Colin and his family live in a 1980s three-bedroom mid-terrace house in suburban Newcastle, England.

With a 15-year-old gas boiler that was becoming less energy efficient, Colin knew that they would have to replace it with a modern system for heating and hot water.

The Electrification of Heat (EoH) demonstration project, funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), is seeking to better understand the technical and practical feasibility of a large-scale rollout of heat pumps into existing British homes.

The Challenge

The recruitment and installation phase of the EoH project ran from July 2020 through to October 2021, and despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, 742 heat pumps were installed into a broad spectrum of housing types and socio-economic groups, that reflects a representative sample of households across Great Britain.

The range of different heat pumps installed, included:

• Low-temperature and high-temperature air-source heat pumps
• Ground-source heat pumps
• Hybrid heat pumps incorporated with a gas boiler
• some additional technologies, such as heat batteries were incorporated.

Householders were asked to reflect on their first hand experiences of taking part in the programme, including disruption during the installation work, thoughts on the noise and aesthetics of the technology and the outcomes for warmth and comfort.

The Solution

Colin was familiar with air source heat pumps due to his job in the energy sector and knew it would not only use less energy to heat their house but also contributes to reducing the family’s carbon impact.

The Outcome

The outdoor unit of the heat pump was placed in the garden and the indoor unit was placed in a kitchen cupboard that was previously used as a pantry. Colin was pleased to see all their radiators being replaced as the old ones were very old and rusty. The new heat pump required no pipework
to be replaced.

The operation of the heat pump is a bit louder than the family initially anticipated: “If you have an open window you can hear it working”. After a few weeks though, the family have got used to it.

Colin and his family are happy with how warm their house is after installing the heat pump. They are particularly happy with a definite improvement to their hot water.