Air source Heat Pumps any good?

[Beau]

They do work in properties that have been built to the required standards of very high insulation and extreme heat loss but are not good for a retrofit to many older properties and many of the sheds currently being thrown up.

This is a common misconception. We are in the process of a retrofit and our ASHP is working great in spite of us still not yet having any loft insulation in an old farmhouse. If you size the emitters right you can heat almost anything efficiently with a heat pump.

Until recently we were living in a barn also heated with a heat pump (GSHP). We lived there for 18 years and it was insulated well below todays standards but again zero problems and no problem with updates.

 

[Jacob]

It's the bias in favour of very techie solutions which worries me.
Low tech gets little mention - top of the low tech list being insulation, draught exclusion, thick socks and underwear.
Given these you can reduce heating costs by only having a blast on when needed i.e. when you are in the room. In our cold kitchen I can switch a fan heater on when I'm in there making a cup of of tea and it warms me up within a few minutes. Then switch of when I leave. If the place is insulated this heat will stay a little longer. If the only heating available is say low temp under floor it'd have to be on for hours before I could go in and make a cup of tea in comfort, and it'd be wasted staying warm for hours after I left!
This is one of the unsung virtues of a wood-burner - I lit mine a bit back with mdf offcuts and they burn like a rocket, temperature in the room hitting 25º in about half an hour.

 

[Eshmiel]

This is a common misconception. We are in the process of a retrofit and our ASHP is working great in spite of us still not yet having any loft insulation in an old farmhouse. If you size the emitters right you can heat almost anything efficiently with a heat pump.

Until recently we were living in a barn also heated with a heat pump (GSHP). We lived there for 18 years and it was insulated well below todays standards but again zero problems and no problem with updates.

Exactly so. Whilst insulation makes the best of any heat internally, by not losing it so fast, a lack or presence of insulation affects how much any heat source has to produce.

A heat pump still extracts 3.5 - 4 units of energy for every 1 unit driving it.

A gas boiler will lose just as much heat from lack of insulation as any other form of heating in the same building.

 

[Spectric]

I lit mine a bit back with mdf offcuts and they burn like a rocket, temperature in the room hitting 25º in about half an hour.

Yes I agree, nice and simple form of heating but think modern world where people have a remote for everything and no mater how hard they try there is no woodburner with a remote or Wifi plus they need to put some effort in with cleaning and putting wood in which might be a step to far for many.

 

[Nail]

It's the bias in favour of very techie solutions which worries me.
Low tech gets little mention - top of the low tech list being insulation, draught exclusion, thick socks and underwear.
Given these you can reduce heating costs by only having a blast on when needed i.e. when you are in the room. In our cold kitchen I can switch a fan heater on when I'm in there making a cup of of tea and it warms me up within a few minutes. Then switch of when I leave. If the place is insulated this heat will stay a little longer. If the only heating available is say low temp under floor it'd have to be on for hours before I could go in and make a cup of tea in comfort, and it'd be wasted staying warm for hours after I left!
This is one of the unsung virtues of a wood-burner - I lit mine a bit back with mdf offcuts and they burn like a rocket, temperature in the room hitting 25º in about half an hour.

That’s not true - there’s lots of mention of that low tech list.

 

[Jacob]

That’s not true - there’s lots of mention of that low tech list.

No I meant in general, not particularly this thread , which has been very interesting.

 

[glenfield2]

Here's one: https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/
Or just google https://www.google.com/search?q=hea...g1NTY0ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
We had www.geogreenpower.com round for a chat. Seemed OK
But by and large we seem to have decided against, until perhaps some future date when we have done lots of improvements including insulation etc

I got asked a question on the solar panel thread and instead of dragging that thread off course anymore thought it best to answer elsewhere.

ian33a​

We used Dartmoor Energy in conjunction with Reco. Your right to look for a firm who know what they are doing as there are too many horror stories about installations by firms who dont. They are 'Heat Geek' trained which rather put my mind at ease. In a way our job was quite straight forward as there was no existing heating system so it was all designed to work as one. Feel free to PM if you want to discuss further

Interesting - which supplier did you use for the installation? (feel free to PM). If we go down that road I would want to find somebody who knows what they are doing.

Circumstances overtook us in the end: we were flooded out in Storm Babet and the insurance paid for a replacement oil boiler. Through the ‘Build Back Better’ scheme they also paid for (an external version) to be re-sited outside on a plinth. So no air pump for us.

I am now contemplating a small solar system for the successor to our flood wrecked garden shed - mains power would be too costly but a battery/inverter/solar might be an improvement on torch light!

 

[Nail]

No I meant in general, not particularly this thread , which has been very interesting.

Yes, I know. Low tech is pushed as a first solution in homes and businesses a lot.

 

[Beau]

It's the bias in favour of very techie solutions which worries me.
Low tech gets little mention - top of the low tech list being insulation

Lets' be honest we probably all have a heat pump in the form of a fridge or freezer. The basics are not remotely techie but agree that some of the interfaces can be rather technical and probably unnecessarily so.

