One thing i have learnt in my 60 years is that if you do not know more than the "professionals" you while get screwed. For this reason a canal like yours is extremely important , especially when the average bloke is changing to a completely new technology. There while always be those who claim that the new tec is garbage , but most of that is down to incompetence ;-)
Awesome! The data sheet of the heat pump I have, which is probably few years old tech, doesn't even have a condition listed that achieves 5.9 COP. Looks like the most efficient heat pump models are R-290 units in the 5kW size or so. Can't get those in the US but at least have a relatively modern unit that should be much cheaper to run than an oil boiler. I'm jealous of that performance, nice job!
I have a 10 year old house, insulated walls and windows, took out a condenser boiler, average gas bill for 3 months before Heat source fitted 450 , after the electric bill went from a few hundred to thousands yes thousands as I live on the coast and the constant chilled wind just stopped the dam thing working, just had a new gas boiler put in , what I did notice was the oversized rads I had to have fitted now heated the room so quick the gas boiler was hardly on, gas boilers and oversized rads are the way forward
Thanks for a great video, I have experienced the benefits of really getting on top of insulation myself. We used a combination of products taking up only 95mm thickness, the difference when installed meant the bedroom warmed up by 2 degrees overnight first night we used end of September. I think your approach to understanding a subject like me, is that you can’t have too much relevant information .
Could you do a video on the Mixergy tank please? Thinking of installing one (along with an ASHP, Solar PV & Eddi) and would be great to know what you think of them.
Very interesting, I have a Georgian townhouse that I’m renovating and may be ASHP is an option after all.. discounted before as it’s always suggested you need double glazing etc
Interesting to see this as it challenges the 'Fabric First' principle. Perhaps not for removing draughts, but for elemental upgrades not being the 'be all and end all'.
Cool (or rather warm). Those are the type of radiators we have with our heat pump system. To touch they do not feel that warm (which for those "not in the know") seems odd. But, place hand above top of radiator and you can clearly feel the convection hear rising. Mark.
Additionally, you could install fans (e.g. ClimateBooster, HeatFan, SpeedComfort) to boost convection and work with an even lower supply temperature using the same radiators.
Sorry if I missed it in the video but is this the 7kw model? Also how many square meters is the property? If understanding the video and looking at the stats you had 3-3.5 last winter and the bigger rads has bumped the cop up to 5-6? Looks good, I have a similar age property if you want to do more experiments on my house then happy to participate :-) Appreciate all homes are different, but imagine this wasn't your office, how much would this have cost after the 5k government offer? Thanks.
I wonder what will happen after you get the insulation fixed. Is there any risk of the Vaillant being oversized and not able to throttle down enough? I am guessing it will need enough radiator and underfloor heat surface and volume, but what does a big unit do if heat loss is very very low? (lets say just 1kW at -7 degrees)
I'm running a 7kW Arotherm plus on a modern house with underfloor heating. My ASHP has a fence 1 metre in front of the fan. My combined (DHW + heating) SCOP since installation 15 months ago is 4.4 which is good. However, I have recently started measuring the air temperature going into the intake as I suspected its recycling chilled air, and sure enough I'm seeing temperature drops of 2⁰C+ when it's running. I can't move the fence, and I don't know whether moving the ASHP to give greater space in front of the pump would be worth the cost. Would you consider running an experiment with your ASHP to demonstrate the recycling of chilled air when a barrier is placed in front of the pump? You could show the significance of keeping the area in front of the pump clear with a movable fence panel or similar barrier. I'm irritated with Vaillant as the ASHP has been fitted according to the space requirements in their documentation (as I understand it), but it's clearly being affected by the fence. Thanks for reading!
Have you done a video showing how to set up the compensation curve for an Ecodan please - various plumbers I have had in the house have said not to use it - I am not very technical, but I need to get my heating costs down.
I have 300mm loft insulation and 60mm cavity wall insulation that’s carbon bonded bead. My house is a 1950’s 4 bed semi. All new double glazing throughout now as well. Now it’s time to get an up to date EPC done. Anyone now where the best place to get an EPC done would be? I’m told they cost around £40-£50.
I’m looking for my new build . Now is the question should I take a heat pump or a hybrid heat pump . And why . Is the set up both good ? Is the one cheaper ?
Thanks for another great video. It was interesting to hear in an earlier video that when looking at SCOP it is biased towards the winter as that is when the heat pump is more used. Still when I look at specs for air to water heat pumps which give a specific SCOP for a specific flow temperature and out door temperature (e.g. Vaillant state their 12kw model at -5C outdoor can achieve an output of 10.8kw with a 55C flow temperature and a SCOP of 3.63). I guess I struggle to see how that applies to real life. 1: What are the assumptions made when a manufacturer states performance like that 2: How does that apply to a real life situation - Can you infer that if a system has been properly installed and never has to generate a flow temperature more than 55C then the SCOP will never be lower than 3.63? 3: Do these sort of quotes for SCOP assume weather compensation? Thank you for all your videos
Scop refers to seasonal heating season 6.5 months, if you just use a COP it will be different from moment to moment, it's a better way of judging what the machine can do (its more real world). Pumps should not need to go above 55 as long as the rads are sized correctly (Correction Factor) and the pipework can carry enough flow rate. SCOP can only be worked out after the completed season end of October to mid-April, at some times the COP will be terrible, during startup and in very bad weather, then excellent on better days. Thats why we get a seasonal average. They absolutely include weather comp, it would be inefficient without it.
@@HeatGeek Also I guess it's good in a way to do this experiment My dad for instance is VERY wary of loft insulation in particular, because he's had it done via a grant before and it just left mould The grant chasers also don't last very long and it's quite difficult to pursue Meanwhile, I'm very pro insulation, and I can't get any form of grants so I have to carefully look into which company is the best bet for that. Loft insulation in my parent's house has been entirely removed because of dodgy insulation contractors
Seems to me that you could have high cop value, like here, with poor insulation, but if you insulated then the overall running costs would come down. You could have low cop with good insulation, which could cost the same to run as high cop with poor insulation - the 2 things seem to be mostly independent of each other
Great Graph at 2m40 ... What is happening between the heat pump runs? is the circulation pump still going . or is it just resting? Does it just restart once the flow water has cooled , or are you timing the heat pump to come on every 50 mins or so, according to the heat need cacluated from weather outside?
Hi how much does the solar thermal collector tubes contribute to the scop and are the new rads double or even treble fin rads as I see you have a flow temperature of just below 30
Can you tell me if you use a buffer tank alongside the 28mm or 22mm hidden pipework and is it just the trvs that control the heat out of each radiator relevant to the heating curve or does the room thermostat control the maximum heat or is it best practice just to rely on trvs. Thank you
Thank you for doing this. Very interesting experiment. Looking at your live feed why does the heating cycle rapidly on some days like Dec 11 compared to others like Nov 29th?
High thanks for the videos but could you help me to explain the usage relating to electricity usage,on the live feed for say the 29th November it shows that you used (I think) 12.746 kilowatts that day is this correct or was it in one hour of usage sorry I am a bit confused regarding kilowatt hours and has the solar thermal contributed a lot to the reduction in running costs of an ashp and I also wonder if it would ever be able to put enough insulation in a 70s bungalow so as to make it into a passive home where no heating is required
Good insulation doesn't make a heat pump more efficient, it just means it uses less energy to heat the dwelling! A better insulated house simply keeps the heat inside where you want it for longer...
That’s what I would assume. The lower the return temperature the more efficient. Or more likely it is irrelevant. But still getting such a high efficiency is impressive. Sure way cheaper than gas at current prices.
