Heat pumps are they a waste of money?

[Northern_Brewer]

I do not have anywhere to put a water cylinder.

You can now get mini, high-efficiency water cylinders for heat pumps - see this video. Or you can use some kind of hybrid system.

My radiators and pipes are donkeys years old they use very narrow pipe (think 10mm) i imagine that would need replacing throughout the whole house including buried in the concrete floor in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom.

Microbore is a pain, but it doesn't stop you from getting a heat pump. "High temperature" heat pumps produce water at the same temperature as a gas boiler, so should look the same to your pipe/radiator network. Only catch is they're a bit more expensive (10% I think?) and are a bit less efficient when in high-temperature mode, but in the real world they rarely have to work in that mode.

 

[Druss]

I'm with OVO and every time I go on their website to check the current balance there's a barrage of ads and such offering this that and the other if I switch to their green energy or get one of their special boilers...all result in me paying them a great deal more with no obvious/tangible benefit.

The idea of renewable energy certainly appeals to me, but I'm very sceptical about the true agenda, always makes me think of this old meme:

 

[Northern_Brewer]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/b.../?ICID=continue_without_subscribing_reg_first

Completely predictable that it's the Telegraph- the Telegraph's coverage of heatpumps is so ludicrously biased it can only be described as propaganda.

For the most part, he says the heat pump performed as expected. The machine’s coefficient of performance (COP, the measure of a heat pump’s efficiency) averaged at 2.2. A typical gas boiler, by contrast, has a much lower average COP of between 0.7 and 0.8....“During the last couple of weeks with freezing temperatures, the COP fell to 1.7,”

No - that is not a heat pump performing as expected. A COP of 2.2 is terrible - the minimum to qualify for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is 2.8, and installers like Heat Geek are averaging 4.4. There's even some air-source pumps in the UK going over 5.0.

So this system was installed by cowboys who didn't know what they were doing. It shouldn't be dropping off that much in cold weather either.

But of course it fits the story that the Telegraph wants to push. No doubt if they were doing a feature on whether you should buy a car, they would use this as their example of a modern car :

 

[Rodcx500z]

I'm with OVO and every time I go on their website to check the current balance there's a barrage of ads and such offering this that and the other if I switch to their green energy or get one of their special boilers...all result in me paying them a great deal more with no obvious/tangible benefit.

The idea of renewable energy certainly appeals to me, but I'm very sceptical about the true agenda, always makes me think of this old meme:

View attachment 109289

Spot on they are all coining it in on the fears they promote, they the government just stoke the fire, unfortunatly some believe them

 

[JockyBrewer]

Thats me all over, enjoy your time here on planet earth, nothing you say or do will make not 1 iota bit of difference to the green dream

So how is Ed Milliband siphoning off money from the electricity wholesale pricing?