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No room for heat pump growth

I write in response to Louise Howlett’s letter in the Pham News March 2023 issue.

I don’t know if the heat pump market is going backwards, but it will struggle to go forward for various reasons, some mentioned in the letter.

Firstly, the cost of installing a heat pump is way beyond the contemplation of most people. Most people would have to take out a serious loan to cover the cost, if they could get one. Then, after installation, what is the life expectancy before more money has to be paid out?

In all the advertising photos of a heat pump installation they are positioned in a nice clear area with plenty of space around. There are a large number of properties in the UK that do not have that space, including terraced and many semidetached houses to mention just some. In the area I live, the houses have a modest patio area which is where a heat pump would be placed. This would render the area virtually unusable, and who wants to sit next to a heat pump when it is running?

As Louise says, they install in mainly off grid locations which implies that more space is available. Also, France is a much larger country than the UK and they have much more land per head of population, which again implies that more space is available.

The majority of houses in this country were built without taking into account the installation of a heat pump. Indeed, new build houses come with a postage stamp size garden!

Also, the British public are aware that there are much larger countries than ours that continue burning fossil fuels at an alarming rate. So why, they may ask, is our small island being asked to save the planet at great expense?

This is not to say that we should stop striving to reduce our energy consumption, and there are ways it can be done with our existing infrastructure. For instance, fitting a good control system to a gas installation would help to achieve this. I am sure that many others will have similar ideas.

The idea of heat pumps no doubt works in the right situation, but for the majority in the UK it is like scrapping everything we have now and starting afresh at great expense both financially and materially. I am not hopeful that it will be welcomed with open arms.

W.Whitworth Harrow

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The latest figures from the Plumbing & Heating Merchant Index (PHMI) report show total value sales for January 2023 through specialist plumbing and heating merchants were +13.4% higher than January last year. Price inflation rose +11.6% over the same period, while volumes increased just +1.7%. With one more trading day in January 2023, like-forlike sales were +8.0% higher.

Total value sales over the last three months, November 2022 to January 2023, were +11.7% higher than the same period a year ago. Volume sales were -0.3% down and prices were +12.0%. Month-on-month January value sales were +22.3% higher than December 2022, but with five extra trading days in January.

Mike Rigby, CEO of MRA Research, which produces the report, comments: “The biggest opportunity to drive volumes up this year must come from energy and water saving products. Last year’s updates to the Building Regulations – largely seen as an interim stepping stone to the more stringent Future Homes Standard, which will come into force in 2025 - are driving the message home that as an industry, we must strive to upgrade and create homes which use less energy, water and resources.”