Goldeneye in the office (Y) We are electric only, On economy-7 tariff. Two high-heat retention storage heaters, one in the living room and one on the upstairs landing. Hot-water tank is immersion heated. Loft insulation done . Is a heat pump installation going to be incredibly expensive to replace this heating system as new pipework and radiators will need to be run? Also illegible for the grant I'm assuming.
When using ground source heat pumps, is there a temperature cut off point? Ie if there was too much heat pulled from the ground or other source, would this negatively impact the efficiency due to the refrigerants used? If not could you combine waste water heat extraction with the heat pump, reducing the required amount of land you'd need to use and reuse more of the energy you've created. Significantly reducing outlaying cost and making this more accessible to people with less land. I would love to chat about this with someone in the know.
What does the 0.6 for the weather compensation mean please? I'm aware of how to set the compensation curve, but I don't understand what a single number represent.
Nice cop ! Is this possible with any new heat pump ? looked to get one for last 3 years but couldn’t make figures work looking at it again due now with high energy prices but electricity is a lot more as well as gas so it still the same difference 7.5 p off peak for 6 hours and 40 p peak for the rest of the day and 11 p kWh for gas . We have 6.2 kw solar west facing with 5 kW invter and 13 kWh battery storage. Got a company coming Thursday to quote us what questions do I ask them to find out if there going to quote for a good system or just a cheap system like 2 others have . And how much energy does a home style heat pump use to run in the day in the winter ie on peak use at once ? I’ve been quoted for a 8 size heatpump before I think We live in a 3 bedroom fully detached bungalow and mid winter use about 60-70 kWh of gas a day and trying to work out if it going to be cheaper to use a tapo zeb on off peak electricity and use our 5 year old hot water cylinder heated from off peak and solar or get a air to air whole home setup or a heat pump any help anyone can provide would be great help Thanks Also these open energy monitors are they good idea for home use for a data geek or was this just for demonstration purposes?
Yer would be interested in if we had change this setting on the user settings or is this installer only setting and can you make a average heat pump much more efficient just by changing settings? Thanks
Nice work! Did you do anything special (calculations etc) in emoncms to get from the inputs to feeds or is it just logging to feeds? btw, have you installed fans on the radiators?
@@trystanlea thanks! I'll build something like it when we have our heat pump installed next month. And, (for years already!) what a fabulous project! Thanks for all the effort!
For the confused, improving insulation will not improve the CoP, the CoP is purely a measurement of how efficiently the heat pump is working, however if improved insulation means you can reduce the flow temperature/compensation curve then that should improve your CoP
Hi Heat Geek, I have a question... I've set my condensing boiler to 40C and increased the size of the rads in some rooms to compensate. The house now maintains 20c fine. Is this a good empirical method of assessing heat pump suitability?
Hi guys, I live less than a mile from your office, I've got your Vito Ops manager coming to see me next week. My current gas heating/insulation is dreadful, I want to improve everything and install a heat pump. If you want to use me as another real life case study feel free to get in touch! Thanks, love the channel, couldn't believe you were so close after I'd watched half your channel 😂
How is your new installation going - was it worth it? We moved in to our converted barn 9 years ago (bought from a previous owner who didn't really live in it). It has an ECODAN ASHP for underfloor heating and hot water. It is expensive to run and gives nothing back. I have turned off the heating and replaced it with 3 Everett stoves, which are really good. Although the hot water is set to 24hrs it is always cold, so we have to repeatedly use the boost button (up to 3 times) to heat water for washing up etc. I have really struggled to find anyone to offer a service, the original installers have gone. I have recently contacted a company I saw on a recommendation of our local face book page who wants £400 plus vat and extra if the glycol needs topping up. Luckily I have a gas Aga (aims programmable) which help to heat the property; gas central heating would be preferable but with the cost to convert and net zero agenda this is not a possibility. I am so frustrated!!
No-one else seems to have talked about this, or you. Can you tell me the diameter of your heating system pipes in this building? Would having smaller/larger ones make a big difference to your results?
At todays prices gas is 9p per kw and electric is 45p so electric heating needs a cop of 5 to match the value of gas if you looked at only the fuel cost and not at the installation cost or the environmental costs. Also because gas can quickly get the property up to temp you do not have to run it 24/7 when you are not home, although that is much more complex to put a value on, and not quite as simple as it sounds because heating does gain a small cop bump when run low for 24/7 vs running at higher wattages. But obviously turning off during low or no need has fuel savings which gas is better placed to capitalise on... Heat pumps are not as efficient when the property is cold and the pump needs to run at a higher delta t to achieve a comfortable temp in a reasonable amount of time (or just wear an extra jumper for 3/4 hrs whilst the heat pump gets the property back up to temp..
@@alphabuilders. Very good point, there are those that will argue that keeping the heating on all day is more economical. Simple maths says otherwise. So you need to size your heating system to heat the house in the time you use it. Whether it is gas or heat pump is not the issue. But isn’t the CoP best when the radiators are cold? So as it warms the house over a shorter period it will still be efficient at least to start off. Now it also depends on the building fabric, a heavy or lightweight, poorly insulated or well insulated. The ideal is probably well insulated with a heavy - high thermal mass, internal structure. Then heat during the periods of cheap rate electricity.
What I would like to know is why can’t we use swimming pool heat pumps (the all season units) rather than the over priced “house HP”. I understand they may not reach higher than 40c but the efficiency is massive on them up to 25 COP. By using a swimming unit with a heat exchanger this should do the job better than most purpose HP units.
I really enjoy your informative videos. Sooooo regarding this video, please help me understand the physics of how the HP COP relates to any given insulation scenario all other variables held constant. Please thank you.
Hi just checked mine today and if the controller is accurate it says I have used 17.1kwh of power and produced 101kwh of heat that's nearly cop of 6 at 5.5 degrees ambient. House is at 20 degrees. Who said you can't heat old houses with a heat pump. It's running at a flow temp of 35 degrees to keep house at 20. We'll chuffed best thing I done getting rid of oil boiler! Your videos have been a great help. Thanks
@Vicki hi its a samsung ehs it is accurate on power absorbed as I have an electric meter on it as per mcs requirements. It's the kwh of heat I can't verify. Everyone told me an ashp in my house wouldn't work but it works fine even at these low flow temps.
Awesome videos. Thanks so much for sharing this information. Like some others here, I have an Ecodan. Is there any chance you can share some comparable settings?
The main get good COP is keep the flow temperature as low as possible, Adams heat pump runs with a flowT of 27C-30C when it's about 7C outside. If a flowT of 30C doesn't heat your house adequately you could look at upgrading radiators. Also ensure the system is not zoned and all TRVs are fully open for best performance. Every system is different, real-time monitoring is very useful to immediately see the effect of any changes
@@GlynHudson Hi and thanks for the reply. All rads were upgraded at the time of installation and TRVs are all at max so should be good there. I switched to curve settings at the weekend but blindly copied someone else's setting. I have an upper and lower setting (flow and outside temp for each) but not sure which temps I should start at. I think I set something like 48 @ 2 degrees and 35 @ 15 degrees. Sounds wrong from what you're saying.
@@craglett That curve setting means your flowT will be 48C when the outsideT is 2C or below. Assuming you have upgraded radiators, this is very high! Try reducing the curve as much as you can. You could try something like FlowT 28C @ 15C outside and flowT 35C when 2C outside. You can experiment over the winter by slowly dropping the curve until you're cold and then increasing it a bit. The rads will obviously be cooler to touch but the heat pump will run for more efficiently for longer between cycles
So according to your live feed you are using about 30Kw in electric per week on heating. At say 38p per Kw = £11.50 per week to heat your building. Is this correct ish?
