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Yeah, anyoane can transform 1 or 2 bedrooms into maintenance room and enjoy the heat in the kitchen.

change agents popping up out of everywhere.

Give the number of flats that need to be decarbonised you are addressing a very important topic. Please delve into this in more detail in future: examples of existing installations in flats, interviews with owners, current HP models for flats, upcoming developments. Also, if this fits with you channel's remit, alternatives to HP in flats (eg electric radiators, whole-wall infrared heating etc). And then there is the question of how the flat needs to be (retro-fit) insulated in order for a HP to be effective. I hear various opinions on this - would be very interested in a more in-depth report on this. Thank you

You will be popular with your neighbour putting a noisy heat pump in a flat. Surely we should be going all electric as this can come from green energy, Ah I forgot electric is three times the cost of gas.

I'm glad you mentioned the potential of Air-To-Air being included in the grant. I think it's much more sensible as it is cheaper (for us tax payers by the way...), and it doesn't require a complete overhaul of plumbing for those on small rad's etc. Note that Air-To-Air does not usually cater for shower/bath/sink hot water use. I've found an company who can install Daikin's Multi+ system which does both. Would be good if you could list announcement sources in the comments as I thought Air-To-Air inclusion was more of a hint than a confirmed addition to the grant?

This was such a light touch examination of complex issues that it was just an introduction. My flat is on the 7th and top floor of a 1960s brick block. I spent 3 years investigating cavity wall insulation but it's not going to happen. No one will put it in because of damp and fire issues, and no one else in the block wants to do anything. So instead I'm going for a heat pump which will be expensive as my flat is poorly insulated, but will reduce my carbon emissions and I think give more consistent heating. I waited three months but eventually got permission from the landlord to put it on the roof above me. No stairs or left to the roof, so it will need winching up, and an extra jack to get it over the railings at the top. All difficult but hopefully going in next month. But I also need a new hot water cylinder which will add to the expense. Most of the flats don't have any balcony, so that's not an option, and surely it's a widespread problem

Did those balustrades pass building regs? Who's house is this?🤣

Add in Management companies like FirstPort / RMG managing these units and this is going to lead to huge costs and maintanance issues. All happy happy but you skip over huge issues with poor buidling management service providers and the huge amounts they charge for services and maintenance and how homeowners end up better in such a situation.

I bought a very nice combi pellet/wood stove a few months ago

Shame that some UK manufacturers are so far behind in establishing heat pump manufacturing in the UK that they are having to rebadge imported heat pumps to bridge the gap until their own manufacturing comes online. So until then BEWARE just because the company is UK based don't assume that their heat pump was made here too.

Hi Evan, we’ve had an ASHP for the last 6 years as part of an all-electric house and car household and have become a local HP evangelist within an environmental action group. We’ve had Bean come to present at a local event too. It’s great that you are running this series of podcasts! It seems to me that there is a bit of an elephant in the room which I hope you can get your expert journalistic teeth into. The current electricity kWh price under the price cap is 392% of the supplied kWh price of mains gas. This means that at standard prices it is virtually impossible to demonstrate to potential ASHP buyers that there will be a payback period for whatever they have to pay above the £7,500 BUS grant for their installation. We have seen with past PV incentives like the Feed in Tariff that a financial payback motivates a lot more people to make capital investments in their homes but with a 392% price disadvantage for electricity use, even a very good SCoP on the heat pump won’t provide a return in terms of running costs. I realise that with PV generation and cheap EV overnight tariffs and home batteries electricity prices can be significant reduced but that involves even more capital expenditure. Back in 2023 Grant Shapps at DESNZ said they would fix the required energy price rebalancing by the end of 2024 but we know what happened to that… I think more sensible electricity vs gas pricing is essential to mass HP adoption so my question is when will that happen? John

Excellent series of podcasts so far - keep up the good work. We upgraded from a highly inefficient electric boiler in 2022 to an air source heat pump and have been extremely happy. This type of informative discussion needs to go mainstream to offset the gas/oil lobby who are spreading mis-information to protect their own interests.....

Excellent podcast - Bean was extremely clear in his explanations, and Evan Davis - presumably well-briefed beforehand - did a first class job of posing intelligible "layman's" questions without mangling the underpinning physics. Looking forward to seeing more.

Flats are likely to eventually be served by heat networks rather than by individual air-water heat pumps. These networks will be driven by commercial scale heat pumps. Networks could be just for a block of apartments, or could be running a wider community scale system

And where 'outside' do put a heat pump when you live in a block of flats

Shane this is not on BBC. Be good to get heat geek on.

Brilliant

Excellent topic

A good common sense discussion around heat pumps. Look forward to the next pod cast 😊