I doing a retrofit of an Victorian detached house. We are about to install a heat pump with UFH. Octopus are offering an 8 year manufacturer warrantee on their Cosy 9kW heat pump along with a reduced tariff of 7p/kWh. How important is the warrantee in the heat pump world, given that to qualify you have to pay for a yearly maintenance check anyway. eg. are heat pumps generally ultra reliable and the chances of manufacturer faults low within 5-10 years?
Many thanks,
Mark
Good question, @MarkMiodownik. My son-in-law was looking at an Aira installation until he looked at the draft contract. He reports:
āThereās also the issue of the guarantee, after the first year the 15 year guarantee is only valid if you pay for their monthly service plan, they quote savings of Ā£30 a month but weāre gonna have to pay Ā£20 a month for their service plan in order to have a 15 year guarantee well all of a sudden thatās only a Ā£10 saving a month itās gone itās not going to pay back.ā
Pays to read the small print carefully, it would seemā¦
Pretty much all major ASHP brands require a yearly service to maintain the extended warranty. My Vaillant has a 7-year warranty, and I consider the Ā£200 yearly service cost a fair price to pay to keep it valid.
What are the details of this tariff? Is it Intelligent Octopus Go? Or something else?
I think the answer really depends on your attitude to risk.
Overall, I think it highly unlikely the manufacturers make a loss on warranty claims so the average answer is going to be that consumers cant win.
The web has very few stories of complete failure and the core compressor technology is likely to be well-engineered from many years of aircon.
The required maintenance is largely not rocket science either, and if you can check filters, check that the evaporator fins are clear, that there is no debris accumulating inside the case, etc you are most of the way there. System failure seems often to be caused by failure to undertake simple maintenance rather than anything failing in the guts of the machine.
I had someone do one maintenance and wasnāt impressed. Indeed, they provided me with a bit of paper claiming that some things had been done which I know they cannot have done. Going forwards, Iāll probably do my own annual maintenance and take a gamble. I do the same with everything and hope that over-all over a lifetime I win. And I like having an understanding of the condition and workingā¦
If you wonāt be doing the maintenance yourself then its probably best to pay someone else to do it and have the warranty.
Like I said: I think the answer really depends on your attitude to risk!
I canāt see anything in here about a 7p rate. It only compares with the standard rate or the Cosy tariff.
The much higher cost of servicing and repairs to heatpumps then gas boiler is one of the issues with having a heatpump. But I get cheaper boiler labour rates because I live in the north, if I lived in London then heatpump service plans would not look so bad.
Octopus seems to be the only large heatpump company with anywhere close to reasonable service costs. But I donāt know how long that will last.
Looking on Facebook it seems many people refuce to learn the basics and call the surport for simple issues like radators not being balanced. So increasing the costs for everyone for heatpump installs and servicing. Companies would never put up with people calling boiler surport lines due to then not understanding basic life skills.
The requirement to pay Ā£200 or more per year to have a few leafs removed and a filter checked makes most heatpump warranties useless.
I want something as reliable as a fridge and as simple to fix as a āheat only boilerā with seperate water pumpā¦. Even the thermostats for heatpump are unnecessary under the control of each manufacturer with expensive replacement partsā¦..
Heat pumps are generally very reliable. Just like with boilers, most failures come from the heating system side e.g poor water quality resulting in failing valves and pumps, these things probably wouldnāt be covered under a heat pump warranty anyway.
If the heat pump was to fail, it would usually be a replaceable component, there are not many components in the heat pump, compressor, EEV or 4-port valve. The expensive item would be the compressor (Ā£1k ish), but luckily compressor failure is very rare.
A heat pump is most likely to either fail in the first year, or run for decades.
The cost of the heat pump unit itself is only part of the installation cost, e.g typical 7kW heat pump cost around Ā£2-4k.
But very few trades people who can be trusted to do the most economic repair to a heatpump within a short time of it failing. Also basic parts like control boards etc seem to cost more then boilers.
The cost of a fitting a replacement heatpump is higher then a standard boiler swap unless same make/model as they all have different wiring etc. A boilers swap is something like Ā£250 plus the cost of the new boiler, new boilers are cheap (often under Ā£1k) var LNPG.
The legel requirements for a yearly safety check on mains presure DHW tanks is likely to cost nearly as much as gassafe check for combi.
The inverter is usually a huge replacement cost, often making the entire unit itself a write-off if itās an older model.
Any out-of-warranty repairs to the refrigeration circuit require an f-gas certified engineer, with the associated high labour costs, again risking tipping into āwrite-offā territory.
Iām sure all this will eventually equalise once market penetration grows and ASHP units themselves hopefully come down in price, engineers are plentiful etcā¦
You could take the service for 1 or 2 years and see how it goes. Octopus Cosy heat pump has not been out that long, so not a long history. You can always cancel it and take the warranty risk if the evidence shows that they are extremely reliable. Most electro-mechanical devices will develop faults within 2 years if there is a manufacturing flaw or a bad design issue comes to light, This might be fan/compressor noise, premature bearing failure etc. So minimum of 1-2 years of service/warranty cover a good idea. Warranty also offers peace of mind which is worthwhile, like home insurance.
Most heat pump services do very little, but you are paying for someoneās time. Cleaning debris from inside/outside unit, Cleaning filters, checking water pressure. Unlike gas boilers there is no safety issue to be worried about.
Previous to our Vaillant Arotherm+ we had 2 Vaillant gas boilers which operated without a single problem over 25 years. Our last boiler was a special offer to upgrade from non-condensing to condensing, not because the previous one was broken.
Our Mitsubishi AC unit has been working flawlessly for 8 years and hasnāt had a single service yet.
Manufacturer and history of reliability something to look out for,
If you ever have to replace your HP there is no issue changing make/model. Most folks will only ever need to replace the outdoor unit if it ever wears out which will be considerably cheaper than the whole system and will possibly be even cheaper than today if heat pumps ever reach mass use.