Smug is much better than Smog, thanks for the update Tom, I’m just starting my heat pump journey, six weeks in and cosy as toast 24/7 for now. Will be hunting for best tariff soon and Octopus seem to offer best one at moment for heat pumps.
They are a mass market sales leader, this is far from "the best". Depends on what you want, they can compete on low install prices but by designing to a higher temperature (which is easier to do) means higher running costs forever. A local firm would be able to do you a more bespoke job, higher install costs possible, with more radiator changes or new wider pipes but lower running costs forever. Tom's getting a 340% performance but the best lowest flow temperature systems get over 400%. Could mean 20% lower running costs.
@@Lewis_Standing My system is not an Octopus install. My heating COP over last six weeks is 4.2, all appears to be well designed and running on weather compensation 24/7 until I learn what best suits me. Temperatures have been very erratic recently from below 3C to 18C within days, and a few nights below zero in week one. I have Daikin 6kW designed to 45C flow @ -3.5C externally. Modulates down to a steady 350W consumption at 32-35C flow.
Hi both - yes I think Octopus is coming up with tariffs that can really encourage the low carbon transition. It does seem that agile has been consistently cheap for a good while for us!
You are entitled to feel smug. It is a real achievement to save all that amount of CO2. My gas boiler stopped working last night. I think my decision to have ASHP has been made for me!
We need co2 to survive. Plants grow best at 1000ppm which is 0.01% co2 in atmosphere. We are at about 380ppm which is 0.000380% co2 in atmosphere. If we cut carbon and get down to 150ppm or lower then plants die off and so do we.
@@egg399. Hello Egg - a couple of points to clarify. When we are trying to reduce emissions we are trying to return to safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. This year the concentration has been around 425. Safe levels are below 350ppm. We are not asking to go any lower than that. Concentrations for thousands of years were below 300ppm Have a look at keelingcurve.ucsd.edu Tom
What everyone is forgetting is that electricity produced from a gas power plant will have losses to. The electricity supply to your house has losses. I Think electricity arriving at your house is about 30-50% of the energy contained in a gas burnt at a plant. Happy for someone to correct me. Don’t forget in the winder solar farms are useless (apart from the odd good day) and wind is intermittent.
Hi Egg - thanks for the comment, yes you’re right there are losses in the electricity system and if all electricity comes from a gas power plant and has an overall efficiency of 30%, then a heat pump would still use less gas than a gas boiler. Due to the free energy it harvests from the air the heat pump efficiency is over 300%. Ours for the winter was 340% which means overall efficiency would be 102%. Compared to a gas boiler at 95% at most. In fact, I suspect your 30% figure is quite low. And fortunately we don’t get all our electricity from gas, but over the last 12 months over 25% of electricity came from Wind power. And only 33% from gas…
Great update. Like the Smug comment. I did HP/Solar/Battery in 2020. When the prices for energy went crazy in 21 it was all I could manage to keep the smug grin off my face. I had to remember that I was fortunate to be able to do this, but others that were in similar situations to me and had not gone all electric got my smug grin!
Fantastic. HP + solar and battery must be very low costs. We don’t have solar or battery, yet, but still happy with our system. Have you worked out how much you might have saved over the last few years?
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle In the last 3.5 years since install it is €5400 in direct solar usage, battery usage and feed in tariff, the house is in Spain. Electricity prices have plummeted in the last 12 months though. You can get a fixed tariff of .11c kWh now. I think Spain has one of the cleanest grids in Europe now, so much wind and reliable solar.
Great results. We had our Viessmann 150a 10kW HP fitted 1st week November 2023 and are extremely pleased with it. Our house is modern construction with UFH throughout. No zoning, our COP for heating and HW is 4.4 to date. We have home batteries 10kW and on Intelligent Octopus tariff. Our average electric cost is 15p kWh. We also have a small amount of solar which is currently supplying around 5 kWh a day. Very happy overall.
Hi Richard, thanks for sharing your story, sounds like a great set up. I’d love underfloor throughout! Not come across a Viessman heat pump yet. I shall look into them. COP of 4.4 over winter is fantastic! Tom
Great vid & result. My closest dates are Oct 28th to March 25th when we used 3140kWh of electricity to produce 13024kWh of heat. SCOP of 4.15 which I’m pleased with. On our Octopus Go tariff this is about £695 electricity. We used to be on oil, but at 6p/kWh of gas 90% efficient boiler that equates to £868. 0:02 So excellent ASHP results. Keep up the good work
@juliandclarke What system have you installed in your property. I'm planning installing a HP on my existing 10mm microbore and need real time stats for through out the year for comparison.
Will have to investigate this Octopus tariff and see if my energy provider has a similar tariff. I take it that this tariff works out cheaper than the heat pump tariff that you were on previously?
There have been some news reports and discussing going around of home insurance companies refusing to insure heat pumps or being a bit sly and not really being clear on the issue. It would be great to hear your experiences with this.
