Heat pump installation costs

[MoDo]

Appreciate there is a heating dedicated section - but this query is purely on the cost aspect so assume this is the more appropriate place...

 

Getting some of the smaller elements priced for our build such as the heat pump. Rather shocked at how much installers seem to want though. 

 

I'd budgeted £5-7k for the heat pump based on material cost of £5k, gov grant of £5k and installation cost including materials of max £5-7k therefore net cost of £5-7k. However had two estimates at £15-17k!

 

I'm not looking at a complex system either. In fact, I doubt it gets any simpler than this. 

Heat pump to heat only ground floor UFH which will be installed by others and in situ. Pump and cylinder to be opposite each other (opposite sides of an external wall). Planning to use a Valliant Unitower which combines all internal elements in a single fridge sized unit (including HW cylinder). So installation would require fitting the outdoor unit (mains cable, flow and return) say half a days job, maybe a full day if I haven't appreciated the work involved. Should be similar for the indoor Unitower. So for £5k of equipment (and thats retail cost - without trade discount) plus a couple days work - how are installers expecting to make circa £10k profit for a couple days work? 

 

I'm minded to purchase the equipment myself, wire it - and bring in a G3 qualified plumber to connect the two pipes for HW to the Unitower. Shouldn't cost more than £300 labour like this. Have I massively underestimated the work involved, or are MCS registered installers simply taking advantage of the situation? 

[Conor]

I got a full package from coolenergy, heatpump, buffer, 300l HWC, carel controller, glycol, the works. That was £6300 after vat reclaim.

 

I then got a team of plumbers in to do the whole hoise, from memory they spent about three days between connecting up the heatpump, plumbing the cylinder, commissioning the UFH (connecting manifolds, installing pumps, valves etc). So that about £1600 and that included two days of the G3 guy.

 

Then there was 28mm pipe, pumps, connectors, brassware etc. So another £300 ish. Then there was the spark for a day, he couldn't get it all done so brought his mate in fro another half day... No bill yet but reckon £300.

 

That brings it in at £8500. 

 

Is the valiant unit a split or monoblock system? If it split that that brings in extra costs.

[LA3222]

I did mine myself. Spark did the electrics, I did everything else - system was running for a year before I had a plumber sign off the G3. He spent half hour looking at it and cost me £300.

[JohnMo]

MSC quote are generally just taking people for mugs from what I see.

 

Others on here as mentioned above have excluded the MSC grant and saved.

 

Had a look at the unitower a while ago, the coil is the largest in the world, so reheat times and temperature will not be the best.  And it just a cylinder with a 3 way diverter valve.  You save a lot with a better performance cylinder and a £150 3 port diverter.

 

If the UFH is a single zone, no buffer required.

 

Then your material list is

3 port diverter - £150

Flexible hoses x2 - £150

Cylinder - £1000 to 1500

Heat pump - depends on make and size, but I just got a new one (Maxa 6kW inverter) from eBay for £1300. Basically the same unit as sold by (made for) Viesmann for £4000+.

Flex feet for HP - £70

Copper pipe and insulation

Maybe a couple of thermostats, expansion vessel, isolation valves, filter ball valve, antifreeze valves (or glycol) bits and bobs - about £600

 

 

[MoDo]

Thanks everyone, so it does seem MCS has become a get rich quick scheme for the installers. Shame really, at most you'd expect them to pocket the £5k grant instead of a typical lower margin, but in fact, it seems the situation is worse than that.

 

I'm still keen on the Valliant Arotherm Plus which is a Monoblock so expect no glycol required, with Unitower.

