magnayn

I couldn't disagree more. If you want to see an end to the use of fossil fuels, we should be encouraging installations by any means possible. The general public can also buy chainsaws, engage in dangerous sports, wire up plugs, drive cars, go on bull-runs and countless other activities with vastly higher risk profiles and I find it frankly tiring that we just nod along when the "regulation and certification" industrial complex captures yet more under its grift.

I know. Completely maddening. We should be gunning for A2A in the places where it's obviously the simplest option - such as many flats. But. IMO, we have an industry shilling for complexity. Experts such as, umm, ahem, geat heek, continue to make bizarre claims like "oh the SCOP on A2A is not as good and it's hard to calculate". It seems completely self-evident that a system exchanging heat into water, then exchanging that again into air is going to be more lossy than one that skips out the middle man. I look at these 'highly efficient heat pump hot water tanks" that cost £1,600 for the tank alone, and my ears prick up when they debug bad installations and just side-mention "oh, of course these things need annual maintenance" and can't help but conclude that for many, an electric shower is like £100 from screwfix, and they could replace it every single year and /still/ end up ahead, and not have to find space they may not have to put a giant tank. We seem completely trapped. On one end we've the zealots, making wild claims about the universal suitability of heat pumps in retrofit because you'll "definitely save money" (who variously ignore installation costs, or maintenance costs, or the gas/electric price ratio, or the fact that low temperature systems tend to run 24/7 and end up emitting about 7% more heat, or that A2W installs seem to be supremely sensitive to very narrow design parameters). We've the grant-harvesters and training industry, who _like_ it complicated so they can sell their services and won't recommend anything that doesn't line their pockets. And at the other end we have the "heat pumps don't work" crazies with their "don't work in cold climates" nonsense -- of course unfortunately they don't have to go too far to find horror stories. I think many are just angry about net zero, and it's all just a proxy fight for them. Here on planet earth, the majority simply want warm homes and hot water at the lowest cost over the medium term, and frankly everything else comes a distant second. They are not interested in having to tweak weather compensation curves to avoid crazy bills, or constantly tinkering with their system, or endless costs in maintenance. They also don't really want ugly, possibly noisy fan units and large water tanks - but will likely put up with them if it achieves Job #1. There's a complete dearth of honest brokers. The government could, say, pay for home surveys that gathered up all the information to act as an entry-point into system design for the various options - A2W, A2A, (which could include "not worth it _yet_"). You could then have a tender process where suppliers could bid for the work. You could even use a scheme to underwrite the running costs -- effectively guarantee to the householder that they will come out no worse off. Or, really, just make gas pricier. Taxing boilers in this way just strikes me will lead to bad outcomes -- like: old, non-condensing units being patched up because it being too expensive to swap; boiler imports (boiler gangs across the NI/ROI border anyone?); a healthy "buy all the components of a boiler as parts" and who knows what inventive circumventions will materialise. But I doubt it will move the retrofit market one iota.

The government is so terribly good at solving things with targets. Ask them how their smart-meter rollout targets are doing.. As you say - simply address the price ratio between gas and electricity and the market will solve it itself. Like all these tinkerings, I expect massive unintended consequences.

Given I can wander into a calor gas store and buy propane as it has a wide variety of uses, an f-gas extension seems unlikely. The govt could cover it as you say by "gas safe" on the installation part - but against a backdrop of still extremely low levels of heat pump uptake, I'm not convinced that would be in the national interest and would likely be seen polictically as a move benefiting only the natural gas boiler lobby (as indeed the F-gas reduction has been in the EU). Either way, it would seem overkill in a non-combustion scenario; it'd be nice to know a contractor knows how to braze pipes together, but I don't think that needs the skillset tested for by gas safe. And of course, I can buy and install such units today, so it'd represent a change to the status quo.

Go for it! I have a friend who did the cert - 4 day course and his comment was that it was .. umm... "not very complicated". (https://tony-muxlow-developments.co.uk/2079_trainingcourse.html FWIW - no connection, just that's who he used). I guess the only gamble is whether the industry converts to non-FGas units quickly. I think A2A is _criminally_ underused. I was digging into flat rentals in our local area yesterday to check prices -- invariably where there was one that looked suspiciously cheap, I'd click through to find "direct electric heating", often with a relatively poor EPC, meaning "it's gonna cost you bignum to heat in the winter". Many of them looked like an ASHP could be fitted relatively easily.

Our boiler can supply 42kW at 17l/min. Good luck finding a domestic heat pump that can do that! Yeah. nah. Direct-heat, 3-phase tankless heater. Simple. Cheap. Never run out of hot water. Think big-ass electric shower.

