Why ‪@tomkatgastraining Isn’t Sold on Heat Pumps (Yet)

Just thinking you can take a gas boiler out of somebody's house and, and throw a heat pump in and it's going to be amazing, it's— that's not going to happen. There's so much needs to be put into the infrastructure first. So no, I don't hate heat pumps, I think they're amazing. I just think the way they're being dealt out to the general public and the way they're expecting gas engineers just to flip over— if they're as good as they say they are, Why do we need all these kickbacks? Why do we need cheap electric being given to people for it to make it look like it's, it's a viable commodity?

What are your thoughts about heat pumps?

Do you want my real thoughts on heat pumps?

This is the Field Rocket Podcast. I'm your host, Tulloch Priest, and today I'm joined by Derek Robbins, better known online as Tomcat. Derek is an experienced gas engineer who also runs a training centre based out of Manchester area offering ACS, Boiler Breakdown, and many other courses. His YouTube channel was started during COVID and now has over 50,000 subscribers. Welcome to the show, Derek.

Thanks very much for having me. My first ever podcast, so really looking forward to it.

Oh, we're definitely looking forward to having you on the show. Uh, today's episode is going to be all about heat pumps, whether they're the golden solution that they're sometimes said to be. But before we go into that, could you give us a bit about your background?

Okay, so I started my apprenticeship with my dad way back in 1983, um, then we had a big fallout, me and my father, when I was 22 over money, like you do. And then I started working for a big manufacturing company called Oxley Threads who manufactured sewing thread. So really I was a commercial engineer up until 1999 when I joined Manchester City Council. Now, the work we were doing at the council was basically upgrading the homes, and we were also getting ready for the Commonwealth Games as well, which were being held in Manchester. Then I started teaching as well at local colleges in '99, and, uh, I was in a serious car accident in 2008. And they said I would never work on the tools again, and I was probably struggling to work for people. So that's how I ended up setting up my, my own training school. Uh, it's called Tomcat Gas Training, and the reason why it's called Tomcat Gas Training is because my son's called Thomas and my daughter's called Catherine. So that's where the Tomcat comes from. Some people think we look after cats, but no, we look after gas engineers. So that's a brief history and how I got into the trade.

That's nice. I like the connection with your children as well. It's really nice.

Yeah, my granddaughter works for me now as well.

Okay, kids.

She runs our plumbing shop, our online plumbing shop. So it's a full family affair at the moment.

What, getting back to heat pumps, what are your thoughts about heat pumps?

Do you want my real thoughts on heat pumps?

Yes, please.

Yes.

What would I call it? The, um, yes please, the edited version, let's say.

Everybody, everybody on social media and everybody who meets me automatically assume I can't stand heat pumps. That's technically not true. I think heat pumps are amazing pieces of equipment. How something can draw heat out of the air no matter what the temperature and turn it into usable heat in somebody's home. The technology for that is incredible. It's not the heat pumps themselves that I don't like. It's the way they get sold and the way they're being pushed by our fantastic government trying to force it down people's throats. I think is not the way to go with a heat pump. I think like most things, you've got to organically grow and they've kind of missing a trick. They're kind of going from stage 1 to stage 100. I'm missing the 99 parts out in the middle. I think the same thing with EV cars as well. It's, um, we need a progression. There isn't plenty of room in people's houses for the equipment that they need, but things like hybrid heat pumps should really be the next step. And then from hybrid heat pumps, we can then go to full heat pumps. Kind of got to teach the general public all about them because what you hear online and what you see on TV and stuff like that, how much of it is true? That's the thing. So no, I don't hate heat pumps. I think they're amazing. I just think the way they're being dealt out to the general public and the way they're expecting gas engineers just to flip over and go from installing gas boilers to installing heat pumps, that's the kind of thing I, um, I don't really get, really. But Anyway, who am I to say otherwise?

Well, yeah, you do have some experience with gas and training and gas engineers. I would say you're in a good place to kind of see a sort of a different point of view.

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What other kind of things, like if we're talking about the government's going from 0 to 100, you talk about hybrids, what other kind of steps could we do to, you know, kind of break up this transition?

Well, the thing with me, if I was going to have a heat pump in my house, and trust me, I've tried to get one, Manufacturers don't seem to be interested to actually give me a heat pump, but there you go. Batteries, solar panels are key for me with heat pumps. If you're going to have a heat pump, you've got to have solar panels and you've got to have batteries because the price of electricity— yeah, one of the downsides of a heat pump is it works off electricity, and electricity isn't cheap whichever way you look at it. It's 4 times, I think, more expensive than natural gases. So it just seems to be all false information about how incredible heat pumps are. They're expensive to install. The government gives you a £7,500 kickback because they are so expensive to change over, and then you get cheaper tariffs for your electric if you've got a heat pump or you've got an electric car. So it kind of gives you false impressions of how good heat pumps really are. If they're as good as they say they are, Why do we need all these kickbacks? Why do we need cheap electric being given to people for it to make it look like it's a viable commodity? These are the things what I think need sorting out.

