don't work and they definitely don't work on microbore and that I basically need some stupid size of about 45 mm pip work which really panicked me I mean genuinely I was concerned and then I remembered that octopus are a national fitting company who fit heat pumps and this is a gas engineer that only fits gas boilers so there could be a little bit of fey technology and also to the lack of understanding of where Technology's gone but it really did fill me with Dread especially when you see articles in the Daily Telegraph of people ripping out heat pumps saying they're not working but then you also see other people like Keat geeks on uh uh Twitter and also on YouTube who talks about many heat pumps aren't installed correctly and that's why people aren't getting warm from heat pumps so armed with all this information I was starting to get less worried but I still had one massive concern and that is cost okay so I am a green person I care about the environment but at the end of the day if I'm going to get a heat pump and it's going to cost me more than running a gas boiler I could spend that money on other projects that are better at reducing CO2 for my own personal uh benefit rather than just changing to a heat pump just because it gives me a green washy feeling if it's going to cost me more money I might as well stick with gas at the moment which is a perfectly gas working boiler and spend that money on something else I have 10 solar panels on the roof at the moment I have storage batteries in the garage at the moment and if I put a heat pump in and it would suck all the power out the solar panels which in the winter when the heat pump's going to be running at full power they don't produce a lot of energy and the batteries are almost empty now and it's the middle of winter so again I could spend money on more batteries first before getting a heat pump if it's going to cost me more money to run that is a genuine concern however you've got to remember there's some other things things that are play for me so first of all I get Peak electricity at 30p I get off peak electricity at 7.5 P that's for when the car's charging and the octopus tariff is combined with this now octopus cozy 6 should work with their adaptive intelligent tariffs meaning that I should get more 7.5 p Electric when running the Cozy and the car at the same time which means that cozy will be using the same price electricity that gases SO gas is 7.5 p and electric at 7.5 P off peak which means they are the same price parity that's not the worry in Peak however I'm paying 30p so that means that you'd think that the heat pump would cost me more during peak hours now obviously I know all about load shifting and those 7.5 will soon be off put but we need to understand about cop and how a heat pump works now first of all a heat pump works about four cop now we'll get back to this we need to explain what cop is cup is a form of measurement for efficiency for heat pumps so a gas boiler is 90% efficient that means for 1 kilowatt hour of energy in that's 7.51 kilowatt energy in at the other end you will get 0.90 kilowatt of heat so there's a 10% loss of putting energy in to getting energy out of a gas boiler we all appreciate there's losses involved in that however our heat pump works differently a heat pump will generate for one kilowatt in typically about 4 kilowatts out which means that you get a cup of 4% also you could say 400% efficiency now 4% cop uh four cop is quite a normal number four Cup on a heat pump in very cold days they could run down to two and in very warm days they could be a lot bit lot better obviously a heat pump for a house will be working 24/7 7 days a week because you're going to be having showers washing your hands so there's a lot of hot water storage up there typically just for all that anyway so that's when the heat pump efficiency will go up and down when it's warmer outside the heat pump won't work working as hard better cop when it's really cold outside manage temperatures the heat pump will be working harder and that cut rate will drop now Cut Rate of four will give you price parity with gas at the moment so that means if I'm paying 30p for electric and the heat bump runs at 4 cup I'll be paying roughly about 7.5 P for the cup of the heat pump which means price parity with gas however obviously the way I'm going to be working it is using some off peak energy from octopus intelligent which means my averages should mean that I am less much less than gas so my worry around this has gone away a little bit my next worry is to do with Aesthetics I bought my house because I liked it curb appeal it looks a pretty house on the front I really do genuinely like the look of it it's one of the things that my my wife really liked about it when we bought the house we both agreed it's a pretty house it's nice little pretty bay windows it's got a nice Frontage and we like the Aesthetics of the fake Stone we've got on the front so it's a nice looking house we love it we absolutely love it what we don't want to do is ruin it by having networks of pipes all over the outside of the house we don't really want that we appreciate that having a heat pump we're going to have some pipe work outside we appreciate that but what we don't want is absolute networks of it which are basically causing a complete Isa to our building that we are in love with so this is something that I don't know how is going to work because we need to get pipes to The Loft we need to obviously get pipes to where they are at the moment where the boiler is and we need to work out with octopus when they do their on site visit how the pipes are going to be rooted where we're going to see them and how we can best hide them or minimalize the look and appearance of them to when we'll see them now I'm sure this is also a concern for many other people so when the Opus engineer comes around I'll try and ask as many questions around this as possible and do this all into a video to explain to you people uh if you are also genuinely concerned about this please let me know Down Below in the comments so I know that I'm just not being an idiot about this now finally we get to find out the price that octopus energy have quoted over the phone for giving me a heat pump now they went through various questions like when is a house built do you think you've got microbore um all sorts of questions around stuff like this where I'd like the heat pump to go where I'd like the tank to go so most of the sort of basic questions have been answered what they do need to do now is come around and do a survey but the price they've given me on the phone is at the moment based on the time of recording this video including a £7,500 bus Grant from the government that's boiler replacement Grant so at the time of the recording video the grant is at 72 Grand so so bear in mind if that Grant changes your price will also change now to this is to install a heat pump put a tank in the Loft pipe it and I believe also they'll change a couple of Radiators included in this quote the quote I was given at the time was 1,350 which I think is an extraordinary cheap price that is cheaper than replacing my current boiler with a new gas boiler but more importantly I pay an insurance Price and maintenance package on my boiler because it's out of warranty and after 4 years I will get my money back and the boiler is obviously insured but the new heat pump will have I think I believe a 5year warranty so four years had my money back already plus I get an extra year warranty and then a heat pump should be in theory cheaper to maintain and Ure and you will have to have gas inspections on that so there's a lot of money saving just based on the General running of a heat pump now if you're interested about the heat pump Training Center I went to go and see with octopus check out that video here but if you're interested in getting solar maybe check out this video here thank you very much

Channel: Nicolas Raimo

Views: 37,248

Keywords: nicolas raimo, nicholas raimo, octopus energy, heat pump, heat loss, heat pumps, air source heat pump, renewable energy, boiler upgrade scheme, low carbon, BUS grant, octopus cosy, cosy 6, octopus cosy 6, octopus heat, octopus heat pump, octopus heat pump install, octopus heat pump cosy 6, octopus heat pump review, octopus heat pump installation review, condensing boiler, heat pump installation, heat pump cost, replacing boiler with heat pump, microbore heat pump

Id: hEVtvHTO8TA

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024