 

I've compared the heat exchanger size in the Unitower cylinder with comparable HP cylinder from Gledhill and seems to be within 0.06 m3 so seems alright? Valliant specs show a heat-up time of 125min which seems very decent. It also has a backup 8.7kWh heater (though I don't think this is used in the heat-up calcs as far as I can tell - as the pump itself can produce a flow temp of 75 degrees. This high flow temp is another reason I'd rather go with this unit (flow temp apparently achieved without backup heater). Valliant claim this higher flow temp means you can get over 300 litres out of their 180l cylinder due to blending down. This would be important for us as a family, one bath would potentially drain the cylinder at 50 degrees, so the ability to occasionally boost to 70 degrees to increase HW by over 100l is important. It also means a Sunamp could be added as they need 65 degree flow temp which is above the temp of most heat pumps. Finally the sound levels are also very low - important as plan to install Unitower in bedroom with heatpump on wall/flat roof opposite. Only downside seems to be the cylinder is enamel and not stainless - but something has to give!

 

Apologies if this sounds like I work for Valliant (I don't)! Just trying to make an informed decision as simply don't have £17k in our budget for HP. Does sound from the advice above we can ignore the MCS installers and self-install + G3 plumber. Especially given the expansion vessel and all associated components are included in the single pre-assembled Unitower (if I've understood what's required for a functioning/safe system) should just be a matter of connecting the pipes and following the commissioning process.

 

EDIT: Just to clarify too - the 7kW unit + Unitower is showing at £4999 or below online (before trade discounts) hence my shock at being quoted £17k to install.

 

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by MoDo

[ProDave]

What you need is a competent plumber and electrician.  I have done several now (each one with a different plumber)  I can't speak so much for the plumbing side, but max 2 days for the electrics usually less, and I would find it hard to believe the plumber was any more.   Even allowing for down south prices that would be less than £2K labour.

 

There is a long held suspicion here that with an MCS install you can get a £5K grant, so the MCS guys just add £5K to the bill so guess where the grant money ends up?  All pure speculation of course but none of us can see how many of the MCS quotes can get so high just by pricing actual labour and hours expected to be worked.

[MoDo]

At least there's no other impact other than the grant of not going the MCS route. Unlike with solar where potentially lucrative SEG is lost. 

[JohnMo]

Data about unistore, it only has a 1.3m2 coil, typical heat pump cylinder would have a 3m2 coil.  That would give faster heat up times for the same flow temp. So spending less time at a low CoP and therefore a better annual SCoP.

 

It's also a steel enamel tank not a duplex stainless steel one, so has a anode to be replaced every one to two years.

 

[Thorfun]

our ASHP/UVC is a long story but after being left in the lurch I had to find someone to install the equipment that was already on-site. found a local company who did it for £3500. that's install the UVC, buffer, ASHP, electrics (although I ran the SWA cable to save a bit of money), about 10m of lagged 28mm flow and return copper pipework from ASHP to UVC and commissioning and connecting to our UFH system. they did a brilliant job and I thought it was a reasonable cost. so there are good reliable heating engineers/companies out there that don't take the pi$$ with costs. generally they've been going for a number of years and aren't just cashing in the grant schemes.

[Bramco]

3 hours ago, Conor said:

I got a full package from coolenergy, heatpump, buffer, 300l HWC, carel controller, glycol, the works. That was £6300 after vat reclaim.

 

We had Nationwide, the coolenergy MCS installers do ours. We already had the cylinders in place for DHW and UFH buffer, so the costs were just for the ASHP and install. Came out a tad over the £5k grant that Nationwide applied for, for us. So net net a no cost addition to the build.  Prices have gone up since then and I still haven't seen the MCS documentation a few months after the install.  Roughly speaking, and from memory, this was about £3k for the pump, therefore about £2k for the install, which would include the materials. Our pump is the smaller one, the iVT9.

 

We had to provide the mains supply to the pump and an additional cable and cat5 cable to the controller (there were a few issues there but that's another story). The install took a day, the plumber flat out, the sparky spent a lot of time in the van...  From memory, the plumber from the main contractor took about a day to plumb the DHW tank and UFH buffer tank in. And for UFH, you'd need a sparky for the wiring centre, immersions etc.

 

So nowhere near the daft 'double glazing salesman' style quotes that 'renewable energy' companies quote.  The tag 'renewable energy' on a suppliers web site should be a red flag to anyone concerned about not being ripped off.