So do you think the actual problem is the, you know, the economics of the heat pumps?

Oh yeah, yeah. Just thinking you can take a gas boiler out of somebody's house and throw a heat pump in and it's going to be amazing. It's— that's not going to happen. There's so much needs to be put into the infrastructure first. If everybody decided to go for a heat pump and an electric car tomorrow, would we actually be able to give the electricity to power all these things? I guess not, but I might be wrong.

I would say that we would definitely be struggling. I'm not an expert on the grid, but I kind of see like, like from the government's point of view, they have to start somewhere. You've got to make a start.

Yeah, I completely agree. I could. Yeah. If, if you're having a heat pump installed to save you energy costs. No, if you're having an heat pump installed to save the planet, because you think you're saving the planet, you're saving the CO2. That's the, that's the possibility. It's— we need to, we need to get the infrastructure right, we need to get the, the National Grid right, we need to get the heat pumps and the systems correct, and most importantly, we need the engineers to install it. I think at the moment the engineers aren't there. If the government wants to install 600,000 heat pumps per year, they're going to need around 30,000 engineers to install it. There are, what, 120,000 gas engineers in the UK. Average age is like me, old. So the average age for a heat, for a gas engineer in the UK is 55. So you're expecting guys who are thinking about slowing down to increase their workload. We need to start grassroots. We need to get apprentices on this. It needs to be, the training needs to be more. We need to start at the beginning and slowly work our way up. This net zero thing by 2050, why did they put a date on it? And again, people say, oh, we've got to have a starting point and a finish point. No, you can have a starting point and you can have a progression. Most businesses that succeed are the ones that have progressed, not the ones who have just started massively. I've seen this in training centres. I've worked, I worked for one of the biggest training centres in Europe back in 2010, I think it was. And they literally lasted 4 years because they were massive from the beginning. So this is how I think heat pumps should be brought into the UK, as a slow progression, not an automatic—

Yeah. So would you, would you suggest, like, if we talk about that target, net zero by, um, by '50, Would you have suggested like 50% by this date? Because it's always that, like that last 5% or 10%, whatever it takes, what takes a lot more work than like the first 50 or so.

Yeah, it's getting— it's the other thing as well is getting people on board with it, isn't it? For me, the CO2 driving block of it really is the thing that makes no sense. Now, if they were saying NOx, nitrous oxide, was the problem with gas boilers, and that's why we need to go to net zero, then I could kind of get on board with it. And a lot of people probably would get on board with that. But to drive something over CO2, which is technically the building blocks of life— plants, trees, everything like that require CO2 to create oxygen— and there being such a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, 0.04%, which doesn't seem to be increasing or decreasing. That's the kind of thing we need to say why we need to get to this, you know, getting heat pumps in, saving energy. The real reason, not the— this is what I think. I think what's the real reason for wanting to get to net zero? Is it just a way of taxing people or is it actually a way there is something we don't know what's going to happen after 2050? I just, I just need convincing. And I think a lot of people do need convincing about it. Yes, heat pumps are amazing piece of equipment. So let's have them on the merit, not force down people's throats because we're saving the planet. That's my opinion.

It's kind of a tricky balance because you've got, if you, like your earlier point about, you know, you need to have, you know, if you do the heat pumps, ideally you need to do it with the solar panels, the batteries. And this is quite quite a big change for people. And then, you know, the way that you use your heat pumps is obviously different from a gas boiler. You don't just turn it on and then off it goes. You need to be a bit more precise. You need insulation. You know, there's quite a few moving parts with this whole, you know, putting the heat pumps in.