The issue with these though is unless you have solar panels running them they are basically as expensive as a combination boiler but double to treble the purchase price . Who has 20k to fit a system ?
The worse your insulation, the higher your SCOP will be, assuming you can still heat adequately with a low flow temperature, because your balance point temperature will be higher i.e. a larger proportion of your annual heating load will be when it's milder outside and hence the COP higher. A house with a really low heating load will have that load concentrated on the coldest days.
Really interesting, so would having very oversized radiators give better efficiencies or does it mean you can install a lower powered heat pump? Looking at replacing a radiator in my living room now and maybe upgrading the boiler in a few years and debating on heat pumps vs boilers. So if I oversize the radiator now will this help from the efficiencies point of view? Basically can a radiator be too big?
What are your lowest temperature in winter? Seems like its quite warm and perfectly suited for a heatpump. Im recently looking into it but it would be viable only for using when outisde temperatures are above 5c, since i alredy have gas that is not too expensive, and since heatpump wouldnt make sense for -15c anyways
Great video! What did changing the weather compensation curve from 0.8 to 0.6 mean in terms of flow temperature? I figured that the flow temperature at 0°C outside changed from at 47°C (0.8) to around 38°C (0.6). At the moment the outside temperature is about 12°C, so the flow temp should be about 28°C (curve 0.6) or 30°C (curve 0.8) so very little difference. The difference becomes larger at lower outside temperatures. I would love to see a video with snow on the ground, what will the flow temperatures and COP be then?
@@HeatGeek I suppose per-season efficiency becomes more interesting in a hybrid setup, where you may want to use the heat pump for most of the year and switch to oil / gas when it's very cold outside.
I"m guessing also that you're mainly heating the office in the daytime - so you don't have the problem of lower evening/overnight temperatures to contend with. A lot of domestic systems will be working hard early in the morning and from early evening to midnight when the outside temperatures are lower - so perhaps the COP would be likely to be lower? Or are you leaving the system on 24 hours a day?
@@HeatGeek Great! impressive. I live in a draughty old Victorian house and have noticed big improvements in efficiency after swapping old radiators for modern ones and installing a modulating thermostat...sadly haven't got the money to be able to go for a full heat pump conversion. we need the government to incentivise all this much better...
This is from a heat source calculator for a house of my age , For every sq ft of living space, you need about 30 BTU of heating output. That means, for example, that for a 1,000 sq ft home, you would require a 30,000 BTU heat pump (that’s a 2.5-ton heat pump)., so my heat source pump for my house is 60000 but with a weight of 5 tonnes, so how is that going over my roof then
I would like to see some details of your OpenEnergy monitoring equipment. Measuring energy input is easy, just needs a Current Transformer on the live feed to the heat pump, but how are you measuring the heat produced?
@@HeatGeek many thanks, will do! I was wondering if this technique can be used to also monitor an aircon air2air heat pump...but clearly a straightforward in-line flow meter couldnt be used to measure the refrigerant flow rate, perhaps an ultrasonic flow meter...
Great video with lots of info as usual! I am not in UK so cant benefit from your services, and planning to switch to a Vaillant hybrid setup for my fairly insulated(roof, and walls insulated and have hr++ glasses in every room, need still change some radiators, there is not much i can do for floor insulation but there is at least some) 130 years old home. I changed the 20 years old boiler to a Vaillant ecoTec exclusive VHR CW5+ 34/43, and now i am able to measure my heat demand. I thought about using your open Energy Monitor the COP values for similar HDD valued days can give me an estimation about my possible energy consumption if i switch to a heat pump. Do you think it would be logical to use that data?
Just break down that old houses. The UK should really just rebuild many old houses. It's no use. Need to build stuff up from the ground. Look at new build houses from the Netherlands. We are your neighbors. Newbuild houses here have energy bills of around 0 to max 50 euro a month. My little brother had 3 euro energy bill last year. Also a good weapon against putin.
Interesting your links show a heat output of 11.2kwh for 2.7kwh input .. if that 11.2 was the equiv of the gas calc and gas to electric is 3.5-4x cost .. the overall monetary saving is negligible .. surely .... or am I missing something key here
You certainly don't need a new well insulated house for a heatpump to work or make sense. I own larger timber framed house from 1732 in New England where mid winter nights are regularly -10c or colder. We have an air-to-air heatpump that keeps indoor temps at 20c down to around -12c. We have a backup furnace that will kick on below that, but ultimately that's generally only running a few hours on cold nights in mid winter. Our loft insulation is basically what you showed here, whatever fit in between the joists. We do thankfully have some blow in cavity insulation, but our exterior walls are thinner than modern homes and aren't air sealed, so its still far from being well insulated. Granted if we lived in an area with gas service that would almost certainly be cheaper, but in our semi rural town the only fossil fuel choices are heating oil or propane.
COP > 1 is a bigger deal than people think. COP > 1 from a cold sink to a hot sink for thermal potential energy means that one day a method will be found for electric potential energy. The instant we figure out how to creat electric potential energy with the same efficiency that a heat pump creates thermal potential energy, the energy crisis will be over.
If you increase insulation remember you have to improve ventilation. If so put the outdraft against the outside unit. Energy recovery. SMe goes for shower drain Water lots of energy loss there.
Correct, every modern newbuild house has a ventilation system with heat recovery. It does have some maintenance to replace the filter once in a while though. It will keep the heat inside and refreshes the air.
I’m concerned about the environmental damage caused by f gases. I understand there are alternatives that can be used. Could you do a video on where the industry is at with this issue? If heat pumps do take over gas eventually, I foresee this being an issue that the industry does eventually get round to tackling. Does it not make sense to get on with it now? Thanks
Hi Adam, My Daikin Altherma 2 is set to 25(@20deg ext) and 50(@-2deg ext)*. How does this compare with your 0.6 setting. Average COP since June is 4 for heating and 2.5 for Hot Water based on controller readout. Love the videos
How did you get emonhp to work with heatpumpmonitor. I don't see all these nice fancy charts like on here. Octopus Energy fitted my Open Energy Monitor but it's not set up properly I don't think so I cannot see any of the costs / savings the heat pump is producing.
Hi Adam. Again great video !! Questions: is your system being helped by solar ? I assime it does. Because 5.9 is above any HP specs, right ? What is the COP for your Vaillant HP, from their specs, at the avg Nov temps? The last one: what is the min output kW for the HP? Keep the videos “flowing” 😊
The solar is not included in the metering. The meter only measures what the heat pump produces so no. Infact solar would decrease our acerage cop as the heat pump would perform better on those days. Additionally we have now turned off the solar so we can measure more accurately.
So it may be better in some cases, to just invest in some bigger radiators instead of insulation. Just to try to maximize scop, instead of lowering heat loss right?
@@HeatGeek well, but why did you not add loft insulation first then, instead you changed radiators? I missunderstood the video then. My idea was, that it would be cheaper to heat 15 kW heat loss house with 4.5 scop system instead of 12 kW heat loss house with 2.5. Scop system. Or am I wrong?
@@HeatGeek thank you for taking your time to reply to my comment. I am just very curious about heat pumps and heating systems in general at the moment. Maybe my idea was not completly wrong, but maybe the catch is, that the lower your heat loss is the less warm water in radiators you usually need. So generally you get better efficiency. Plus the cheepest energy is the one you dont need to produce. I wonder what SCOP is going to be in this case
Will adding more insulation not actually drop efficiency? I'm finding with our Mitsubishi that with low flow temps it tends to cycle more as heat loss is too low to keep the flow/return delta large enough. It's on less often, so less overall energy use, but the efficiency is less.
