We are the charity formerly known as Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS)
We are the charity formerly known as Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS)
We are the charity formerly known as Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS)
A heat pump can reduce your energy bills and reduce your reliance on fossil fuels. Heat pumps currently attract government grants towards installation.
Heat pumps can be up to five times as efficient as a gas boiler, and a well designed and installed system can reduce energy bills, so they are becoming an attractive option for homeowners.
If you live in England or Wales, you can get £7,500 towards a heat pump with the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, if your property is eligible. This can support the installation costs of air, ground & water source heat pumps.
There are also several means tested grant schemes, including the ECO4 grant and Warm Homes grants, which can cover the whole cost of a heat pump installation, if you and your property meet the eligibility criteria.
Our team can support you to explore which grants you might be eligible for and how to maximise your budget.
These are some considerations about your home if you are thinking of a heat pump:
With some work to reduce energy consumption most properties can support a heat pump and we can help you to find out if yours could too.
If you’re unsure, we can help you to assess your home against similar properties that are ready for a heat pump, in our Heat Pump Advice Call. This will help identify work that might be needed to get your home ‘heat pump ready’.
I’m already thinking of renovating or retrofitting my house – is it too late?
If you are already planning work or renovation to your home, want to make it very energy efficient, or are interested combining a heat pump with other technologies, our Home Retrofit Scenarios Report can help you. This is an in-depth assessment of your property’s current energy use, the size of heat pump you would need to heat your home, and if your current heat loss is too high for a heat pump now, we can help you to assess how to make your home heat pump ready.
Modern heat pumps can be as quiet as a boiler when installed to a high standard. Many factors can affect how much noise a heat pump makes, and these include the quality of installation, position of the heat pump and how regularly it is maintained.
Quiet Mark test the noise level of heat pumps and certify certain brands, and you can see a list of these here: Quiet Mark | Heat Pumps
Heat pumps are an efficient way to heat your home, converting free heat from the air, ground or water into heating for the home using electricity.
If you are switching from an oil boiler, or electric heating, a heat pump could reduce your bills, as these fuel types are typically more expensive. At present heat pumps have similar running costs to a gas boiler. You can reduce the cost of running a heat pump by:
· Powering up with renewables, combining with solar panels, and other low carbon technologies, to generate the electricity to power the heat pump.
Our Heat Pump Advice Call can help you to understand what work you might want to do to your home to make it more energy efficient, and our Home Retrofit Scenarios Report can help you develop detailed plans for your home and heat pump.
It depends on the heating system you have in place now, and how energy efficient your home is. It is likely that some upgrades will be needed to your existing heating system. Because heat pumps provide lower temperature heating than gas boilers, your radiators need to be large enough to heat your home at this temperature. If you have a ‘wet’ underfloor heating system this may be suitable for a heat pump but would need assessment.
As a basic principle, heating systems need maintenance to continue to run efficiently. If you need to upgrade your heating system anyway you will likely need to install a system that would be suitable for a heat pump (to meet current building regulations), which means this won’t be an additional cost.
The installers we refer to can help you to understand what upgrades your heating system might need, depending on your current heating system and budget.
Yes! Heat pumps working in much colder countries, such as Scandinavia, and are designed to work at temperatures as low as -27°C. In the UK, a well-designed and installed system can provide heating and hot water through even the coldest Cumbrian winter.
Most heat pumps take up an area of about 1 x 0.5m. The height of the heat pump varies depending on the required output. You will also need a hot water cylinder and some additional equipment inside your home, depending on the type of heat pump you are installing. The installers we refer to can help you to plan where to locate this equipment.
Heat pumps create no Carbon Dioxide at the point of use and are a very efficient way to heat your home. They need electricity to run them, which (depending on how it is made) releases carbon dioxide, but electricity supply from the ‘grid’ is decarbonising over time. Using electricity to run a heat pump creates a fraction of the CO2 released from fossil fuel heating.
If you’d like to find out more, try the solar PV and battery guides from the Energy Saving Trust. They also have a Solar Energy Calculator where you can put in details about your roof and the size of the system you are interested in to get an estimate of fuel savings. Money Saving Expert has also published an article that weighs up the cost of solar PV.
If you would like to download these FAQs as a PDF document, you can do so here.
Does a heat pump sound like the solution for you? Next steps…
Attend one of our free heat pump events where you’ll get the opportunity to ask more detailed questions.
Complete our quick heat pump questionnaire. Our team will contact you and you can take it from there!
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