Education's key. Educating the public, educating the engineers and the future engineers. Might sound a bit of a cliché because I'm in training. Without the high standard training things don't happen. You know, at the moment we've got— there's loads of people like me who have been in the industry all their working lives, and they've got vast amounts of knowledge on gas and gas boilers and gas appliances. And there isn't that for heat pumps. Yes, heat pumps have been around a long, long time, but not in the UK. And I just don't think even in the training infrastructure, what I've seen, it's just not there. And it's going to end up— there's going to be poor installs. There's going to be lots and lots and lots of customers who are going to be very, very unhappy with what's been put into the house because of their lack of knowledge and training and the engineers. It just seems bizarre that we're getting rid of gas boilers, or trying to get rid of gas boilers, and then bringing in something that not a lot of people would say are experts in it. I'm certainly no expert in it. I've done a lot, a lot of research myself because I'm supposed to train it. I've done some installations. My son is more of a heat pump guru than I'll ever be, but trying to get him in front of a class, he's not interested. And it's people like my son who needs to be doing the training. The guys who— he's been doing it for 10 years. He's been working with heat pumps, solar panels, green energies for 10 years. He's got that experience. He's got that knowledge. He's got that know-how. And it's people like him need to be the guys in front of the classes teaching about heat pumps, not the likes of me who's read everything in a book and been on a few jobs with him. You know, that's what's needed in my opinion.

And what kind of challenges, so the technical challenges, do you have when you're installing the heat pumps?

Oh, compared to boilers, massive. This is what— this is where the training lacks massively. I, I think the training for heat pumps at the moment, I think, is like speed dating. You kind of go into a class, they throw a load of information at you, and then you go away. We've got flow rates, we've got low temperature heating, we've got radiator sizing, house sizing, heat pump sizing. There's a massive amount of information engineers have to know about to actually be able to install a heat pump correctly, because if you, if you mess up on any of these things especially sizing radiators and sizing the heat pump, you're gonna cost customers a hell of a lot of money in their electric bill. Doesn't matter that a heat pump is 4, 3, 4, 500% efficient. If you don't install the system correctly and size it correctly, you're gonna cost people a hell of a lot of money when they're running the heat pump. Definitely compared to a gas boiler where you can pretty much put a boiler in wrong and it'll work. Because the technology has grown. The technology is amazing, and it's very, very forgiving and very versatile. But a heat pump at the moment isn't, in my opinion, it isn't anyway.

Do you think heat pumps will become more versatile?

Oh God, yes. Oh yes. I speak to quite a few of the trainers of the manufacturers for heat pumps. I love talking to those guys. They're the ones you get all the information off. And they're saying the research and development costs and what they're doing at the moment to try and get these units to the top, it's incredible really. And it's, and it's a credit to the manufacturers as well, you know, especially the boiler manufacturers who are changing or trying to change from, from boilers to heat pumps and making a unit which is technically supposed to be easy to install. And work very, very efficiently, efficient. It's hats off to them, they're amazing.

So do you think they'll ever get to the point where they're as flexible as the gas?

Well, there's a $100 million question. No, I don't, I don't think in, in retrofitting, no, I don't think so. New installs, yeah, new builds, I think again, you're in, you're building it. If I was to build a house tomorrow and I've I've had this discussion with my wife numerous times. We moved 2 years ago to the middle of nowhere on top of a hill, and it's freezing all year round. And I just said to her, I want to knock it down, the house, and rebuild it. And if we did rebuild it, I would definitely put in a heat pump in. I would definitely be putting batteries, solar panels, and insulation, and definitely underfloor heating. That's what I would do if I was building a house. And I think again, new builds— we were going to buy a new build, but lockdown and everything kind of stopped it. And I'm so glad we didn't buy it in the end because I filmed while they were building it. And no disrespect to the guys who are actually installing the stuff, because I do— I have a couple of contracts with, with the big building companies to do the gas for their engineers. The speed in which they're putting them in to make money at the end of the day. It's not good for the industry and for the standard of the new builds.

Yeah, but if you did do, well, if you built your own house, you know, the battery's expensive, you've got the solar panels, there's quite a large amount of upfront investment to make this work.

Massive. One guy on the comment I did on one of my videos, He'd done exactly that and spent £70,000. And I put, and he was saying, you know, I needed, I'm stopping heat pumps progressing and I need to be doing this, I need to do that. He's invested £70,000 into his house. And I said to him, when do you expect to get back that £70,000 in savings from your energy? Never heard a thing off him after that.

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What I've been told about the lifespan of heat pumps, they pretty much base them on the same as boilers, so 15, 20 years.

Do you think modern boilers last for 15, 20 years?

It's, yeah, it's if a boiler is looked after, and I don't mean this waving a flue gas analyzer at a boiler and calling it a service. I mean literally checking it every year, annually. You know, opening the COVID checking for leaks. For me, water quality is key for the life of a boiler. Pretty much I think everybody agrees with that because of the changes to the building regs and the British Standards to bring in water quality checking filters. So for me, water quality is key to keeping a boiler going. If it's not crystal clear, you're expecting small O-rings and moving parts to not leak. It will if you've got your inhibitor in, the inhibitor levels are checked and the system is clean. And I'm guessing the same thing's going to be for heat pumps. If we're going to retrofit heat pumps, for me, the systems have to be crystal clear before you actually stick a heat pump on there.