I expect with radiators that big it just means will run at 35 C through depths of winter - so better efficiency - though what I find is need some room temp control to turn off for longer periods in mild weather (ecodan wireless control on auto-adapt mode does this)
We have a similar 7kw arotherm. Just checked the working figure which vaillant elude to being cop. It's reading 7.1 for heating for November so far and 4.2 for dwh. Seem too good to be true. Although have tuned it carefully to get there.
@@zlmdragon. thanks. I have measure the actual electrical usage and it does under report about 50-60watts consistently when running. But as the running power varies between 500 and 1500 watts normally the percentage error is not too bad. But it annoying they don't give true figures. Like estate agents 'measuring' floor space the error always favors the measurer!
@@zlmdragon. absolutely. But at these figures I'm happy even with a 10% error. It's still way out performs our gas boiler which was the point. They clearly could include the pump and electronics consumption. Just the dishonesty of the marketing world. 😞
You may have answered this somewhere already but why go for a heat pump isn't the thermodynamic panels more efficient as they don't require a fan? Just curious cheers
The problem is the education of system designers. Still a real gamble get the wrong company and you'll be paying for it for the next ten years. Great videos as always.
That's exactly what I am doing, 7kW Arotherm plus ASHP has been up and running for about 1.5 months with a total COP of 6.0 and 5.8 for this month so far. Had solar with 12.4 kWh battery installed a week ago and looking forward to seeing the results in the months ahead.
I have just been studying your data on Emoncms it looks like your heat pump is cycling quite a bit, I would think if you can stop that it would be even more efficient. Thanks for the video I love your channel.
Could you explain the reasoning for target COP number as the measure of successful performance ? yes it shows the very efficient use of electric Vs direct gas heat but surely it is the total electric energy consumption reduction that should be the target. So when you install insulation total heat demand goes down and hopefully electric consumption. Should that not be the target to encourage?
I think he means that insulating should be the priority instead of system performance. He probably didn’t get the idea of this beeing a testcase where a heatpump can heat a poorly insulated building without displaying horror kw/h usages just by focusing on good system design. Anyway, subscribed!
A heat pump can create all the heat you need…but if your emitters are insufficient in surface area then you’re restricted in getting it out into the environment. I’ve been telling my customers this for years. Design is key to performance
Your COP values are very impressive, partly explained by your low flow temperatures. However, your building seems to have an extremely low heat loss, despite the lack of insulation. Using the figures from 30th November, your heat pump generated 54 kWh and consumed 12kWh giving a COP of 4.5. The internal temperature never dropped below 20 deg C with an average external temperature of around 6 deg C (difference = 14). The average heat loss during this day was 54/24 = 2.25 kW which gives a value of 160 W for the heat loss per degree difference between internal temperature and outside temperature. This seems very low for an uninsulated house (mine is 450 W). Having said that, I doubt if many ASHP owners get a COP of 4.5 when the outside temperature is 6 deg C, however low their flow temperature. How are you achieving this? No buffer tank for one thing probably.
meh, my brother has a SCOP of almost 7. Water/Water heatpump. And is actually very normal for newbuild houses here right now. But many countries are far behind probably. It's funny to see how to try to catch up. I know many people with electricity + heating bills of around 0 Euro. My little brother last year has 3 euro bill for the whole year for Electricity + Heating + Cooling too.
I agree with your calculations mikeheap8823. Not being able to survey the property I still don't believe the heat efficiency that has been achieved. Obviously as I have not been to this property but on the video walk around I have done many heat loss calculations on similar houses and cannot see how this installation will provide a 600% efficiency. The most I have achieved is 400-450. Please provide more info on the size of heat pump and total heat loss.PS you are not the UK's lending experts in renewables; somebody else is. I'm not that boastful!!
I have this crazy idea of mounting the air water heatpump INSIDE a glasshouse (170m3). Used only for heating I wonder what COP would that achieve! Also if it would actually work (air flow,/humidity wise). Do you think I could get close to 9 COP? Especially if I optimize the heating during the day (max solar insulation)
One thing i have learnt in my 60 years is that if you do not know more than the "professionals" you while get screwed.
For this reason a canal like yours is extremely important , especially when the average bloke is changing to a completely new technology.
There while always be those who claim that the new tec is garbage , but most of that is down to incompetence ;-)
Awesome! The data sheet of the heat pump I have, which is probably few years old tech, doesn't even have a condition listed that achieves 5.9 COP. Looks like the most efficient heat pump models are R-290 units in the 5kW size or so. Can't get those in the US but at least have a relatively modern unit that should be much cheaper to run than an oil boiler. I'm jealous of that performance, nice job!
In a 1950s house, just moved, we will be in touch soon but this is great news. Roof being done real soon!
I have a 10 year old house, insulated walls and windows, took out a condenser boiler, average gas bill for 3 months before Heat source fitted 450 , after the electric bill went from a few hundred to thousands yes thousands as I live on the coast and the constant chilled wind just stopped the dam thing working, just had a new gas boiler put in , what I did notice was the oversized rads I had to have fitted now heated the room so quick the gas boiler was hardly on, gas boilers and oversized rads are the way forward
Thanks for a great video, I have experienced the benefits of really getting on top of insulation myself.
We used a combination of products taking up only 95mm thickness, the difference when installed meant the bedroom warmed up by 2 degrees overnight first night we used end of September. I think your approach to understanding a subject like me, is that you can’t have too much relevant information .
Love the 'Golden Eye' on the N64. The only reason I still have my N64. :D Great video as well.. ;)
Can you do similar monitoring for Dec, Jan & Feb please.
Edit, I see that you will be doing follow ups during winter.👍👍
Could you do a video on the Mixergy tank please? Thinking of installing one (along with an ASHP, Solar PV & Eddi) and would be great to know what you think of them.
Great simple video, love it.
Very interesting, I have a Georgian townhouse that I’m renovating and may be ASHP is an option after all.. discounted before as it’s always suggested you need double glazing etc
Interesting to see this as it challenges the 'Fabric First' principle. Perhaps not for removing draughts, but for elemental upgrades not being the 'be all and end all'.
Super interesting stuff, what was the heat loss calc for the building?
Cool (or rather warm). Those are the type of radiators we have with our heat pump system. To touch they do not feel that warm (which for those "not in the know") seems odd. But, place hand above top of radiator and you can clearly feel the convection hear rising. Mark.
Additionally, you could install fans (e.g. ClimateBooster, HeatFan, SpeedComfort) to boost convection and work with an even lower supply temperature using the same radiators.
@@Soepsliert interesting, will investigate
Sorry if I missed it in the video but is this the 7kw model? Also how many square meters is the property? If understanding the video and looking at the stats you had 3-3.5 last winter and the bigger rads has bumped the cop up to 5-6? Looks good, I have a similar age property if you want to do more experiments on my house then happy to participate :-) Appreciate all homes are different, but imagine this wasn't your office, how much would this have cost after the 5k government offer? Thanks.
I wonder what will happen after you get the insulation fixed. Is there any risk of the Vaillant being oversized and not able to throttle down enough?
I am guessing it will need enough radiator and underfloor heat surface and volume, but what does a big unit do if heat loss is very very low? (lets say just 1kW at -7 degrees)
I'm running a 7kW Arotherm plus on a modern house with underfloor heating. My ASHP has a fence 1 metre in front of the fan. My combined (DHW + heating) SCOP since installation 15 months ago is 4.4 which is good. However, I have recently started measuring the air temperature going into the intake as I suspected its recycling chilled air, and sure enough I'm seeing temperature drops of 2⁰C+ when it's running. I can't move the fence, and I don't know whether moving the ASHP to give greater space in front of the pump would be worth the cost.