This is super interesting 👍 One question: how does this affect efficiency? I look at our house, and wonder if when we eventually go heatpump (my view is it's economically unviable for us right now), our large UFH downstairs would fit well, but the rest of the house much less -- a split between _some_ a2w (mostly downstairs) and _some_ a2a (mostly upstairs) would be the best solution. Having multiple outdoor units - although we have a location that we could likely put them wihout looking _too_ terrible - would be nice to avoid. Is there anywhere good as an information resource about this kind of thing? Vendors are really, really bad about advertising their own products, let alone what actual stuff is possible..

Curious that his Energy efficiency label seems to relate to a very different wall unit..

I had to laugh because I've watched the video he has in the background on the TV - and it's *extremely apparent* at one point where his concerns lie - that A2A is so simple, anyone might be able to do it 😱 No complicated re-plumbing to larger pipework, no worrying about flow temperatures and emitter sizes, no buffer tanks - simple and no need for the grifters. 👍

After the recent heat, I'm still musing on A2A as a possible cooling, maybe heating route. I got momentarily excited when I saw Mitsubishi and LG did narrow "between joist" ceiling cassettes for A2A - only to discover that they're built for 450mm joist centres and in my (1930s) house they're decidedly less than that. This seems daft, given many of the wall-hung units look like they'd fit in the joist gaps, just obviously aren't intended for that. Am I missing other options? I look at A2A installs - I could possibly cope with the units, but the pipework being bodged (ahem, 'covered with conduit' / 'boxed in') I definitely could not..

Octopus Energy has sent shockwaves through the UK renewables industry. The company has announced that it will accept solar installations onto its Smart Export Guarantee tariffs without MCS accreditation. This represents a significant development for electricians and homeowners, as they can now sell their excess energy back to the grid at a very competitive rate.

OOh - that's useful information! Curious how this works in practice. I have 16x250W (4000W) panels; if I replaced them to effectively double the output (and appropriate inverter, DNO approvals, etc) would my FIT payments effectively have to be half what the generation meter says ?

I suspect the answer to this is "no", but it's a hard one to get an answer on. Our house has a single-phase dumb-meter. The connection to the building is 3-phase, we used to have a 3-phase meter but had it removed as it cost more and wasn't in use (thus the meter is connected to one of the phases off that cable). We have Solar PV from 2014, thus in a FIT scheme with a generation meter, where we get paid FIT + "assumed" export of 50%. I understand I could change the "assumed" export part to a metered export scheme - but this seems like a bad choice (as if I were being more clever I'd reduce export to 0!). I could get the meter swapped out for a smart meter on 3-phase. I've been told SMETS2 has a 'net metering' arrangement, so if I were importing on one phase but exporting on the other, I pay on the difference. At some point I'm sure I'll be coralled into having to have a smart-meter, so it seems sensible to switch back to 3-phase given the supply is already there. I don't think on my current setup it would be worthwhile adding anything additional (say, batteries) that could export to the grid, as I'd either get nothing for it, or have to take my PV off the "deemed export" scheme (as how would the energy company know which bit was which). However: Could I go 3-phase, attach a battery to one of the other phases, and have a metered-export arrangement for that phase alone? I.E: can the meter report import/export _per phase_ to the supplier to make that kind of arrangement work ?

Have you a reference to this? I'm reading https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-energy-saving-materials-and-heating-equipment-notice-7086 and my reading of it is that ASHP installation is 0 rated for VAT regardless of the proportions given to labour and capital equipment, but that you do need to have them invoiced together.

I did find, after a tip from a friend that just F-Gas certified, that eBay has many vendors that sell units there that I haven't found often elsewhere (e.g: Samsung, but they're quite cooling rather than heating focussed). On the "nonsense about A2A" thread, I was watching a YT video about air/air from a channel that's a A2W heat pump training organisation (heatgeek), where they talk to a guy that does commercial A2A. It was very notable half way through that the mask slipped. The real concern is that A2A is simple! If any old joe can get an F-Gas certificate, or fit units that don't require it - where then for over-complicated surveys (that bear little relation to reality as in old housing everything is a guess) and a closed-shop of "professionals" who can bamboozle the public with storage tanks and buffers and pumps and pipe sizes ? This is lunacy. He was against ceiling fans (that americans in A2A setups use to push the air around) because... it might decrease the delta-T across the condenser and so lower the efficiency. I am without words. What's important isn't "are you comfortable in the room", it's overall efficiency apparently. So running practically 24x7 at a high efficiency (A2W) is preferable to a lower efficiency but more rapid time to comfort (A2A). Optimising for the wrong goal. We have a heating market which is effectivelybeen "do some simple sizing / gut feel for rads, upsize by 20%, install a boiler based on DHW demand, job done". If you need a PhD to correctly size an A2W system without it bankrupting the client then all is lost.