I would imagine your batteries are not going to last forever either.

No, no, nothing lasts forever, does it? Everything's made to break. Otherwise, once they've sold it once, they won't sell it again. But technology moves on constantly, doesn't it? So maybe if we have solar panels and batteries and heat pumps, all the savings we're going to get in, um, the energy costs, they can be put away for in 10, 15 years' time when they need replacing. If that's going to happen, I don't know.

It is just a huge investment, like an extra £70,000. Sort of upfront. It's just, it's a lot of money just for a heating system.

Yeah, this is where I think, I think the way you buy a heat pump is going to change. I think it's going to be— I remember back in the— my dad's business was a, he was a commercial engineer, but anything he did in domestic, when it was especially with boilers, people were expecting like a payment plan. And again, I think that's what's going to come back for heat pumps because they're so expensive to install. If the government takes the £7,500 away and then you go to a customer and say it's going to cost you £20,000 for a new heat pump, or it's going to cost you £2,000 for a new boiler, customers are going to go, give me the boiler.

The boiler is not going to last, or the heat pump's not going to last 10 times longer, is it?

No. And these are the things what need ironing out, don't they? The technology needs to be, you know, spot on. That, and, and it's— and again, what you keep saying, it's the training. If you've got a rubbish engineer installing a system, you can halve its life. And then if the customer decides, I'm not having it serviced, because they, they forget about them at the end of the day, don't they? Boilers get put into kitchen cupboards and then that's it, until the water stops getting hot through the tap, or they turn the heating on and the rooms don't get hot. Then they think about calling an engineer. Not, oh, I've had it for a year now. I need to get it checked and I need to get it serviced. You know, it's the same going to happen with a heat pump. Heat pumps are a bit more in your face though, aren't they? Sat there in your back garden or your front garden or wherever you've got it staring at you.

They are quite sizable. Yes.

You're not going to forget about a heat pump. Have you got a heat pump?

No, we don't. We don't. We have our house is not a modern built house. So we would have some serious issues. We would have to put new radiators in with the insulation. It would be, it'd be challenging.

I've done, I've done loads of experiments on my heating system reducing the flow rate. I started at 50 degrees in my house. This is not changing any radiators. I did, I did some stuff for Honeywell with their auto-balancing valves. So I basically set my flow temperature to 50, and then the really cold days we had a couple of winters ago, the house didn't get hot. It didn't get— I think it was about 17 degrees it got to. So I had to keep notching it up. So I did 55, and it works out on the really cold days where it's minus figures at our house, I turn the boiler to 65. Um, when it's spring, you know, when it's spring and autumn, we're down at 50, 55. So it's dead easy to do. It's a dead easy test to do for people as well, to see whether they think they can cope with it. And it's taken a long time to get my wife used to— she likes 30 degrees, she thought 30 degrees was a normal temperature. We keep our house around about 19 degrees. We're on LPG, and I've ended up saving 2 tanks a year from the people we bought the house from. We've got all the paperwork what they left us, and they were having 4 tanks a year of 1,000 liters each time. We're down to 2, and all I've done is change the boiler, change the flow temperature, put auto-balancing valves, cleaned out the system, got inhibitor in, works a dream.

So this flow, just kind of testing out the flow rate, is this something that you would kind of recommend before somebody moved to a heat pump? Just to actually—

Oh yeah.

Just to experience what it's like.

Definitely, definitely. Again, comfort temperature. A lot of people whinge at, you know, 21 degrees, I can't cope with 21 degrees, it's too cold. Well, we're in Scotland at the moment, and what's the temperature outside? 14 degrees outside, and we're in this little chalet. It looks like a big caravan, and we're lovely and warm. We don't have the heating on, it's just massively insulated. So we haven't even had any heating on in this place, but there's loads of glass, so we've got solar gain and all the rest of it. So yeah, just getting used to having lower temperatures, 19 degrees instead of 21 degrees, saves you money. And actually playing around with the control on your boiler— some people can do it via the stats. Again, WeatherComp is a must for me, but that's another story. But yeah, being able to just you can knock down your flow temperature 5 degrees at a time and then just see if you can cope with the temperature. Obviously it's got to be winter, it's no good doing it in summer, but yeah, winter, definitely.

Okay, that's great. Well, thank you very much for coming on to the show, uh, Derek. It was, um, very useful to, um, to talk with you. And, uh, yeah, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thanks very much for having me. I've enjoyed it. Thank you.

Yeah, and that's, uh, Derek Robbins from, uh, Tomcat, um, Training. Thank you.