Would you consider running an experiment with your ASHP to demonstrate the recycling of chilled air when a barrier is placed in front of the pump? You could show the significance of keeping the area in front of the pump clear with a movable fence panel or similar barrier.
I'm irritated with Vaillant as the ASHP has been fitted according to the space requirements in their documentation (as I understand it), but it's clearly being affected by the fence. Thanks for reading!
Do you have stats on how much potential output the old radiators had, vs the new ones?
Yes! Disrupt the system, love it.
Have you done a video showing how to set up the compensation curve for an Ecodan please - various plumbers I have had in the house have said not to use it - I am not very technical, but I need to get my heating costs down.
I have 300mm loft insulation and 60mm cavity wall insulation that’s carbon bonded bead. My house is a 1950’s 4 bed semi. All new double glazing throughout now as well. Now it’s time to get an up to date EPC done. Anyone now where the best place to get an EPC done would be? I’m told they cost around £40-£50.
I’m looking for my new build . Now is the question should I take a heat pump or a hybrid heat pump . And why . Is the set up both good ? Is the one cheaper ?
How many rooms/radiators are you running of this heatpump? Have you got buffer cylinder?
Thanks for another great video. It was interesting to hear in an earlier video that when looking at SCOP it is biased towards the winter as that is when the heat pump is more used.
Still when I look at specs for air to water heat pumps which give a specific SCOP for a specific flow temperature and out door temperature (e.g. Vaillant state their 12kw model at -5C outdoor can achieve an output of 10.8kw with a 55C flow temperature and a SCOP of 3.63). I guess I struggle to see how that applies to real life.
1: What are the assumptions made when a manufacturer states performance like that
2: How does that apply to a real life situation - Can you infer that if a system has been properly installed and never has to generate a flow temperature more than 55C then the SCOP will never be lower than 3.63?
3: Do these sort of quotes for SCOP assume weather compensation?
Thank you for all your videos
Scop refers to seasonal heating season 6.5 months, if you just use a COP it will be different from moment to moment, it's a better way of judging what the machine can do (its more real world).
Pumps should not need to go above 55 as long as the rads are sized correctly (Correction Factor) and the pipework can carry enough flow rate.
SCOP can only be worked out after the completed season end of October to mid-April, at some times the COP will be terrible, during startup and in very bad weather, then excellent on better days. Thats why we get a seasonal average.
They absolutely include weather comp, it would be inefficient without it.
Agree more detailed performance data from the manufactures would be realy useful. ( & fewer glossy photos of warm people in show homes) .
I think the main question is, what did you use to get that N64 working on the big screen?
Love this. Look forward to seeing how this all goes. Are we not better off insulating properly first though?
Yes. This is an experiment to challenge convention
@@HeatGeek Also I guess it's good in a way to do this experiment
My dad for instance is VERY wary of loft insulation in particular, because he's had it done via a grant before and it just left mould
The grant chasers also don't last very long and it's quite difficult to pursue
Meanwhile, I'm very pro insulation, and I can't get any form of grants so I have to carefully look into which company is the best bet for that.
Loft insulation in my parent's house has been entirely removed because of dodgy insulation contractors
Seems to me that you could have high cop value, like here, with poor insulation, but if you insulated then the overall running costs would come down.
You could have low cop with good insulation, which could cost the same to run as high cop with poor insulation - the 2 things seem to be mostly independent of each other
For listed solid walled single glazed Victorian buildings with only loft insulation would it be possible utilise an air source heat pump?
Great Graph at 2m40 ... What is happening between the heat pump runs? is the circulation pump still going . or is it just resting? Does it just restart once the flow water has cooled , or are you timing the heat pump to come on every 50 mins or so, according to the heat need cacluated from weather outside?
Hi how much does the solar thermal collector tubes contribute to the scop and are the new rads double or even treble fin rads as I see you have a flow temperature of just below 30
Have you done a video on biomass boiler or even pellet stoves for heating
Can you tell me if you use a buffer tank alongside the 28mm or 22mm hidden pipework and is it just the trvs that control the heat out of each radiator relevant to the heating curve or does the room thermostat control the maximum heat or is it best practice just to rely on trvs.
Thank you
Thank you for doing this. Very interesting experiment. Looking at your live feed why does the heating cycle rapidly on some days like Dec 11 compared to others like Nov 29th?
It's not cycling.. its defrosting.. and it's rapid but its running a minimum of 45 mins to an hour if you zoom in
High thanks for the videos but could you help me to explain the usage relating to electricity usage,on the live feed for say the 29th November it shows that you used (I think) 12.746 kilowatts that day is this correct or was it in one hour of usage sorry I am a bit confused regarding kilowatt hours and has the solar thermal contributed a lot to the reduction in running costs of an ashp and I also wonder if it would ever be able to put enough insulation in a 70s bungalow so as to make it into a passive home where no heating is required
Good insulation doesn't make a heat pump more efficient, it just means it uses less energy to heat the dwelling!
A better insulated house simply keeps the heat inside where you want it for longer...
That’s what I would assume. The lower the return temperature the more efficient.
Or more likely it is irrelevant.
But still getting such a high efficiency is impressive. Sure way cheaper than gas at current prices.
Have you done any videos on solutions like thermal storage (Tepeo, Sunamp, Caldera etc) for those that cannot fit heat pumps ?
I would like to know too?
Thanks again all!
Goldeneye in the office (Y) We are electric only, On economy-7 tariff. Two high-heat retention storage heaters, one in the living room and one on the upstairs landing. Hot-water tank is immersion heated. Loft insulation done . Is a heat pump installation going to be incredibly expensive to replace this heating system as new pipework and radiators will need to be run? Also illegible for the grant I'm assuming.
Gteat vid. As you have open energy Mon. How do the figures compare with the ones on the vaillant controls? Energy Yeild and working figure?
@HeatGeek the emoncms Link doesn't work anymore - might be worth updating to the heatpumpmonitor URL?
When using ground source heat pumps, is there a temperature cut off point? Ie if there was too much heat pulled from the ground or other source, would this negatively impact the efficiency due to the refrigerants used?
If not could you combine waste water heat extraction with the heat pump, reducing the required amount of land you'd need to use and reuse more of the energy you've created. Significantly reducing outlaying cost and making this more accessible to people with less land.
I would love to chat about this with someone in the know.
What does the 0.6 for the weather compensation mean please? I'm aware of how to set the compensation curve, but I don't understand what a single number represent.
Do you run a buffer? If you do is it in parallel or serie? Thanks
Nice cop ! Is this possible with any new heat pump ? looked to get one for last 3 years but couldn’t make figures work looking at it again due now with high energy prices but electricity is a lot more as well as gas so it still the same difference 7.5 p off peak for 6 hours and 40 p peak for the rest of the day and 11 p kWh for gas . We have 6.2 kw solar west facing with 5 kW invter and 13 kWh battery storage. Got a company coming Thursday to quote us what questions do I ask them to find out if there going to quote for a good system or just a cheap system like 2 others have . And how much energy does a home style heat pump use to run in the day in the winter ie on peak use at once ? I’ve been quoted for a 8 size heatpump before I think We live in a 3 bedroom fully detached bungalow and mid winter use about 60-70 kWh of gas a day and trying to work out if it going to be cheaper to use a tapo zeb on off peak electricity and use our 5 year old hot water cylinder heated from off peak and solar or get a air to air whole home setup or a heat pump any help anyone can provide would be great help Thanks
Also these open energy monitors are they good idea for home use for a data geek or was this just for demonstration purposes?
My Arotherm 11kwh current flow rate is 1000 litres per hour, I was advised to get it increased to 1700 litres per hour, what are your thoughts?
