r/ukheatpumps

Moving from estimate to full survey stage. Initial estimate was for a Midea. I've asked if Vaillant is an option and it is but haven't confirmed costs yet. What are the best heat pump options for home automation / home assistant? I'm pretty clued up with traditional central heating control (basically CH and HW demand, couldn't be simpler), what do I need to additionally consider for heat pumps? My main aim will to be to dynamically mange scheduling, primarily to fit around smart tarrifs and battery/solar. But I understand inverter control (pump power), defrost, flow temp monitoring will also need to be monitored and potentially managed. I would prefer something that doesn't reliant on cloud - ethernet/modbus being the gold standard for me. Does anyone have some success stories they can share? I don't want to end up with a heat pump that either gives no control, or I have rely on some silly cloud subscription. Or can I just rely on old fashioned call for heat and everything will behave?

​Hi everyone,

​I’m looking for a quick sanity check on a quote I’ve received from Aira. I’m quite keen to move forward with them, but I have a nagging suspicion that their gross pricing is heavily inflated to swallow up the extra BUs grant (increasing to £9,000 for this with oil boilers)

​They quote they’ve given me:

​Total Gross Price: £14,734 (This is after I negotiated them down by £1,000 from their first offer).

​Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) Grant: -£9,000 (They've offered to take this off the invoice immediately and reclaim it themselves when available).

​Final price: £5,734

​The Scope of Work:

​6 kW Aira heat pump

​200L hot water cylinder

​5 standard radiator upgrades

​Has anyone else negotiated with Aira recently for a similar-sized system?

Note: for what it's worth we had Octopus round who basically weren't interested in doing it, because we have a large conservatory, so our setup may be a little bit more complicated..

​Thanks in advance!

New house, currently renovating, needs a new boiler. The house is quite large at around 172sqm, probably more than double my last house, so not looking forward to the energy bills.

Given that the boiler needs replacing anyway, I’m weighing up alternatives. Considering solar panels, a battery and a heat pump. Had a couple of quotes and think I could get the system installed for under £20k. I’d have to borrow to finance this so am considering a secured loan with my mortgage lender (they don’t offer any green initiatives like some do).

Having ran the numbers in copilot it would seem that the cost to repay the loan would be almost entirely offset by the combination of solar, cheap overnight tariff and a well designed heat pump.

Once the loan is repaid then I’d likely be £2k or more better off per year.

On paper this works, but still feels risky. The main concern is that the secured loan would make remortgaging more difficult, though we got the house for a steal due to its poor state so should get into a lower LTV bracket when the time comes, making it easier to consolidate the loan into the mortgage. Any downsides to this?

I'm looking into installing a ASHP, along with solar and a battery (that I've arranged separately).

I live in a reasonably sized, 4 bed detached that was built around 2006. It seems to have 10mm plastic microbore pipe to most of the radiators that are currently in place. I can't see if they are microbore behind the walls, but presume that they will be.

Having booked a survey with Octopus, I've since seen a number of posts stating that microbore is a bit of a show stopper, and that the costs can escalate very quickly in replacing it.

I wondered at what cost point people thought it was no longer worth it and look in to alternatives?

I appreciate it's a subjective question but just wanting to gather other people's opinions.

Also, if it's no longer cost effective, what alternatives could I look at?

Thanks in advance.

Hi, I just received the details for the room-by-room heat loss calculation. We will need five new radiators, three in the bedrooms on the first floor. They designed the flow temperature at 49°. I would like to have a flow at 35-40°. Should I tell them now, or can it be adjusted later? Do I need to upgrade the radiators in the bedrooms? Now that they are off, the home is really warm upstairs.

The calculation is for a 4 bed detached new build house (2019) , for midea r290 m thermal arctic ht series 4Kw.

Thank you.

Other than the warranty what benefits are there for opting for the plus version for an extra £500.

I would first caveat that no heat pump user should use a default electricity tariff. However, the energy price cap is illustrative about the general trends.

Compare July 2025 to July 2026:

1. Electricity: 1.16% increase from 25.73p/kWh to 26.03p/kWh
2. Gas: 13% increase from 6.33p/kWh to 7.16p/kWh

Now, some of this are due to policy changes made by the government. However, given there's only 5% VAT on gas it is inherently the case that electricity has more room for manoeuvre. Electricity has tons of added policy costs which could be shifted without too much unintended consequences.

Combined together this means that the heat-pump user will be experiencing far more consistent heating costs over this period of crisis than the gas boiler user. For those who want sustainable bills which fluctuate less during crises the choice should be obvious.

How to educate the public about the need to innovate to reduce price volatility is a hard problem but these data certainly helps.

The BBC have eventually responded to my complaint and have added more to the article about Gavin’s situation.

It seems he is on a smart tariff, but only has a 1.5kWh battery (pointless!), therefore can’t shift his usage on to a lower rate.

Good morning all, we have just agreed to purchase a new build that has no gas but a heat pump for hot water and heating.

