MCS umbrella scheme. Anyone done it?

[flanagaj]

I would like to do all aspects of our heating/cooling and DHW installation myself.  I've read that I can do this and claim the grant if I use the MCS umbrella scheme.  Keen to understand if anyone has gone down this path?

[Stu789]

I'm interested in this too...

FWIW I spoke to a couple of the MCS umbrella companies last month and they only deal with a trading plumber not a self-builder so they basically said "get the plumber you want to work with to call us" 

 

 

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

We did it via Cool Energy. It worked well for us overall. The only issue is controlling their heat pump via modbus. The service was great. 

[flanagaj]

2 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

We did it via Cool Energy. It worked well for us overall. The only issue is controlling their heat pump via modbus. The service was great. 

Are you a plumber @MikeSharp01.  Just trying to understand your background.  I'm hoping that so long as you can show you have done detailed heat loss calculations and have a detailed schematic showing the proposed installation, it will show you have a good understanding of what needs to be done and you can hopefully do the work under the scheme.

[JohnMo]

Just buy it yourself.

 

Direct UVC cylinder, heat during cheap rate periods. Direct cylinder compared to heat pump cylinder generally £1k+ or £2k cheaper than Mixergy and Heat Geek ones. Plus it allows you heat house and DHW in cheap periods. Price difference buys a lot of cheap energy. But from switching for heat pump heated to direct I haven't noticed any difference in overall cost of electricity.

 

You will most likely have UFH anyway. Then you just need the ASHP. I paid £2k for mine.

 

You also have the freedom to do your install your way.

[LaChab]

I recently finished installing an ASHP under the umbrella scheme. I did all the work, and I'm definitely not a plumber.

I made a "profit" of about £1000, so I think it's a really good offer.

[crispy_wafer]

34 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Just buy it yourself.

 

Direct UVC cylinder, heat during cheap rate periods. Direct cylinder compared to heat pump cylinder generally £1k+ or £2k cheaper than Mixergy and Heat Geek ones. Plus it allows you heat house and DHW in cheap periods. Price difference buys a lot of cheap energy. But from switching for heat pump heated to direct I haven't noticed any difference in overall cost of electricity.

 

You will most likely have UFH anyway. Then you just need the ASHP. I paid £2k for mine.

 

You also have the freedom to do your install your way.

Suggesting the ashp for heating only and have the immersion on a timer or some form of solar diverter to utilise excess?

[Stu789]

15 minutes ago, LaChab said:

I recently finished installing an ASHP under the umbrella scheme. I did all the work, and I'm definitely not a plumber.

I made a "profit" of about £1000, so I think it's a really good offer.

Could you please share which umbrella scheme you used, thx

[LaChab]

@Stu789 I used this company. https://www.air2heat.co.uk/mcs-umbrella-scheme. As you can see, they're based in Oswestry but they were happy to travel down to North Somerset for me. 

[JohnMo]

17 minutes ago, crispy_wafer said:

Suggesting the ashp for heating only and have the immersion on a timer or some form of solar diverter to utilise excess?

Just a simple programmable timer for DHW - stand alone system. Generally you are better exporting solar, but I do get some periods on Agile where export is almost nothing and if you have excess solar, ideal time to dump in to water

 

32 minutes ago, LaChab said:

I recently finished installing an ASHP under the umbrella scheme. I did all the work, and I'm definitely not a plumber.

I made a "profit" of about £1000, so I think it's a really good offer.

Wouldn't advertise you made a profit, as you an the umbrella company are defrauding the tax man.

[G and J]

5 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Wouldn't advertise you made a profit, as you an the umbrella company are defrauding the tax man.

I’m sure he meant compared to the best quote he got otherwise.  Honest. 

[Oz07]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

Just buy it yourself.

 

Direct UVC cylinder, heat during cheap rate periods. Direct cylinder compared to heat pump cylinder generally £1k+ or £2k cheaper than Mixergy and Heat Geek ones. Plus it allows you heat house and DHW in cheap periods. Price difference buys a lot of cheap energy. But from switching for heat pump heated to direct I haven't noticed any difference in overall cost of electricity.

 

You will most likely have UFH anyway. Then you just need the ASHP. I paid £2k for mine.