Can you share your control strategy in more detail? Would be really helpful to replicate. Thanks
Yer would be interested in if we had change this setting on the user settings or is this installer only setting and can you make a average heat pump much more efficient just by changing settings? Thanks
Hello, what setback and target temps are you using and how are they scheduled?
Yer be interested to see more info on setting and how it was achieved
Nice work! Did you do anything special (calculations etc) in emoncms to get from the inputs to feeds or is it just logging to feeds? btw, have you installed fans on the radiators?
Thanks Arjen! All just logging to feeds and conversion of power to kWh, that's all then picked up in the heat pump dashboard (we set this up for Adam)
@@trystanlea thanks! I'll build something like it when we have our heat pump installed next month. And, (for years already!) what a fabulous project! Thanks for all the effort!
What was the cost of the installation and also the running cost in £ compared to your previous system for most customers efficiency really means cost
For the confused, improving insulation will not improve the CoP, the CoP is purely a measurement of how efficiently the heat pump is working, however if improved insulation means you can reduce the flow temperature/compensation curve then that should improve your CoP
It will. We will be able to run at lower temperatures and scop will increase further.
👍👍🙌🙌 always learning…
@heat geek that’s literally what he said lol
@@Etacovda63 yes I missread sorry both!!
Hi Heat Geek, I have a question... I've set my condensing boiler to 40C and increased the size of the rads in some rooms to compensate. The house now maintains 20c fine. Is this a good empirical method of assessing heat pump suitability?
Yes
Excellent question! I'm trying the same thing with UFH as well as rads.
Hi guys, I live less than a mile from your office, I've got your Vito Ops manager coming to see me next week. My current gas heating/insulation is dreadful, I want to improve everything and install a heat pump. If you want to use me as another real life case study feel free to get in touch! Thanks, love the channel, couldn't believe you were so close after I'd watched half your channel 😂
How is your new installation going - was it worth it? We moved in to our converted barn 9 years ago (bought from a previous owner who didn't really live in it). It has an ECODAN ASHP for underfloor heating and hot water. It is expensive to run and gives nothing back. I have turned off the heating and replaced it with 3 Everett stoves, which are really good. Although the hot water is set to 24hrs it is always cold, so we have to repeatedly use the boost button (up to 3 times) to heat water for washing up etc. I have really struggled to find anyone to offer a service, the original installers have gone. I have recently contacted a company I saw on a recommendation of our local face book page who wants £400 plus vat and extra if the glycol needs topping up. Luckily I have a gas Aga (aims programmable) which help to heat the property; gas central heating would be preferable but with the cost to convert and net zero agenda this is not a possibility. I am so frustrated!!
No-one else seems to have talked about this, or you. Can you tell me the diameter of your heating system pipes in this building? Would having smaller/larger ones make a big difference to your results?
Might be interesting to see the cost difference between heating with the pump vs heating with a combi boiler.
ruclips.net/video/D8pvXDk_KAA/видео.html
At todays prices gas is 9p per kw and electric is 45p so electric heating needs a cop of 5 to match the value of gas if you looked at only the fuel cost and not at the installation cost or the environmental costs. Also because gas can quickly get the property up to temp you do not have to run it 24/7 when you are not home, although that is much more complex to put a value on, and not quite as simple as it sounds because heating does gain a small cop bump when run low for 24/7 vs running at higher wattages. But obviously turning off during low or no need has fuel savings which gas is better placed to capitalise on... Heat pumps are not as efficient when the property is cold and the pump needs to run at a higher delta t to achieve a comfortable temp in a reasonable amount of time (or just wear an extra jumper for 3/4 hrs whilst the heat pump gets the property back up to temp..
@@alphabuilders. Very good point, there are those that will argue that keeping the heating on all day is more economical. Simple maths says otherwise.
So you need to size your heating system to heat the house in the time you use it. Whether it is gas or heat pump is not the issue.
But isn’t the CoP best when the radiators are cold? So as it warms the house over a shorter period it will still be efficient at least to start off.
Now it also depends on the building fabric, a heavy or lightweight, poorly insulated or well insulated.
The ideal is probably well insulated with a heavy - high thermal mass, internal structure. Then heat during the periods of cheap rate electricity.
What I would like to know is why can’t we use swimming pool heat pumps (the all season units) rather than the over priced “house HP”.
I understand they may not reach higher than 40c but the efficiency is massive on them up to 25 COP.
By using a swimming unit with a heat exchanger this should do the job better than most purpose HP units.
I really enjoy your informative videos. Sooooo regarding this video, please help me understand the physics of how the HP COP relates to any given insulation scenario all other variables held constant. Please thank you.
When you increase insulation you can run at a lower flow temp which will increase scop.
@@HeatGeek which flow temp are you running now?
If you are in a very wet area please do not fill the cavity on old properties with anything that can become slowly saturated.
Hi just checked mine today and if the controller is accurate it says I have used 17.1kwh of power and produced 101kwh of heat that's nearly cop of 6 at 5.5 degrees ambient. House is at 20 degrees. Who said you can't heat old houses with a heat pump. It's running at a flow temp of 35 degrees to keep house at 20. We'll chuffed best thing I done getting rid of oil boiler! Your videos have been a great help. Thanks
@Vicki hi its a samsung ehs it is accurate on power absorbed as I have an electric meter on it as per mcs requirements. It's the kwh of heat I can't verify. Everyone told me an ashp in my house wouldn't work but it works fine even at these low flow temps.
Awesome videos. Thanks so much for sharing this information. Like some others here, I have an Ecodan. Is there any chance you can share some comparable settings?
The main get good COP is keep the flow temperature as low as possible, Adams heat pump runs with a flowT of 27C-30C when it's about 7C outside. If a flowT of 30C doesn't heat your house adequately you could look at upgrading radiators. Also ensure the system is not zoned and all TRVs are fully open for best performance. Every system is different, real-time monitoring is very useful to immediately see the effect of any changes
@@GlynHudson Hi and thanks for the reply. All rads were upgraded at the time of installation and TRVs are all at max so should be good there. I switched to curve settings at the weekend but blindly copied someone else's setting. I have an upper and lower setting (flow and outside temp for each) but not sure which temps I should start at. I think I set something like 48 @ 2 degrees and 35 @ 15 degrees. Sounds wrong from what you're saying.
@@craglett That curve setting means your flowT will be 48C when the outsideT is 2C or below. Assuming you have upgraded radiators, this is very high! Try reducing the curve as much as you can. You could try something like FlowT 28C @ 15C outside and flowT 35C when 2C outside. You can experiment over the winter by slowly dropping the curve until you're cold and then increasing it a bit. The rads will obviously be cooler to touch but the heat pump will run for more efficiently for longer between cycles
@@GlynHudson Again, thank you for your help with this. I shall give those settings a try as a starting point and experiment over the winter.
So according to your live feed you are using about 30Kw in electric per week on heating. At say 38p per Kw = £11.50 per week to heat your building. Is this correct ish?
can we get or make temperature more hight by using Heat pump ??
The issue with these though is unless you have solar panels running them they are basically as expensive as a combination boiler but double to treble the purchase price . Who has 20k to fit a system ?
The worse your insulation, the higher your SCOP will be, assuming you can still heat adequately with a low flow temperature, because your balance point temperature will be higher i.e. a larger proportion of your annual heating load will be when it's milder outside and hence the COP higher. A house with a really low heating load will have that load concentrated on the coldest days.
Really interesting, so would having very oversized radiators give better efficiencies or does it mean you can install a lower powered heat pump?