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle TH-cam seems to delete links, but there have been news articles over the last year like The Telegraph's "Homeowners risk losing thousands with quarter of heat pumps not covered by insurance" and The Independent's "Heat pumps excluded from breakdown cover by leading home insurance providers", as some of the big insurance providers specifically exclude it, and they and some others cover them to a far less extent to the equivalent for a gas boiler.
@TOMBRAY My lounge has 360ppm CO2 in the UK. Hawaii has volcanoes/geological faults, that’s why their CO2 is higher. We don’t need to do a lot more here in the UK, we are only 10ppm away from 350ppm. I couldn’t reply to your reply so I have had to post here.
Hi Egg - I suspect whatever instrumentation you are using isn’t calibrated correctly. The measurement in Hawaii is backed up globally. science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/the-amount-of-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-is-measured-at-mauna-loa-hawaii-by-the-national-oceani/ Tom
Interesting to see the difference in CO2, so much more than the money. Oddly our 4 bed new build cost about £400 to heat with gas over the last year (Octopus standard rate), so will be interesting to see what tbe £££s difference is next year.
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle Getting there... Just trying to get the MCS bit sorted and then work out how Homely will integrate with the existing setup...
Do you have a home battery? I've been avoiding agile as I have solar but no battery. Tracker has been good throughout the winter but tracker would be amazing today going negative all afternoon
Hi Mike - we don’t actually have a home battery. We shift some of our electricity use (ie washing machine, dishwasher etc) to outside peak times but don’t change much else. A battery would definitely help avoid the peaks! Tracker is probably a bit easier to live with but i suspect agile is that bit cheaper Tom
Hello - i suspect the unit itself won’t get more efficient over time but we have changed how we run the unit that helps improve efficiency. Ie - we have reduced the flow temperature but run the system for longer to keep temperatures at what we want. Hope that makes sense? Thanks Tom
Smug is much better than Smog, thanks for the update Tom, I’m just starting my heat pump journey, six weeks in and cosy as toast 24/7 for now.
Will be hunting for best tariff soon and Octopus seem to offer best one at moment for heat pumps.
They are a mass market sales leader, this is far from "the best".
Depends on what you want, they can compete on low install prices but by designing to a higher temperature (which is easier to do) means higher running costs forever.
A local firm would be able to do you a more bespoke job, higher install costs possible, with more radiator changes or new wider pipes but lower running costs forever.
Tom's getting a 340% performance but the best lowest flow temperature systems get over 400%. Could mean 20% lower running costs.
@@Lewis_Standing
My system is not an Octopus install.
My heating COP over last six weeks is 4.2, all appears to be well designed and running on weather compensation 24/7 until I learn what best suits me. Temperatures have been very erratic recently from below 3C to 18C within days, and a few nights below zero in week one.
I have Daikin 6kW designed to 45C flow @ -3.5C externally. Modulates down to a steady 350W consumption at 32-35C flow.
@@_DougaldogI see, market leaders in heat pump tariffs. My mistake. Sounds like an excellent system you've got. Amazing.
@@Lewis_Standing
I’ve edited now, it was a bit ambiguous 🙂
Hi both - yes I think Octopus is coming up with tariffs that can really encourage the low carbon transition. It does seem that agile has been consistently cheap for a good while for us!
3.4 is certainly an encouraging COP to see considering we're hopefully having a heat pump in some point over the summer
Great stuff Ian, pleased to hear you may be making the step. Have you got an installer lined up?
You are entitled to feel smug. It is a real achievement to save all that amount of CO2. My gas boiler stopped working last night. I think my decision to have ASHP has been made for me!
Just in time for the weather to get a bit warmer! I hope you’re able to replace with a heat pump asap!
Let us know how it goes more people sharing there positive experiences the better
We need co2 to survive. Plants grow best at 1000ppm which is 0.01% co2 in atmosphere. We are at about 380ppm which is 0.000380% co2 in atmosphere.
If we cut carbon and get down to 150ppm or lower then plants die off and so do we.
@@egg399. Hello Egg - a couple of points to clarify. When we are trying to reduce emissions we are trying to return to safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. This year the concentration has been around 425. Safe levels are below 350ppm.
We are not asking to go any lower than that.
Concentrations for thousands of years were below 300ppm
Have a look at keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
Tom
What everyone is forgetting is that electricity produced from a gas power plant will have losses to. The electricity supply to your house has losses. I Think electricity arriving at your house is about 30-50% of the energy contained in a gas burnt at a plant.
Happy for someone to correct me.
Don’t forget in the winder solar farms are useless (apart from the odd good day) and wind is intermittent.
Hi Egg - thanks for the comment, yes you’re right there are losses in the electricity system and if all electricity comes from a gas power plant and has an overall efficiency of 30%, then a heat pump would still use less gas than a gas boiler. Due to the free energy it harvests from the air the heat pump efficiency is over 300%. Ours for the winter was 340% which means overall efficiency would be 102%. Compared to a gas boiler at 95% at most.
In fact, I suspect your 30% figure is quite low.
