Air to water pump

harr

Hi
Just looking for a bit of advice, my mum in her 70s lives in an old Council estate , house is small 3 bed terrace.
She got word today the co co are planing to install heat pumps in the houses as part of some board na mona scheme.
The house is far from air right with solid fuel In kitchen and sitting room and oil central heating.
Her electric bill now is small as is her fuel costs and she has got herself into a tizzy worried about electricity bills and not been able to have an open fire or the range on in kitchen.
She is in her late 70s and doesn’t like change and likes her turf fire .
How expensive are these to run and much upheaval getting them in and running them
Thanks

MicktheMan

Surely the council / BnM would do due diligence on the house before they install the hp to ensure it is suitable :rolleyes:
In the absence of a cast iron guarantee that her bills will be low AND she won't be cold, imo your mother is right to be concerned.

harr

MicktheMan wrote: »

Surely the council / BnM would do due diligence on the house before they install the hp to ensure it is suitable :rolleyes:
In the absence of a cast iron guarantee that her bills will be low AND she won't be cold, imo your mother is right to be concerned.

I haven’t a clue about the new system, the houses are 50 years old , some improvements in new windows and an extra bit of insolation in the attic is all they did.
Still uses solid fuel and oil and doesn’t like the idea of no range in kitchen . Like a lot of older people very set in her ways . Also worried about what happens if they have a power cut which happens regularly enough around here.

3d4life

There was talk of retraining some of the BnM lads to do warm house retrofit work.

Do you know is it just a heat pump or are they going to work on the house too ?

Merrion

For all forms of heating the basic physics are the same: warmth (comfort) equals heat input minus heat loss.
This means that no matter what you heat with, if you put the same heat in then you will get the same warmth.

However not all fuels cost the same - in fact electricity is currently more expensive than the other fuel sources.
Where heat pumps hit the sweet spot is that they have a CoP of greater than 1 which means for every kilowatt of electricity put in you get more than a kilowatt of heat out (typically about 3x for an air-to-water heat pump and about 4x for an air-to-air heat pump) so as long as the heat pump is set up correctly she should not notice any additional cost.

In addition to it being no more expensive, it also doesn't run any risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. I got air-to-air heat pumps installed for my mum's place 17 years ago for precisely that reason and honestly have not looked back.

harr

3d4life wrote: »

There was talk of retraining some of the BnM lads to do warm house retrofit work.

Do you know is it just a heat pump or are they going to work on the house too ?

I presume they would have to update the house to have it some way air tight and I think it’s all the one company.
No definite answers yet but talk of doing house inspections to see what’s needed before any installation can start.