A different phase on the development has solar as standard, but gas and no heat pump, whereas our phase has no solar but heat pump. I’ve set some money aside for a battery when I thought it would be coming with solar (and got the builders to make a contribution to our upgrades given no solar..)

I was hoping for some feedback from those who have a heat pump as to how much they’ve cost to run vs how much with solar? And if you’d recommend a battery to assist it? We are due to move in in October so I expect even if we got solar installed quickly it wouldn’t make too much of a difference to running over winter.

We are also with octopus at the moment and would probably go with them for installation, so if anyone’s had experience of that any feedback would be welcome.

I'm hoping to get a quote check with regards to pricing as I feel out of my depth!

Property
394 m2
Newly renovated
Underfloor heating ground and first floor
New insulation throughout

Proposal

• Supply and install X2 Grant HPR290 155 Cascades.
• Supply and install X1 Grant accessories pack.
• Supply and install X1 Joule 500L Hi-gain cylinder.
• Supply and install X1 200L buffer tank.
• Second fix all electrics to the above appliances.
• Supply all pipework, fittings and lagging.
• Commission.
• Installation of all other valves, stop taps and anything plumbing related.

Total: 22,280.00

Edit: Updated property size

i have no other location to put the heatpump. The installer said its safe enough but googling it says its not.

Hi All,

Got heating oil currently so have quotes for a heat pump. I was happy to go through with the quote based on the £7.5k grant. But the budget announcement a month or so ago regarding the increase to £9k has me delaying my decision. I don't want to leave £1.5k on the table. And as I have the quote already I'm assuming the installer will have to pass the increase on.

Just looking for some agreement of my approach, although disagreement is fine also. Thanks team

The UK push toward electrification is accelerating, with solar panels, battery storage, heat pumps, EV chargers, and smart tariffs all connected into one home energy system.

But from a project perspective, it feels like installs are becoming far more complex to design, coordinate, and manage.

More equipment. More approvals. More moving parts between sales, design, installation, and grid connection.

For installers, EPCs, and solar professionals in the UK market:

Are integrated energy systems improving the customer experience… or creating more operational friction behind the scenes?

Hi, I'm looking at getting one of the Daikin multi split systems (or equivalent) where 1 split provides heating/hot water via a water cylinder and the other 4 splits go to air emitters for heating/cooling. As the air emitters would be in rooms that already have UFH/radiators, I think this would let me use a lower flow temperature and increase the efficiency without needing to replace the UFH/radiators, whilst also giving me cooling. However, I can't figure out what BUS grant it would be eligible for as it combines A2W and A2A...

I'm trying to find this out before contacting installers so I have some idea of the cost.

Hello,
I live in a 2015-built maisonette flat, with a roof terrace. The property is timber construction, with a brick external layer.

I would love to install an ASHP for environmental reasons. I’ve had a system designed - which suggested a 4kw Grant unit, to cover heat loss of around 2.5kw.

I am concerned that the heat pump will produce vibrations that will pass through into the flat below. If I could wall mount it, would that reduce the risk?

Anyone have experience of mounting an ASHP on a light-weight roof terrace, or other situation where there isn’t significant amount of earth/concrete to soak up vibrations?

Best wishes.

Hi, my house has a heat loss of 11kw and I need a heat pump asap ideally. The installer has offered Samsung 12kw, but I've read it has a poor UI. Very little out there about Daikins. Vaillant is an option but apparently costs 2k more than the Samsung. I think this is due to currently needing a twin fan unit for my heat loss?

Will this problem be solved by the new 11kw pro? Do we know the RRP ex VAT, max warranty length and how soon we can actually get it installed? Thanks in advance!

I'm trying to work out why my new build 2 bed flat is using up around 30kwh a day.

My boiler has changed from an immersion heater which we left on constantly to a heat pump boiler, and during the summer we'd never have the heating on so would only cost us around £100/month on the agile tariff.

I've now moved and my energy usage is around 0.5kwh every half an hour, costing me probably around £40/week.

As it's a new build flat I also have an MVHR and have set that to summer bypass.

Looking at the heat pump's energy usage, it says it's running around 7kwh a day but then the rest of the energy usage seems insane especially when we are not in the house /actively using anything.

Is the above normal? Or is there something else in the flat sucking up electricity constantly that I'm unaware of.

Edit: Seeing a couple requests: I have a Samsung controller (gen6 I believe) for my air source heat pump, I'm not sure what model the flat uses exactly though. It's a 150L tank, and my hot water occasionally runs out if it's only set to run once at night (DHW set to 50), I've left the 'zone' on weather compensation (-3 degrees) to see if that helps with keeping it efficient but i doubt it's turning on often, I have under floor heating and no radiators, and my thermostats turned onto 19c during the night at low energy rates and 16c thereafter.

I have an Ideal Logic Air R32, Ideal Halo Air settings tell me to keep the hot water set to “always on” rather than timed as this saves the most energy.

I can kinda see the logic - keeping it topped up to 45/50C is cheaper than heating it from cold every time, but information online seems to imply either heating during cheap hours or during midday peak temps is cheaper/more efficient:

Who’s right?