Yep.
You did indeed touch it.
However I see nothing in their terms that invalidates the promise they made (to toss a heat pump against the wall without breaking any MCS rules)
So they must be rejecting there being any issues on the basis of not having broken any MCS rules.
Reading up on what RECC requires and comparing this with their terms might be fun.
Well maybe, maybe not.
I only changed my radiators, they are not radiators that Octopus had installed or worked on.
I have not touched or interfered with any of their installation in this respect although I have by fitting the OEM system, the radiators are irrelevant really.
That was my fault sorry. I counted to three. 
Octopus lied to me in writing by claiming that regulations prohibited them from paying for PV export unless it was MCS accredited.
I told them that the regulations said no such thing (the regs say they MUST pay for PV export if it is MCS accredited; but don’t prohibit you from choosing to pay for export for non MCS if you want to) but the terms of their supply license required them to be honest with their customers.
They were given the option to choose between winding in their necks and telling the truth; or my asking ofgem to terminate their supply on the grounds in wilful dishonesty in writing.
They chose to - in theory but not in practice - pay for non MCS PV export rather than admit that the real reason they were previously claiming that regulations prohibited them from paying for non MCS PV export was simply that they didn’t wanna.
They weren’t happy.
One of their external advisers was mind you.
“Effing told you not to lie” or comments to that effect.
If the heat pump does turn out to be faulty, e.g. has a sticky valve or lost some gas, is Octopus still obligated to fix it within the warranty period?
Why?
Their commercial model sucks for UK plc. (cheap heat pumps with high opex)
Their own brand heat pumps won’t be doing anything that you can’t buy off the shelf. They’ll just be more proprietary with more vendor lock.
And they’ll work just as badly with a commercial delivery model that is investing everything in reinventing the wheel that doesn’t need reinventing whilst investing diddly in staff capable of using a tape measure and/or designing a heating system.
You’re looking at “reasonable clause in consumer contract” territory here .
Look at what RECC require. If Octopus have stated any of the above in writing they’re likely to be utterly toast for being unreasonable.
They’re also likely to be reading this and having crisis meetings internally.
F**k we sold a heat pump to somebody who isn’t a clueless Nissan leaf driving picture postcard family.but has standards and a tape measure.
Hi Tim,
My warranty is with Daikin for the heat pump, only Octopus for the install. If I was going to pursue them for something I would have already done it by now, I have the evidence hanging off two of the walls in my house! In fact I have pipework hanging off the front of my house too that they still haven’t fixed!
I have a bit of experience in contract law, me changing radiators absolves them of nothing in reality unless they could prove that the changing of the radiator caused or contributed to the fault I wanted rectifying.
The claim on the call today is toothless, they can’t get out of responsibility for all their work just because I changed some radiators, imagine it in court, the heat pump sunk into the ground as they had not installed it properly, the fact that I have changed four radiators has not contributed in any way to the heat pump being installed incorrectly, they would lose.
.
The mistake the guy on the telephone made today was that he thought I wanted something different to what I actually wanted.
He thought I wanted money, compensation, a new heat pump etc etc.
What I wanted was and admission of the errors, an apology and some constructive, helpful advice and assistance on making my house fit this heat pump.
Telling me that we don’t do really efficient installations, we just do cheap and if you wanted a really efficient installation you should have gone elsewhere and paid more money was a big mistake.
I have dealt with some crappy companies and products in the past but never have I once heard a company say we only do cheap and if you want it done properly go elsewhere and pay more money, what employee of any company says that?
It seems that desiring, expecting or even hoping for the quoted COP from their chosen heat pump supplier is verging on a crime. This Octopus employee thought it was an unreasonable expectation as I hadn’t paid enough money to make such a demand.
Aren’t the quoted COPs from ideal conditions unlikely to be achieved once the pump is outside the house at the end of a pipe run losing heat all the way to the tank, even on the rare occasion the air and water temperatures match?
I can’t find the measurement method documented right now, sadly.
Because from the sounds of this thread and a few others, they might not have any buyers by then!
We’ll see. I’m not sure more vendor lock is possible than some, but they could match it.
Watch for the special electricity tariffs etc that only come with their heart pumps.
sCOP 2.5 but compensated for by cheap electricity. For the first owner. For a limited time. If they also buy their air and water from octopus etc.
Just going to turn the back up heater off, or is that turn my cold weather heating source off and leave my back up heater (the heat pump) on
My impression is that there is a large subset of the heat pump industry pushing for this approach. Perhaps it’s even the majority? I don’t think it’s something unique to Octopus. How strong is the economic argument for doing this? Lets play devils advocate.
Lets take an typical domestic property in the UK with ~10,000 kWh of annual heat demand. Lets say a low performance install gets a SCOP of 3, while a high performance install gets a SCOP of 4:
Difference = 833 kWh/year
If long term electricity prices stabilise around 26 p/kWh, that’s £217/year of additional running cost from the low performance install.
Lets say we take a 15 year system lifespan period, that’s potentially ~£3300 of additional cost over 15 years. So how much extra does it make sense to spend to do things like upgrade radiators and replace existing pipework
Need to take into account inflation here I guess!
Perhaps someone with more investment / accountancy knowledge than I could explain the best way to look at this?
How much was your Octopus installation cost @matt-drummer ? What kind of initial investment difference are we looking at vs the alternative?
