Heat pumps can be installed in two days and work as well as gas boilers without huge extra cost. The real barriers in the UK are that old homes need bigger radiators and electricity costs four times more than gas. Proper sizing to match a building's heat loss matters more than insulation.
Chapters
It is possible to install a heat pump in 2 days and to have it running as well as your gas boiler and to not cost much more to install. Now is a really good time for people to start thinking about heat pumps if they weren't already, if they're in the gas industry. I think historically we've seen that heat pumps meant a lot of retraining. They're really complex machines, but that's all changing pretty rapidly with technology. But we have a challenge in the UK, which is that we've got older buildings with pipework and radiators that's been designed for gas boilers. And heat pumps can be anywhere between 200 or 600% efficient. 200— 100% efficient sounds great until you realize that electricity in this country is 4 times the price of gas. There's this kind of myth that if you've got an uninsulated house, you can't have a heat pump. And I think that we just need to kind of simplify it. It's all about heat loss. As long as the heat pump's big enough, it's going to be able to put enough power into that house.
