We live in an off gas area and although oil boilers and wood burners are a tried and tested market and there are millions already installed across the UK we have decided to try some new technology especially after the price of oil shot through the roof last year we decided to investigate other alternatives for our hot water and central heating as we could not afford the cost of having a gas pipe laid to reach our house as we were quoted five figures to do this. After considering many options we have decided on an air source heat pump with which we are very satisfied.

We think that the air source heat pump has many advantages. It will help to reduce our carbon footprint, they are cheap to install compared to ground source heat pumps because you do not have to own a large piece of land to run the long lengths of ground pipes in as the energy is extracted from the air instead and they are meant to use a 3rd of the energy required to run an emersion. The air source heat pump also works put a lot cheaper to buy and install than a ground source heat pump.

The only disadvantage that we have encountered has been the noise which really is not that bad (like an air con unit) and the time to heat the water.  It takes about three times longer to heat the water than conventional boiler.  We have thought about running it on economy seven over night as our air source heat pump is fitted outside but we were wondering if the humming may wake the neighbours.

Rather than going for a well known brand which would have set us back about four thousand pounds we chose a cheaper Chinese air source heat pump for just over a thousand pounds this is a massive saving for us, we did add new radiators to increase the surface area but this did not cost much as we plumbed these in ourselves. It is currently running perfectly well we based our decision to go for the more economical model because we discovered that most of the internal components were sourced form European manufacturers anyway this made us confident that the system that we chose despite being assembled in china was not inferior in quality To the more well known brands of air source heat pump indeed like most other things that you pay more for the name than the fact that you are getting a better product in fact from our experience the opposite could be said to be true.  It was easy to install just as I imagined all the others were and this was confirmed by a plumber who had a vast experience in installing these types of systems. Much like a conventional boiler the flow and return heated up a coil in a hot water cylinder.  It seems to reach a maximum temperature of around fort five degrees Celsius to raise the temperature to the required sixty degrees we use a emersion heater.

We found that under normal operation it would need the occasional boost but I presume it may need this more in colder climates when temperatures dip below zero degrees Celsius. With or without the air source heat pump it insulating the house would always be a good idea to retain the heat.

In order to efficiently retain the heat stored we decided on double radiators in all the rooms and we also mounted on the outside of the house and reduced the heat losses by having short pipe runs and hopefully this will all add towards improving my energy rating for the Home Information Packs. Because the air source heat pump is operating constantly at a lower temperature than a traditional boiler we need to increase the surface area of the radiators in order to match the heat output of traditional gas or oil boilers. Many people have commented to us previously that these systems can be noisy but in reality they do not generate any more noise than an air conditioning system, quite tolerable! Though I would say that the air source heat pump is quite large and it can weigh around one hundred kilos ours is a thirteen kilowatt unit and floor mounted on a concrete base that we have dug ourselves.

Judging by our use so far I think we are using about two pounds fifty worth of electric a day which is far cheaper than our previous heating costs and we could improve this further by better insulating the house.

Although it is cheaper than using an oil boiler we have had a spare coil fitted in the hot water cylinder.  We are thinking of connecting this coil to a solar water heating panel to bring down the costs of our ho water heating over the summer and autumn months, on reflection we did think about adding an extra boiler for a wood burner with a back boiler but thought this too complex.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Green Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.