Looking at replacing a radiator in my living room now and maybe upgrading the boiler in a few years and debating on heat pumps vs boilers. So if I oversize the radiator now will this help from the efficiencies point of view? Basically can a radiator be too big?
No ot can never be too big!! As big as pos!
Why does the amount of insulation effect cop? I would of thought it would just effect total energy usage which is a very different thing?
What are your lowest temperature in winter?
Seems like its quite warm and perfectly suited for a heatpump. Im recently looking into it but it would be viable only for using when outisde temperatures are above 5c, since i alredy have gas that is not too expensive, and since heatpump wouldnt make sense for -15c anyways
We were - 8 last week. Cop them we 2.5
Great video! What did changing the weather compensation curve from 0.8 to 0.6 mean in terms of flow temperature?
I figured that the flow temperature at 0°C outside changed from at 47°C (0.8) to around 38°C (0.6). At the moment the outside temperature is about 12°C, so the flow temp should be about 28°C (curve 0.6) or 30°C (curve 0.8) so very little difference. The difference becomes larger at lower outside temperatures. I would love to see a video with snow on the ground, what will the flow temperatures and COP be then?
Sure. But the only REALLY important thing is the average over the heating season because that's what the bill is..
@@HeatGeek I suppose per-season efficiency becomes more interesting in a hybrid setup, where you may want to use the heat pump for most of the year and switch to oil / gas when it's very cold outside.
I"m guessing also that you're mainly heating the office in the daytime - so you don't have the problem of lower evening/overnight temperatures to contend with. A lot of domestic systems will be working hard early in the morning and from early evening to midnight when the outside temperatures are lower - so perhaps the COP would be likely to be lower? Or are you leaving the system on 24 hours a day?
We have it on from 6am to 10pm. You can see yhe property temperature in the graph is constantly between 20 at night and 22 5 during day.
@@HeatGeek Great! impressive. I live in a draughty old Victorian house and have noticed big improvements in efficiency after swapping old radiators for modern ones and installing a modulating thermostat...sadly haven't got the money to be able to go for a full heat pump conversion. we need the government to incentivise all this much better...
This is from a heat source calculator for a house of my age , For every sq ft of living space, you need about 30 BTU of heating output. That means, for example, that for a 1,000 sq ft home, you would require a 30,000 BTU heat pump (that’s a 2.5-ton heat pump)., so my heat source pump for my house is 60000 but with a weight of 5 tonnes, so how is that going over my roof then
I would like to see some details of your OpenEnergy monitoring equipment. Measuring energy input is easy, just needs a Current Transformer on the live feed to the heat pump, but how are you measuring the heat produced?
Mass flow rate.flow and return woth flow meter. Very simple. Look for our mass flow rate video
@@HeatGeek many thanks, will do! I was wondering if this technique can be used to also monitor an aircon air2air heat pump...but clearly a straightforward in-line flow meter couldnt be used to measure the refrigerant flow rate, perhaps an ultrasonic flow meter...
How will the system cope with prolonged -20 ish temps which we had a 3 or 4 years ago when the beast from the east hit?
It depends on the refrigerant the heat pump uses, a system designed for cold weather should have no problem with -20.
Summer temps you've got down south just now Fella lol
The temperature is in the graph. Overlaid over other heat pumps were still looking at a late 4 or 5 scop
Great video with lots of info as usual! I am not in UK so cant benefit from your services, and planning to switch to a Vaillant hybrid setup for my fairly insulated(roof, and walls insulated and have hr++ glasses in every room, need still change some radiators, there is not much i can do for floor insulation but there is at least some) 130 years old home. I changed the 20 years old boiler to a Vaillant ecoTec exclusive VHR CW5+ 34/43, and now i am able to measure my heat demand. I thought about using your open Energy Monitor the COP values for similar HDD valued days can give me an estimation about my possible energy consumption if i switch to a heat pump. Do you think it would be logical to use that data?
Just break down that old houses. The UK should really just rebuild many old houses. It's no use. Need to build stuff up from the ground. Look at new build houses from the Netherlands. We are your neighbors. Newbuild houses here have energy bills of around 0 to max 50 euro a month. My little brother had 3 euro energy bill last year. Also a good weapon against putin.
Interesting your links show a heat output of 11.2kwh for 2.7kwh input .. if that 11.2 was the equiv of the gas calc and gas to electric is 3.5-4x cost .. the overall monetary saving is negligible .. surely .... or am I missing something key here
You certainly don't need a new well insulated house for a heatpump to work or make sense. I own larger timber framed house from 1732 in New England where mid winter nights are regularly -10c or colder. We have an air-to-air heatpump that keeps indoor temps at 20c down to around -12c. We have a backup furnace that will kick on below that, but ultimately that's generally only running a few hours on cold nights in mid winter.
Our loft insulation is basically what you showed here, whatever fit in between the joists. We do thankfully have some blow in cavity insulation, but our exterior walls are thinner than modern homes and aren't air sealed, so its still far from being well insulated.
Granted if we lived in an area with gas service that would almost certainly be cheaper, but in our semi rural town the only fossil fuel choices are heating oil or propane.
Just to clarify, is the solar thermal contributing to the heating, I know you had problems initially but are they sorted now?
Yes but we've turned it off as it will lower scop
Hi, is your Delta T between 3-4 C.
COP > 1 is a bigger deal than people think.
COP > 1 from a cold sink to a hot sink for thermal potential energy means that one day a method will be found for electric potential energy.
The instant we figure out how to creat electric potential energy with the same efficiency that a heat pump creates thermal potential energy, the energy crisis will be over.
If you increase insulation remember you have to improve ventilation. If so put the outdraft against the outside unit. Energy recovery. SMe goes for shower drain Water lots of energy loss there.
Correct, every modern newbuild house has a ventilation system with heat recovery. It does have some maintenance to replace the filter once in a while though. It will keep the heat inside and refreshes the air.
Not bad 💪 my Vaillant arotherm plus has a scop of 5.3
Very good! What size?
@@HeatGeek 5kw and a curve of 0.35
I’m concerned about the environmental damage caused by f gases. I understand there are alternatives that can be used. Could you do a video on where the industry is at with this issue?
If heat pumps do take over gas eventually, I foresee this being an issue that the industry does eventually get round to tackling. Does it not make sense to get on with it now?
Thanks
He's using R290 which is pure propane. It's a hydrocarbon, not an f gas.
Hi Adam, My Daikin Altherma 2 is set to 25(@20deg ext) and 50(@-2deg ext)*. How does this compare with your 0.6 setting. Average COP since June is 4 for heating and 2.5 for Hot Water based on controller readout. Love the videos
What are those figures in Dec, Jan & Feb?
@@davidreece1642Don't know yet as ASHP was only installed in June. The design sCOP figures are 3.4 and 1.9 respectively.
@@philipbroggio9315 Thanks for replying. When Adam next does an update perhaps you could post your figures too.
How did you get emonhp to work with heatpumpmonitor. I don't see all these nice fancy charts like on here. Octopus Energy fitted my Open Energy Monitor but it's not set up properly I don't think so I cannot see any of the costs / savings the heat pump is producing.
Best to contact them directly. They’re an amazing company and very helpful
Hi Adam. Again great video !!
Questions: is your system being helped by solar ? I assime it does. Because 5.9 is above any HP specs, right ?
What is the COP for your Vaillant HP, from their specs, at the avg Nov temps?
The last one: what is the min output kW for the HP?
Keep the videos “flowing” 😊
The solar is not included in the metering. The meter only measures what the heat pump produces so no. Infact solar would decrease our acerage cop as the heat pump would perform better on those days.
Additionally we have now turned off the solar so we can measure more accurately.
So it may be better in some cases, to just invest in some bigger radiators instead of insulation. Just to try to maximize scop, instead of lowering heat loss right?
