Detached property, hosted by Martin

The house was built in 2004 with a gas boiler and a Gledhill Boilermate heat store for hot water and heating.  This was way past its design life and I wanted to replace it before it failed.  Replacement would probably have cost about £5K and gas didn't seem like a good long term solution. 
 
 I had a very poor experience with one of the largest installers: the man they sent to do the survey knew less about heat pumps than I did, and that wasn't much.  They were also totally inflexible about where it was installed, the type of radiators they would use, and the work I would have to do myself.  They quoted £11.5K, which after the BUS grant would have been £4K.  I declined and got my £500 survey fee back.
 
 I then discovered the Heat Geek organisation and learnt a huge amount from their videos.  I contacted them for a survey, for which they charged a non-refundable £375.  Tommy Jones from Alton and Jones came round, obviously knew a huge amount about heat pumps, and was happy to adapt to my needs.  After some adjustments and toing and froing he quoted £16.5K, ie £9K after the grant.  This seemed high, so I got a ballpark quote from one other expert installer – who was more expensive.  It also turned out that Tommy was one of the country’s leading heat pump installers.  Therefore I decided the cost was worth it.
 
 As the only practical place to install the pump was above ground storey height, I needed planning permission – which was a slow and frustrating experience.  When I received it I arranged an installation date when my wife was away.  The installation, in October 2024, took 4.5 days.

It's still early days, but the house is much more comfortable than it was.  I could do with some really cold weather to test things properly.  In the current mild weather (about 14C during the day and 9C at night) the heat pump app is showing an efficiency of nearly 6.  This means that for every kWh of electricity I pay for I'm getting 6kWh of heat.  This seems riduculously high (I would expect a max of 4), but things should become clearer as it gets colder.