Yes, insulation does not get enough attention but suspect that because its not very glamorous and oddly it seems many like a tech solution over the doing the basics. Still working on our farmhouse and adding good levels of insulation were we can. Lots of PIR and mineral wool going in (pics below)

Whether or not people buy into being 'green' gas and oil supplies are finite so sooner or later we are all going to need an alternative heating system. Heat pumps run off renewable electricity looks like our best bet at present

 

[Eshmiel]

It's the bias in favour of very techie solutions which worries me.
Low tech gets little mention - top of the low tech list being insulation, draught exclusion, thick socks and underwear.
Given these you can reduce heating costs by only having a blast on when needed i.e. when you are in the room. In our cold kitchen I can switch a fan heater on when I'm in there making a cup of of tea and it warms me up within a few minutes. Then switch of when I leave. If the place is insulated this heat will stay a little longer. If the only heating available is say low temp under floor it'd have to be on for hours before I could go in and make a cup of tea in comfort, and it'd be wasted staying warm for hours after I left!
This is one of the unsung virtues of a wood-burner - I lit mine a bit back with mdf offcuts and they burn like a rocket, temperature in the room hitting 25º in about half an hour.

An air source heat pump is just a big fan heater - that also does cooling on those red hot days; can control the humidity sufficient to prevent moulds; provides an air flow through a house, which also prevents moulds; filters out pollen and other tiny-particle pollutants as it draws outside air in to heat or cool. You can also control it to a far greater degree than any fan heater. And it runs at a quarter of the e-cost of a fan heater for the same amount of heat provision.

If you burn MDF, plywood or any other man-made board-stuff on a wood burner you're a major polluter, not just of your neighbours air but your own internal house air. In fact, numerous studies show that the level of pollution from a wood burner inside a house is many times that outside just downwind of the chimney. You may not notice it but its there. You may even be one of the luckier ones who don't die early from it but instead just have a degraded condition of health. Still, why introduce a killer-machine into the hoose just to save a bit of capital? Well, difficult if there's no capital and the wood burner's already there. But burning MDF ..... ?

 

[Jacob]

Lets' be honest we probably all have a heat pump in the form of a fridge or freezer.

Yebbut they are not a major investment.

The basics are not remotely techie but agree that some of the interfaces can be rather technical and probably unnecessarily so.

Yes, insulation does not get enough attention but suspect that because its not very glamorous and oddly it seems many like a tech solution over the doing the basics.

Well it is tempting. In our house the pump could go on the back wall with pipes going straight up to the tank in the attic. The whole thing fitted with minimal disruption - very different from whole house insulation!

 

[Jacob]

An air source heat pump is just a big fan heater - that also does cooling on those red hot days; can control the humidity sufficient to prevent moulds; provides an air flow through a house, which also prevents moulds; filters out pollen and other tiny-particle pollutants as it draws outside air in to heat or cool. You can also control it to a far greater degree than any fan heater. And it runs at a quarter of the e-cost of a fan heater for the same amount of heat provision.

If you burn MDF, plywood or any other man-made board-stuff on a wood burner you're a major polluter,

But carbon zero.

..... But burning MDF ..... ?

er..why not? It's very dry, burns hot and clean, probably much less polluting than damp logs. Anyway it's got to go somewhere so it might as well be up my chimney!

 

[Eshmiel]

But carbon zero.

er..why not? It's very dry, burns hot and clean, probably much less polluting than damp logs. Anyway it's got to go somewhere so it might as well be up my chimney!

Do you subscribe to the hope that burning wood is somehow carbon neutral? It might be if the planting/growth rate replaced the burn rate but that equation failed decades ago and is getting worse for the forests and woods as each year passes. A comforting myth and no more, now, for the wood burners.

The MDF and other man-made boards have a large percentage of not very healthy chemicals in 'em. These too fog your neighbourhood, perhaps stunting bairns and doing for grandpa who already has a dodgy lung. They also gas-up your living room air with the nasties.

I know, I know - we humans survived for millennia burning the logs. On the other hand, how much did that contribute to the rather low human life expectancy rates, along with the other new-born grim reapers stalking the biosphere post-hunter/gather life?

 

[Jacob]

Do you subscribe to the hope that burning wood is somehow carbon neutral?

It certainly is carbon neutral if it's waste, wherever it came from originally. It will end up in the environment anyway, if not up my chimney.
In fact most timber used as wood comes from "farmed" sources. The big clearances are for agriculture, not fuel.

The MDF and other man-made boards have a large percentage of not very healthy chemicals in 'em.

Formaldehyde apparently, in very small quantities. Formula CH2O, in a hot fire is going to turn into CO2 and H2O

These too fog your neighbourhood, perhaps stunting bairns and doing for grandpa who already has a dodgy lung. They also gas-up your living room air with the nasties.

I know, I know - we humans survived for millennia burning the logs. On the other hand, how much did that contribute to the rather low human life expectancy rates, along with the other new-born grim reapers stalking the biosphere post-hunter/gather life?

human life expectancy rates have never been higher, although rumoured to have plateaued in recent years.
I think we need high efficiency clean wood and waste burners for direct low tech heating and also disposal of waste. I burn a lot of paper and cardboard. Pity to waste it all in landfill, where it decomposes anyway.