No insulation means less energy AND higher efficiency. Insulation first.
@@HeatGeek well, but why did you not add loft insulation first then, instead you changed radiators? I missunderstood the video then.
My idea was, that it would be cheaper to heat 15 kW heat loss house with 4.5 scop system instead of 12 kW heat loss house with 2.5. Scop system.
Or am I wrong?
@@HonzaZalabak we have in all the properties we install in. Ours as all of our stuff is an experiment. Plus I thought it was 200mm
@@HeatGeek thank you for taking your time to reply to my comment. I am just very curious about heat pumps and heating systems in general at the moment.
Maybe my idea was not completly wrong, but maybe the catch is, that the lower your heat loss is the less warm water in radiators you usually need. So generally you get better efficiency.
Plus the cheepest energy is the one you dont need to produce.
I wonder what SCOP is going to be in this case
@@HeatGeek did you upgrade the pipework size when you upgraded the radiators?
Will adding more insulation not actually drop efficiency? I'm finding with our Mitsubishi that with low flow temps it tends to cycle more as heat loss is too low to keep the flow/return delta large enough. It's on less often, so less overall energy use, but the efficiency is less.
I expect with radiators that big it just means will run at 35 C through depths of winter - so better efficiency - though what I find is need some room temp control to turn off for longer periods in mild weather (ecodan wireless control on auto-adapt mode does this)
It should increase efficiency
We have a similar 7kw arotherm. Just checked the working figure which vaillant elude to being cop. It's reading 7.1 for heating for November so far and 4.2 for dwh. Seem too good to be true. Although have tuned it carefully to get there.
If your well insulated and/or have underfloor heating it's probably correct.
50% insulated . Lots of thermal mass, mid terrace and basement with ufh . Rads in the rest. And super warm November!
@@zlmdragon. thanks. I have measure the actual electrical usage and it does under report about 50-60watts consistently when running. But as the running power varies between 500 and 1500 watts normally the percentage error is not too bad. But it annoying they don't give true figures. Like estate agents 'measuring' floor space the error always favors the measurer!
@@zlmdragon. absolutely. But at these figures I'm happy even with a 10% error. It's still way out performs our gas boiler which was the point. They clearly could include the pump and electronics consumption. Just the dishonesty of the marketing world. 😞
so do you just put bigger radiators in?,,is that it?anyone?
Did you say what temp you had the thermostat set? In other words was the place a realistic temp of say 21.
Follow the link.. you can see the property is perninently at 20-23c
How is the cop calculated?
@HeatGeek no new data showing for over three months?
You may have answered this somewhere already but why go for a heat pump isn't the thermodynamic panels more efficient as they don't require a fan? Just curious cheers
You obviously vastly misunderstand how electricity and heatpumps work.
@@zlmdragon. I’m guessing he means IR panels.
The problem is the education of system designers. Still a real gamble get the wrong company and you'll be paying for it for the next ten years. Great videos as always.
Yes hopefully more and more will do the heat geek course
Once it's insulated properly it might benifit from a lower capacity heat pump to keep it running near its maximum.
Yes but there isn't a lower capacity hp unfortunately
@@HeatGeek 4kW mitsubishi QUHZ!
@@jeanforthewin Panasonic do a 3kw heat pump. KIT-ADC03JE5C.
That's probably the 3.5kw Vaillant already installed
If I could run one of these off of my home storage battery which cost me 4.5p/kwh at the moment, then I'd be looking at
That's exactly what I am doing, 7kW Arotherm plus ASHP has been up and running for about 1.5 months with a total COP of 6.0 and 5.8 for this month so far. Had solar with 12.4 kWh battery installed a week ago and looking forward to seeing the results in the months ahead.
I have just been studying your data on Emoncms it looks like your heat pump is cycling quite a bit, I would think if you can stop that it would be even more efficient. Thanks for the video I love your channel.
They are 45 min cycles. It's all good.
How would you reduce cycling ?Just with a anti cycling delay? Or physical changes such as larger buffer?
@@joewentworth7856 a volumiser, hysteresis, control practices of customer and anti cycle delay yes
Get a big buffertank. Also useful for boosts when PV’s are up.
@Brian B that would lower efficiency in our opinion. We'd prefer more batteries for extra pv then multiply through hp
Well it's easy to get this results then UK is warm. I would like to see numbers starting from -10 C to -25 C
Hi I was thinking of doing my acs gas course so you think this is worth it in 2023 or should I study something else. At the moment I work as a plumber
I suggest doing the heat geek course and working for a heat pump installation firm
Just wanted to mention that if you were to paint those radiators terracotta you would get more btu's of output from them.
Sure, or black
Could you explain the reasoning for target COP number as the measure of successful performance ? yes it shows the very efficient use of electric Vs direct gas heat but surely it is the total electric energy consumption reduction that should be the target. So when you install insulation total heat demand goes down and hopefully electric consumption. Should that not be the target to encourage?
Sorry I don't understand the question?
I think he means that insulating should be the priority instead of system performance.
He probably didn’t get the idea of this beeing a testcase where a heatpump can heat a poorly insulated building without displaying horror kw/h usages just by focusing on good system design.
Anyway, subscribed!
Adding insulation means tou can lower flow temperatures which increases efficiency ad well as lowering demand
A heat pump can create all the heat you need…but if your emitters are insufficient in surface area then you’re restricted in getting it out into the environment. I’ve been telling my customers this for years. Design is key to performance
Heat pumps= bigger radiators
@@danielwebb2773 or just appropriate ones
Insufficient in surface area? Doesn't that mean too small?
@@danielwebb2773 so you agree with me?
I have heard that you need bigger radiators with ASHP systems and thought that was what you were implying
Your COP values are very impressive, partly explained by your low flow temperatures. However, your building seems to have an extremely low heat loss, despite the lack of insulation. Using the figures from 30th November, your heat pump generated 54 kWh and consumed 12kWh giving a COP of 4.5. The internal temperature never dropped below 20 deg C with an average external temperature of around 6 deg C (difference = 14). The average heat loss during this day was 54/24 = 2.25 kW which gives a value of 160 W for the heat loss per degree difference between internal temperature and outside temperature. This seems very low for an uninsulated house (mine is 450 W). Having said that, I doubt if many ASHP owners get a COP of 4.5 when the outside temperature is 6 deg C, however low their flow temperature. How are you achieving this? No buffer tank for one thing probably.
No buffer tank. And importantly, quality pure advanced weather compensation. R290 helps with scops too!
meh, my brother has a SCOP of almost 7. Water/Water heatpump. And is actually very normal for newbuild houses here right now. But many countries are far behind probably. It's funny to see how to try to catch up. I know many people with electricity + heating bills of around 0 Euro. My little brother last year has 3 euro bill for the whole year for Electricity + Heating + Cooling too.
I agree with your calculations mikeheap8823. Not being able to survey the property I still don't believe the heat efficiency that has been achieved. Obviously as I have not been to this property but on the video walk around I have done many heat loss calculations on similar houses and cannot see how this installation will provide a 600% efficiency. The most I have achieved is 400-450. Please provide more info on the size of heat pump and total heat loss.PS you are not the UK's lending experts in renewables; somebody else is. I'm not that boastful!!
I have this crazy idea of mounting the air water heatpump INSIDE a glasshouse (170m3). Used only for heating I wonder what COP would that achieve! Also if it would actually work (air flow,/humidity wise). Do you think I could get close to 9 COP? Especially if I optimize the heating during the day (max solar insulation)
Is the open energy monitor still working?
Yea
The open energy monitor is asking for a username & password@@HeatGeek