Air to Air Heat Pumps

The merits of installing PV panels are the same whether you have a heat pump or not to be honest. The point _OkGo_ is making is that PV will not be generating electricity at the times your heat pump needs electricity, so putting up PV thinking it will provide free electricity to run your heatpump does not make sense.

So you just need to look at your electricity usage and ignore whether there is a heatpump there or not and see if PV makes sense. The conclusion you'll likely come to is that it has a payback of somewhere between 6-10 years depending on whether you go for a battery or not and assuming you get a good price. If you plan to stay in the new house for 10/15/20 years then that payback period is fine and you'll be saving a decent few quid on electricity bills.
 
Whats your current views on heat pumps given you have 12 months experience?
 
That is the contradiction, we have vents in the walls and windows etc to prevent condensation and mold and we are told not to have leaks to run a heat pump
 
It’s not as simple as taking out your oil or gas boiler and installing a heat pump, you’ve got to do some upgrades to make the house more efficient nd in some cases the cost outweighs the benefit. You are better off getting a new more efficient oil or gas boiler
 
Whats your current views on heat pumps given you have 12 months experience?
Our usage of electricity has gone from approx. 1000kw per annum, to 2000kw per annum. We have solar panels, so the real usage has probably gone up to 2800kw per annum. This is for a two person, 3 bed room terraced house. Previously we both worked outside of the house, but now there is someone working from home all the time so not comparing like with like. We previously would have used approx 5kw of gas in addition to the electricity (price per kw for gas far lower than electricity and not comparable). My numbers aren't perfect, the previous ones are based off averages (but these' tended to be correct, rarely a big change when I did a reading. Current numbers are based off summer and winter averages - not exact. We still have a gas bill as we use it for cooking, although, clearly our usage is far lower, but we still have all of the standing charges and usage of approx. 600kW per annum - 9m cubed * conversion factor * 6 bills (I've based this off the last 4 months, but they're winter when we'd use the oven a bit more. )

We did a full retrofit, insulation windows, walls - the house is far more comfortable. But the house would be far more comfortable if we'd done all of the upgrades without the heat pump - but that's not how the grant worked.

We naturally prefer to keep a cooler house - 16 to 18 degrees. A notable amount of the energy we've used has been over night when temperatures are low to prevent it freezing. Maybe comparing bills for someone who keeps a house warmer there would be a more noticeable difference.

We didn't do the upgrade for cost savings - our bills were always low, but front of the house wasn't comfortable, even with the heating on (even as people that don't mind a cooler room). It was to future proof the house and make the front rooms usable - we're pleased we did that. But if I wasn't doing a full upgrade, upgrading the heat pump would be the very very very last thing I'd do. I think that we need to move away from fossil fuels, I think we need to move away from Gas. But when I look at the operation mode for the month of Jan, the freeze stat was 18% of the time, and heating was 23.8%, with water at 4%. That minimum level of having everything off, with a heat pump, is quite high in the winter time. Where as from now till November it will hardly kick in at all.

In hind sight we should have put more panels up (We went with what was recommended, I didn't think we could put more, I think we could have). Moving to electricity for cooking is likely to happen for us, but just not sure when, and I may need to convince someone else to give up gas cooking. The difference in comfort in the house is huge from improvements in the insulation. I can't tell with the bills as we've someone home more now, so its probably just offset it.
 
few years ago I installed both a gas hob and a induction hob. (Half/half so to say).
The gas one rarely gets used at all. Don’t think I’d bother with gas hob again, induction is great.
 
Are the controls for nduction hobs not very fiddly? I've only cooked on them a coupe of times, but the controls seemed to be very finicky, sometimes not responding to touch for example. I prefer the look of induction hob over gas, but love the simplicity and visual of gas.
 
You are not making the system more efficient, you are making the house more efficient . So no matter what heating system you have you will save energy cost.
Correct me if I'm wrong but
the heat pump is running 3 motors, fan, compressor, circulating pump. All requiring energy