IGP

HPs are great and can easily be cheaper and more comfortable than gas central heating, but they are different beasts vs gas boilers. They can be a bit of a learning curve as you don’t run them the same way. I would get someone like a heat geek as mentioned earlier to come round, and explain and setup the system in an optimal way for you. It’s just not worth the stress IMHO.

Might be worth taking a look at to see how they did underfloor heating as well. About 5 mins in.

Need, no. But you could for that extra bit of performance.

I would echo the A2A (air con) sentiment. It’s not resistive so doesn’t run glowing hot and will be 2-4 times more efficient than resistive heating. If you’re there for a while, worth it.

This is the kicker, I personally would scrap the BUS but offer 20 year interest free loans to spread the capital cost.

As others have said, something doesn’t sound right to have those kind of bills and still be a bit cold unless you genuinely have an uninsulated mansion.

I'm coming to make peace with hybrids in theory, assuming they are more like the Intergas ones, where they are running for 100% of the heating time, just topped up with heat from the combi rather than stopped and purely running on the combi. Then it's such a marginal step (psychologically) to full ASHP the next time people upgrade their heating / hot water in say 2035 / 2040... I would tier the BUS payment to be say £4/5k rather than the £7.5k for full ASHP installs.

To be fair, a lot of the new HPs have the ‘Quiet Mark’ but that’s nothing official from a regulatory perspective.

Wholeheartedly agree. Same should be with the heat pump, the heat pump itself should be VAT free for whoever buys it, but for all practical purposes (HMRC admin) all the gubbins should only be VAT free if you’re getting as a supply & install job when retrofitting.

Get a heat geek to take a look, they’ll be able to sort the valve but also advise adjust the system to get the best out of it.

I would do your own heat loss, it's not super difficult but for mental bandwidth reasons, perhaps do it once you’ve done the weather compensation bit as @JohnMo described. Knowing that is invaluable and you can start to make very informed decisions without relying on variable quality tradesmen.

Those models have a MID approved meter inbuilt already as I understand it. https://www.ovoenergy.com/heat-pump-plus

What ASHP do you have? If it’s a Valliant Arotherm Plus or a Viessmann Vitocal 15X you can go on OVOs Heat Pump Plus add on which is 15p/kWh for heat pump usage and that doesn’t have any special times so you can run its low, slow and steady for maximum SCoP and a cheap heat pump tariff to boot.

Good thread on it here too, which posted in another thread yesterday. https://energy-stats.uk/vaillant-arotherm-firmware-351-06-07-problems-energy-integral/amp/

Also, what’s the floor situation - concrete or suspended timber? If suspended timber, then there are relatively cheap* insulation opportunities there. Then you get the whole house wrapped up, rather than having a potentially cold floor. *vs digging up a concrete floor