And fortunately we don’t get all our electricity from gas, but over the last 12 months over 25% of electricity came from
Wind power. And only 33% from gas…
Great update. Like the Smug comment. I did HP/Solar/Battery in 2020. When the prices for energy went crazy in 21 it was all I could manage to keep the smug grin off my face. I had to remember that I was fortunate to be able to do this, but others that were in similar situations to me and had not gone all electric got my smug grin!
Fantastic. HP + solar and battery must be very low costs. We don’t have solar or battery, yet, but still happy with our system. Have you worked out how much you might have saved over the last few years?
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle In the last 3.5 years since install it is €5400 in direct solar usage, battery usage and feed in tariff, the house is in Spain. Electricity prices have plummeted in the last 12 months though. You can get a fixed tariff of .11c kWh now. I think Spain has one of the cleanest grids in Europe now, so much wind and reliable solar.
Great results. We had our Viessmann 150a 10kW HP fitted 1st week November 2023 and are extremely pleased with it. Our house is modern construction with UFH throughout. No zoning, our COP for heating and HW is 4.4 to date. We have home batteries 10kW and on Intelligent Octopus tariff. Our average electric cost is 15p kWh. We also have a small amount of solar which is currently supplying around 5 kWh a day. Very happy overall.
Hi Richard, thanks for sharing your story, sounds like a great set up. I’d love underfloor throughout!
Not come across a Viessman heat pump yet. I shall look into them. COP of 4.4 over winter is fantastic!
Tom
Very good result. I think I need to investigate Intelligent Octopus. But have to balance with cheaper overnight EV charging
Great vid & result. My closest dates are Oct 28th to March 25th when we used 3140kWh of electricity to produce 13024kWh of heat. SCOP of 4.15 which I’m pleased with. On our Octopus Go tariff this is about £695 electricity. We used to be on oil, but at 6p/kWh of gas 90% efficient boiler that equates to £868. 0:02 So excellent ASHP results. Keep up the good work
@juliandclarke What system have you installed in your property.
I'm planning installing a HP on my existing 10mm microbore and need real time stats for through out the year for comparison.
Will have to investigate this Octopus tariff and see if my energy provider has a similar tariff. I take it that this tariff works out cheaper than the heat pump tariff that you were on previously?
There have been some news reports and discussing going around of home insurance companies refusing to insure heat pumps or being a bit sly and not really being clear on the issue. It would be great to hear your experiences with this.
Hello - I am afraid I haven’t experienced that, but would welcome any links you can share to news reports discussing it…?
Tom
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle TH-cam seems to delete links, but there have been news articles over the last year like The Telegraph's "Homeowners risk losing thousands with quarter of heat pumps not covered by insurance" and The Independent's "Heat pumps excluded from breakdown cover by leading home insurance providers", as some of the big insurance providers specifically exclude it, and they and some others cover them to a far less extent to the equivalent for a gas boiler.
@TOMBRAY My lounge has 360ppm CO2 in the UK.
Hawaii has volcanoes/geological faults, that’s why their CO2 is higher.
We don’t need to do a lot more here in the UK, we are only 10ppm away from 350ppm.
I couldn’t reply to your reply so I have had to post here.
Hi Egg - I suspect whatever instrumentation you are using isn’t calibrated correctly. The measurement in Hawaii is backed up globally.
science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/the-amount-of-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-is-measured-at-mauna-loa-hawaii-by-the-national-oceani/
Tom
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle I’d rather have a readin* taken in the UK. Away from volcanoes.
Great results. Not sure if the microphone is really small or whether you have massive hands.
Both!
Interesting to see the difference in CO2, so much more than the money. Oddly our 4 bed new build cost about £400 to heat with gas over the last year (Octopus standard rate), so will be interesting to see what tbe £££s difference is next year.
How’s the heat pump plans coming along?
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle Getting there... Just trying to get the MCS bit sorted and then work out how Homely will integrate with the existing setup...
Do you have a home battery? I've been avoiding agile as I have solar but no battery. Tracker has been good throughout the winter but tracker would be amazing today going negative all afternoon
Hi Mike - we don’t actually have a home battery. We shift some of our electricity use (ie washing machine, dishwasher etc) to outside peak times but don’t change much else. A battery would definitely help avoid the peaks!
Tracker is probably a bit easier to live with but i suspect agile is that bit cheaper
Tom
Do you have a seperate hot water tank such as the Vallient UniStor?
Hi Ben - yes we do, ours is the 150 litre version (if I remember rightly) that was installed as part of our installation.
Tom
How does it get more efficient over time?
Hello - i suspect the unit itself won’t get more efficient over time but we have changed how we run the unit that helps improve efficiency. Ie - we have reduced the flow temperature but run the system for longer to keep temperatures at what we want. Hope that makes sense?
Thanks
Tom
Thanks for your videos.
Not knocking it.
Feedback: Why's your video quality so poor? An iPhone would be clearer.
Quality looks ok to me… filmed and edited on an iPhone, are you watching on low quality settings?
Thanks for the feedback though
Tom
@@TomBray-LowCarbonLifestyle iPhone TH-cam premium, full res.
Maybe it’s just me.
Audio wasn’t great even with the mic you’re holding.