 

You also have the freedom to do your install your way.

I was looking into this the other week with ai. Excuse my luddite levels of understanding. I know you know your onions. The ai was implying immersion heating is a lot more expensive than heat pump because no COP. It was kind of implying doing the install so can heat water with both ashp and immersion is the best way. Are you saying its a lot more expensive? Can the ashp recharge quicker than immersion?

 

Do you guys have some low dhw use which means you dont really notice the cost whereas a big family with multiple showers or baths would notice it?

[JohnMo]

29 minutes ago, Oz07 said:

The ai was implying immersion heating is a lot more expensive than heat pump because no COP

The implication is most likely correct in theory, but reality for our system is our electric consumption/cost hasn't changed enough to really notice, especially as one of the heats is done in the day when I have solar to pick up the cost.  Interesting I was talking with a friend, he has a system oil boiler and switched over to immersion only heating DHW a few years ago, mainly because he didn't see much difference in running cost. Wife is also happier as she didn't like the not really hot water water generated by the heat pump.  He has a young family (oil boiler) - there are two of us.

 

Can the ashp recharge quicker than immersion? Depends on the output, but our 210L is generally charged in an hour or less with immersion (heat twice per day), it took that long also with the a 6kW heat pump - not tried now we have a 4kW (installed in January).  A heat pump will slowly ramp up temperature from as low a flow temperature as it can, here is a typical night time reheat (our 6kW ASHP) - was 8 degs outside. 

 

 

It took an hour and would have heated cylinder to 47 degs.  Used 2kWh. 

 

Plot showing cylinder temperature - Last night I reheated cylinder, it starting at 4.30am and was finished at just before 5am and then around 1 hr later ran for a further 6 mins, an hour later another couple of mins, so all up just over 3kWk - but cylinder was at 58 degs, not 47 degs.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by JohnMo

[-rick-]

51 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

The implication is most likely correct in theory, but reality for our system is our electric consumption/cost hasn't changed enough to really notice, especially as one of the heats is done in the day when I have solar to pick up the cost.  Interesting I was talking with a friend, he has a system oil boiler and switched over to immersion only heating DHW a few years ago, mainly because he didn't see much difference in running cost. Wife is also happier as she didn't like the not really hot water water generated by the heat pump.  He has a young family (oil boiler) - there are two of us.

 

It's going to depend a lot on individual circumstances. I suspect you use relatively less water than others and you also have a long, inefficient, pipe run to the heat pump that adds loss when switching between space heat and DHW.

[PhilT]

2 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Wouldn't advertise you made a profit, as you an the umbrella company are defrauding the tax man.

Surely not. Is there a rule in the umbrella scheme which says you can't spend less than the grant? I doubt it. The so called "profit" of £1,000 is essentially used to pay his own labour cost

[JohnMo]

3 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

It's going to depend a lot on individual circumstances. I suspect you use relatively less water than others and you also have a long, inefficient, pipe run to the heat pump that adds loss when switching between space heat and DHW.

All correct, but point is I am spending only 15 to 30p per day on DHW, if I averaged a CoP of 3 it's 5p to 10p. So between £50 and £100 let's call it £75. It would about £28 on a heat pump. So £47 cheaper doing a heat pump. If the difference in cylinder price is £1000 you have a 21 year payback just to break even.

 

Also like that during a cheap period I can heat the house for the whole period and same when cooling instead of switching over the heating hot water when you need actually need the cooling on.

 

3 minutes ago, PhilT said:

Surely not. Is there a rule in the umbrella scheme which says you can't spend less than the grant? I doubt it. The so called "profit" of £1,000 is essentially used to pay his own labour cost

Of cause you can spend less than the grant, but you can only claim what you spend, it's not a heat pump and free holiday scheme.

 

Not sure you claim for your labour, as there is no charging mechanism for that, unless you are business.  If you did you would be due employer and employee NI and income tax.

 

As @G and J says possibly he didn't really mean what he wrote.

[MikeSharp01]

5 hours ago, flanagaj said:

Are you a plumber @MikeSharp01.  Just trying to understand your background. 