I should say I don’t think there’s anywhere near a straight relationship between initial installation cost and the quality of the result and system performance. E.g significant oversizing of heat pumps results in higher installation costs than would otherwise by the case… but certainly avoiding pipework and radiator upgrades is an example of an area where lower installation cost would likely lead to lower performance
Hi Trystan,
I have no problem with that approach and I feel I got more than I paid for from Octopus, I have no complaints there and the heat pump was heating my house well until today.
I have no problem spending on bigger radiators to improve what I have.
My issue is that I wouldn’t have needed to do any of that if Octopus had got the initial heat loss survey correct, they would have installed a 7kW Daikin heat pump and I would be getting a SCOP of around 4 running 35c water around my perfectly adequately sized radiators.
But, I can’t do that is I got this 9kW heat pump that produces more heat than I need.
Octopus say I should just run it as the COP is good enough, not as good as if I had a different heat pump but meets their obligation to me.
Which it does, but it is not what they would have fitted, my conservatory would have been an unheated room as it is with @phproxy
But because they have messed up they are now saying that my conservatory is a habitable room and must be heated.
In March it was unheatable and had to be excluded until Doug got the heat loss wrong by a factor of 3.
So I didn’t want or need a high end perfect installation, just one where I had a heat pump that was appropriate for our house.
I have a 98m2 house and it has the same heat pump as Colin’s even though his house is 230m2
All because Octopus say I need it to heat my conservatory.
To top it all off my conservatory has electric under floor heating in it but I have had to build my heat pump around a conservatory?
What heat pump designer or installer would do that?
My feeling is that the industry is at an early stage in it’s learning journey and the designer probably thought they were doing the right thing or thought that they had their hands tied by MCS rules or guidance. Had you instructed them to do so , could they have left the conservatory out of the heated envelope? Seems that it should logically be an option? but do MCS rules allow? and was there an option to take into account the electric under floor?
I think there’s a need for clearer guidance around air change rates in the MCS documentation and a little more flexibility to take into account secondary heat sources…
the booster on the daikins is a mystery to me!!! that seems crazy!
My installers explicitly excluded the conservatory from the calculations, without any insistence from me.
Hi Trystan,
I will try to keep this simple and confine it to the relevant part about the conservatory.
The house was surveyed on 24 March 2023.
The surveyor said initially that the conservatory would be unheatable, the radiator removed and the room excluded from the heat loss calculations.
At the end of the survey he said good news, you can keep the conservatory as the heat loss is only 827w and the radiator is big enough.
The total heat loss was 7,300w so I got the 9kW heat pump.
The heat loss was 6,500w for the house and 827w for the conservatory.
Then my problems start when I want to heat.
I told everybody from the surveyor to the installers that I wanted to run at 35c or less on pur weather compensation. Nobody at any stage said I have no chance with those radiators, perhaps because I wouldn’t as they can handle about 2,500w at a delta t of 15c
The house was resurveyed on 23 November 2023.
The heat loss is now 7,400w but split differently, 5,100w for the house and 2,300w for the conservatory.
The differences are that the conservatory had been surveyed in March with a tiled roof and 300mm of loft insulation. If it had been done properly in March the conservatory would have had to have been excluded as they don’t have a suitable radiator for it.
By coincindence, or otherwise the house heat loss is now only 5,100w instead of the 6,500w surveyed in March.
This means the overall heat loss is the same.
Now Octopus say my conservatory must be heated, it cannot be excluded, I don’t know why the change of stance.
Concentrating on the house, the heat loss is actually a bit less as the MCS treat all houses equally based on age in terms of air changes, our house is an epc B89 so the heat loss is overstated somewhat because of this.
So what I find is that if it is 10c outside the house might require 2,000w and the conservatory 500w but the conservatory has to have 1,000w as it makes up one third of the total heat loss.
The heat pump is sized to deliver 2,300w of heat to our consevatory when it is -2.3c outside. It can’t do that as the radiator isn’t big enough.
The radiator is actually sized to provide the heat required by the original heat loss calculation, 827w, it actually does more than that but not 2,300w
I have a heat pump that puts out a minimum of 4,500w if I try to run it efficiently
My house needs 2,500w, the heat pump is putting out 4,500w so either the house gets hot, the COP is poorer than it could be or I run i in shorter bursts.
If I run it in shorter burst the initial power consumption of the massive compressor (from a 16kW heat pump) and the circulation pump designed to cope with properties three times the size of mine is so much that the COP is even worse. I find it no more costly to run for longer periods than in short bursts, I may as well be warmer for the money.
All this is because we have a bigger heat pump than we would have had if the heat loss calculation had been performed correctly in March.
Now Octopus are saying it is still the correct heat pump because the conservatory needs it.
So what I have is a heat pump that’s primary purpose is to produce enough heat to satisfy our conservatory with the secondary function of the remaining heat produced going into the house that we actually live in.
I hope it’s not just me, I can’t see how it is possible to design a heat source that can supply 31% of the heat produced to 12% of the heated space of the property using just radiators.
That is my problem with it.
I have turned it off but now I am producing heat for nothing!
Have a look.
The electricity is being used by the heat pump in my feed but it has gone from the app, apart from the circulation pump.
Strange?
The back up heater doesn’t behave how I expected, you would think it might add a bit of help when needed but it appears to be all or nothing, so all 3.5kW whether it is all needed or not!
