Hello all. I work at the charity Nesta on Visit a Heat Pump, a free site where heat pump owners can list their system and allow people to ask questions and even visit in person.
We set the site up after asking people what made the transition so difficult - folks said they’d seen conflicting information online and it slowed them down. We think getting honest info from people who have a heat pump is the best way to cut through the noise (I’m a host on the platform and the sound a heat pump makes is the number 1 question I get!).
Your listing shows your rough location and you can choose when to host visits or just respond to messages. Lots of people get enough reassurance just from seeing houses like theirs with heat pumps.
Would you be up for joining? And if you’re already on there, how are you finding it?
I’m listed on the Visit A Heat Pump website and have hosted a few visits. It’s been good fun. And having spent lots of time getting my hp it’s been good to pass on knowledge. I show the more tech-minded people the HP Monitor website - being able to show things like heat demand, flow temp, etc. is helpful in answering questions.
Hi Louis. Im registered but would like to make a suggestion. I usually have a couple of interested people but dont really want to create an event but rather am happy to meet people who contact me directly. This has happened on a few occasions but still some people just sit there “interested” but dont contact me. Can you more proactively push the make contact angle?
Same for me, Ive hosted a few events and have only had one which was busy (oversubscribed and I squeezed everybody in), but the others have either had 1 person or none.
Dont mind this, but its a bit faffy to arrange timings/dates and then have none of the interest sign up. Would be useful to understand what timing suits people best, or find out what people want to know.
Hi everyone, great to hear you’re already on Visit a Heat Pump!
@SteveW That’s so cool that you can show visitors your dashboard - I’m sure this will be really interesting to lots of visitors.
@bontwoody That’s a great idea and fits with our thinking about what to do next with the ‘followers’ function. I’ll talk to the team about nudging them to get in touch.
@cccharles Great that you had a busy event! I’ve had a similar experience with some events being really popular and others having no bookings.
We’ve found that lots of visits are organised informally through messaging rather than through the booking system, and that’s fine.
Our most popular times for bookings are Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon and then Wednesday evening. I think it depends on the area and how much promotion hosts do on Nextdoor or local Whatsapp/Facebook groups.
The most common questions we get are around the sound of the heat pump, installation experience, running and installation costs, and planning permission.
I’ve got a question for you all now - would you add your Visit a Heat Pump profile link to your Heat Pump Monitor dashboard? We could integrate it into the Top of the SCOPs table like the links to YouTube and Betatalk - would you use that?
@Louis-at-Nesta Yes, happy to add my my Visit A Heat Pump link.
Question - is the Heat Pump Monitor map (of installed systems) likely to be the main route into the system, for new users? If so, they’ll bypass the system/list page, which I think is the page you’re proposing for the new link. Another option is to put the link on the system/view page, this is where someone using the map feature is likely to land. Or both.
I am part of the visit a heat pump scheme. I have hosted a number of individuals and a few of them have gone on to fit heat pumps. A couple have gone further and added solar and batteries as well.
