Hi, we are looking Ground/AIr source for our old farmhouse (oil CH + AGA for water, solid walls etc) and my understanding is that it’s debatable whether it’s worth even trying.
I don’t want to waste any installer’s time coming out to survey what might be a complete non-starter so I’m seeking an online tool I could enter data into which would let me know whether it’s even worth going to a survey. Have googled but nothing coming up. Thanks in advance
Hello @Nsar1, in theory any space can be heated with a heat pump, it’s all about engineering design to get it right. For the best results you want to design for what’s called low temperature heating, @Zarch has written a good blog post about this here: Low Temperature Heating - Energy Stats UK
If you are worried about wasting an installers time you could offer to pay for a heat loss survey and evaluation of your existing system. You ideally want to get at an estimate of the heat loss at design temperature e.g -3C, an estimate of the annual heating energy consumption (you can compare that to what your energy bills are at the moment) and an idea for what your existing radiators/under floor will provide at the lower flow temperature that works best with heat pumps.
That will then give you an idea for what size of heat pump will be required and how much radiator upgrades etc might be needed.
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Thanks very much.
Most of our candidate installers wanted us to pay for that before designing the system and providing a finalised quote. Some with an independent installer, some with their own. The one that didn’t seemed, well, not as good.
what I like to use is remrate not exactly online but it will help you calculate your house requirements and where you can tweak to get the best bang for your buck. you add in the basic structure of the building . your location etc then it help you calculate what your building heatloss is and then from there you can determine what would be the best avenue to go for cost benefit analysis. it has a 14day trial so you can not lallygag to much ( but there are easy ways to get around that) …
but from there you can see what happens if you add a little more insulation to building . install a vapour barrier, change windows , add in solar or evacuated solar water heating and different styles and types of heating systems including heat pumps - then it gives an estimated yearly energy usage – from my years of using it it pretty much bang on in it calculations