‘I was a green energy zealot – until I had a nightmare heat pump installed’

All Paul Robinson really wanted were some solar panels on his roof.

The company director, who had recently moved to a quiet market town in Mid Wales, is a firm believer in green technology. In the 12 years before he moved, he had benefitted from solar panels and a home battery, both of which shaved money off his power bill.

The Government offers homeowners grants towards solar panels through its Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) scheme. But to take advantage of the generous initiative, Robinson was also required to install an air source heat pump, an endeavour that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.

“I’m so glad I didn’t pay for any of it,” he says. “The amount it cost is crackers.”

Robinson estimates that around 18 tradesmen – a team of electricians, plumbers, plasterers, and supervisors – descended on the stone barn conversion in Welshpool, with the entire installation costing at least £40,000, according to estimates seen by The Telegraph.

The ECO4 grant, which is aimed at helping people who struggle to afford to heat their homes, covered the entire cost of the work.

Applicants can receive thousands of pounds towards upgrading their property’s energy efficiency, provided their home has an energy performance certificate rating of D or worse. In Robinson’s case, contractors estimated the renovation would lift his EPC score from an F to a B.

“It was utter madness, it really was,” says Mr Robinson. “They had to put internal insulation on the walls, rip out hundreds of metres of copper from the plumbing system, and replace every pipe.”

All the carpets and floorboards came up, and a cupboard was devoted to housing a water tank. The property’s oil boiler was replaced with a behemoth twin 12kW Vaillant heat pump, which would draw power from the solar panels and battery that Robinson had ultimately done all of this for in the first place – at least in theory.

In practice, Robinson says the conversion has been “a nightmare”.

A bank behind the property obscures the sun, meaning his new solar panels barely work. “The sun hits the panels for about 15 minutes a day for five months of the year,” he says. “In my last property, I managed 2,500 watts. Now it’s only around 200.”

The meagre amount of power provided by the solar panels comes nowhere near fully charging his home battery and means the heat pump relies almost entirely on the grid, which is expensive due to the price of electricity.

Robinson says he is awaiting another contractor to move the panels to somewhere where they will attract sunlight.

And on top of all that, he adds, the heat pump failed to keep the house warm.

“Having run it now for two weeks, we’ve got a heating engineer coming to look at putting an oil boiler back in,” he says. “Even with the recommended measures taken, the cost is still very high compared to oil.”

‘I’m going to sell my heat pump’

Roughly 1.5 million households in Britain still rely on heating oil, which successive ministers have been eager to phase out. Until fairly recently, the previous government had hoped to ban new oil boilers from as early as next year.

But the deadline was pushed back to 2035 by former prime minister Rishi Sunak before Labour dropped the policy in January. While new-builds will still be forced to have heat pumps, households will be allowed to install gas or oil boilers from 2035.

Getting heat pumps to work in old buildings can be a struggle – though it can be done.

Last year, The Telegraph reported that ground-source heat pumps in eco-friendly homes built by the Crown Estate had left homeowners with big bills to fix or rip out the technology. One homeowner was left without heating or hot water for a month. Another, like Robinson, ripped theirs out to install an oil boiler.

The problem is compounded by a lack of tradesmen qualified to work with the technology. Last year, the standards body, MCS, said the number of certified contractors qualified to work with renewable energy sources had risen by 23pc to 5,000 since the year before. However, only 58pc of these are qualified to work with heat pumps.

The shortage of workers means a malfunctioning heat pump can spiral into an expensive nightmare, and it may work out cheaper to revert to gas or oil.

When self-employed trader, Mark Lawrence, decided to renovate his bungalow in Nottingham, he hedged his bets by retaining a combi boiler alongside a new heat pump.

Lawrence, 55, believed the technology would pair well with his home’s underfloor heating, but found that during winter, the heat pump took four hours to get his room to temperature even on a mildly cold day.

“When the temperature dropped to freezing or worse, it took a lot longer,” he says.

Fed up with how long the heat pump was taking to heat the property, Lawrence disconnected the electricity-powered system and substituted in the gas boiler.

“Wow, what a difference,” he says. “Within two hours, the temperature is the required level, and it doesn’t matter about the outside temperature.”

The heat pump also proved expensive. Using his smart meter, Lawrence worked out that his heat pump cost him £1.80 for the four hours it took to heat his home on a mild day, and £2.40 in lower temperatures.

Heat pumps work by extracting heat from the air outside a home, so in cold weather, their efficiency falls – a problem that does not affect gas or oil boilers.

Analysis by the Energy Utilities Alliance found that heat pumps cost around £4 more per day to run in sub-zero temperatures than gas boilers.

However, the Heat Pump Federation trade body argues that the systems are more efficient than gas boilers in the “shoulder months of the year”, in spring and autumn, and are cheaper to run over the course of a year than gas- and oil-fired boilers.

“I’m probably going to sell my heat pump as I’m better off just relying on the gas boiler,” says Lawrence. “There’s just no point in any house that’s the age of my bungalow trying to install one when you have to also retrofit new insulation and radiators. They’re just ineffective in older houses.”

‘My heat pump works so badly, my wood stove is on 24/7’

Horror stories from homeowners who have tried and failed to make heat pumps work for them pose a problem for Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who wants 600,000 heat pumps installed every year from 2028.

Take-up is already well below target, despite the Government offering £7,500 towards installations.

Homeowners whose heat pumps have failed to work have little choice but to revert to fossil fuels. In one Telegraph reader’s case, her heat pump’s poor performance forced her to “burn half a rainforest” heating her home with a wood stove.

“I’m beyond caring – I’ve gone back to coal fire and have a portable gas heater,” she says.

The reader, who asked to remain anonymous, was surprised to find her heat pump performed so badly given she lives in a new-build.

“My son got back from Australia and we put the heating on in his room – it cost us £10 a day. I’d rather pay for his return flight,” she says. “We put the heating on the other day and I’m just watching the smart meter go to red.”

She does not use the second floor of their four-bedroom house, on account of her husband’s disability.

“My husband is a pensioner,” she says. “But he’s recently lost the winter fuel allowance. Our home needs to be heated very quickly because of his low mobility.”

The company responsible for the heat pump claimed there was nothing wrong with the system, and a plumber dispatched to the property lacked the qualifications to attempt a fix.

“In the meantime, we’ve gone back to the 1950s, with our wood-burning stove on 24/7 and breathing in ash,” the reader says.

A government spokesman said: “While we are unable to comment on individual cases, any energy efficiency measures fitted under government schemes must be fitted by a TrustMark registered installer and to the highest standards. Any measures installed must be safe and effective, with issues promptly and properly rectified by the installer.

“Heat pumps are three times more efficient than gas boilers and we are making them more affordable to more households by providing £7,500 towards the cost, enabling families to save around £100 a year compared to a gas boiler by using a smart tariff effectively.”

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