 

Simon

[PeterW]

2 hours ago, MoDo said:

I'm still keen on the Valliant Arotherm Plus which is a Monoblock so expect no glycol required, with Unitower.

Still need glycol / antifreeze in the system as you have an air to water heater pump and there is water held in the external heat exchanger 

[JohnMo]

3 hours ago, PeterW said:

Still need glycol / antifreeze in the system

Or anti freeze valves, at around £100 each.

[MoDo]

5 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Data about unistore, it only has a 1.3m2 coil, typical heat pump cylinder would have a 3m2 coil.  That would give faster heat up times for the same flow temp. So spending less time at a low CoP and therefore a better annual SCoP.

 

It's also a steel enamel tank not a duplex stainless steel one, so has a anode to be replaced every one to two years.

 

Looked at a Gledhill and OSO Heat pump cylinder - the OSO has a similar sized coil, though exceptionally low heat loss per 24h. The Gledhill does have a much larger coil though like you say, though higher heat loss.

 

Is replacing an anode a DIY job or is the plan for these enamel cylinders to last the warranty period and then fail?

[JohnMo]

https://www.vpshotwatercylinders.co.uk/product/gledhill-stainless-lite-plus-heat-pump-cylinder-210-litre/

 

3m2

 

Or

https://www.cylinders2go.co.uk/shop/renewable-energy/200-litre-telford-tempest-heat-pump-cylinder/

 

3.3m2

 

Coil area is the most important thing, otherwise you spend an age trying to heat the cylinder up and you will use loads of energy and still have no hot water.

 

Couldn't find the oso, but think you need the geocoil on that range.

 

Heat loss will be way less than they claim, as they are rated at the same temp something like 75 deg. Your cylinder will be at close to 50 deg.

 

[JamieG]

On 15/01/2023 at 09:39, MoDo said:

Thanks everyone, so it does seem MCS has become a get rich quick scheme for the installers. Shame really, at most you'd expect them to pocket the £5k grant instead of a typical lower margin, but in fact, it seems the situation is worse than that.

 

I'm still keen on the Valliant Arotherm Plus which is a Monoblock so expect no glycol required, with Unitower.

 

I've compared the heat exchanger size in the Unitower cylinder with comparable HP cylinder from Gledhill and seems to be within 0.06 m3 so seems alright? Valliant specs show a heat-up time of 125min which seems very decent. It also has a backup 8.7kWh heater (though I don't think this is used in the heat-up calcs as far as I can tell - as the pump itself can produce a flow temp of 75 degrees. This high flow temp is another reason I'd rather go with this unit (flow temp apparently achieved without backup heater). Valliant claim this higher flow temp means you can get over 300 litres out of their 180l cylinder due to blending down. This would be important for us as a family, one bath would potentially drain the cylinder at 50 degrees, so the ability to occasionally boost to 70 degrees to increase HW by over 100l is important. It also means a Sunamp could be added as they need 65 degree flow temp which is above the temp of most heat pumps. Finally the sound levels are also very low - important as plan to install Unitower in bedroom with heatpump on wall/flat roof opposite. Only downside seems to be the cylinder is enamel and not stainless - but something has to give!

 

Apologies if this sounds like I work for Valliant (I don't)! Just trying to make an informed decision as simply don't have £17k in our budget for HP. Does sound from the advice above we can ignore the MCS installers and self-install + G3 plumber. Especially given the expansion vessel and all associated components are included in the single pre-assembled Unitower (if I've understood what's required for a functioning/safe system) should just be a matter of connecting the pipes and following the commissioning process.

 

EDIT: Just to clarify too - the 7kW unit + Unitower is showing at £4999 or below online (before trade discounts) hence my shock at being quoted £17k to install.

 

 

I paid roughly £10500 for a 7kW aurotherm plus with 300l UVC, no buffer tank as one zone and full install. Minus the Home Energy Scotland Grant (£7500) I paid £3000 of which £2500 was an interest free loan. This was from an MCS accredited installer which is a requirement for the HES funding. 

 

I did crazy different prices from different installers ranging up to your kind of price.