No I am not a plumber but I can plumb! I had the PHPP data which I sent them for heat loss along with a set of drawings and sections along with the air tightness certificate and they used that data to create the MCS form entries. I did the whole install and they came down, did a bunch of checks and signed it all off.

 

Although I am emotionally with @JohnMo on not bothering with MCS I do need to get BC sign off and the part G cert so this was an easy way to get all that. We did make a small return on the grant but not after my time!

[SimonD]

I think there's some misunderstanding going on here particularly about the BUS Grant. The grant is either £7500 for on gas grid or £9000 for off gas grid, it is not based on spend. That's the figure you claim and get awarded if you're eligible. If your costs are below that, then you get a return. In essence, the return pays for your DIY time, but it isn't in any way close to the commercial value of the time you'll spend on your own DIY install.

The other is about direct DHW with immersion v heat pump. The heat pump is always going to beat the immersion as even with just a COP of 2, you're onto a winner, and if you're putting in more that 3kW (or 6kW if you've got dual immersions) then your reheat time is going to be reduced. Some factors limiting this are that if you have a badly commissioned system DHW temp may be set so high the heat pump doesn't like it and you can see a drop of COP sometimes to below 1 on older R32 units.

Make sure you choose a good umbrella because some are dreadful and will just do a basic desktop heat loss an no system design and then they'll force you to comply with their requirements, whether you like it or not. Make sure they actually understand MVHR and include the specifications in the heat loss as some heat loss tools out there don't deal with whole house MVHR on the ventilation and leakage side of things. Similarly with high airtightness, and insulation levels, often leading to over-sizing of heat pump.

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, SimonD said:

That's the figure you claim and get awarded if you're eligible. If your costs are below that, then you get a return. In essence, the return pays for your DIY time, but it isn't in any way close to the commercial value of the time you'll spend on your own DIY install.

If that's the case something is very wrong with the system. My install cost just over £3500 in parts, so was eligible for £4k cash back, if I went through the grant. Don't think so.

[Nickfromwales]

3 hours ago, JohnMo said:

All correct, but point is I am spending only 15 to 30p per day on DHW, if I averaged a CoP of 3 it's 5p to 10p. So between £50 and £100 let's call it £75. It would about £28 on a heat pump. So £47 cheaper doing a heat pump. If the difference in cylinder price is £1000 you have a 21 year payback just to break even.

 

Also like that during a cheap period I can heat the house for the whole period and same when cooling instead of switching over the heating hot water when you need actually need the cooling on.

 

Of cause you can spend less than the grant, but you can only claim what you spend, it's not a heat pump and free holiday scheme.

 

Not sure you claim for your labour, as there is no charging mechanism for that, unless you are business.  If you did you would be due employer and employee NI and income tax.

 

As @G and J says possibly he didn't really mean what he wrote.

Everyone is anonymous on here unless they use their full legal name as their username, so makes no odds tbh.

[Oz07]

Do you get penalised on SAP for not fitting ashp cylinder?

[JohnMo]

You seem to get penalised from what people say installing a heat pump, so who knows?

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

If that's the case something is very wrong with the system. My install cost just over £3500 in parts, so was eligible for £4k cash back, if I went through the grant. Don't think so.

Yes I  have said there is something very wrong with the system.  We all know you can buy all the parts for £3500 and from experience I recon 2 days plumber and electrician to install in a new build.  So say £50 per hour and 32 hours labour that's £1600.  So that's total cost of £5100.  There is some design and paperwork time so lets say another £1000 for that.

 

So imho it should be possible for the £7500 grant to cover supply AND install in most situations.

 

I have yet to hear of anyone getting a free to them install under the BUS scheme, and you hear of some very high charges in some cases.  And nobody running any of these schemes has ever come along to justify WHY their installs cost so much.

[flanagaj]

3 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

I did the whole install and they came down, did a bunch of checks and signed it all off.

👏👏 proper self-builder.

[MikeSharp01]

3 hours ago, JohnMo said:

My install cost just over £3500 in parts, so was eligible for £4k cash back, if I went through the grant. Don't think so.

No you would not, because there is also a bill to come from the umbrella company who need to do all the work of calculating the heat losses, setting the spec, providing the design, commissioning and signing off the system. In our case that was a big chunk. (Which we agreed before we signed up.)