Yahoo News How much installing a heat pump will actually cost you
Boris Johnson once joked that heat pumps were “10 grand a pop” – but he was slightly off the mark. For many households, the cost of replacing an old-style gas boiler is closer to £15,000, according to Nesta, a charity.
This cost can, for the time being, be mitigated by the Government’s boiler upgrade scheme, which offers households a £5,000 grant towards the installation of an air source heat pump, and £6,000 towards ground source units, although the latter are vastly more expensive.
Households are being encouraged to switch to these low-carbon alternatives, but how much do they really cost?
British homes are infinitely varied. The bill for upgrading a classic mid-terrace Victorian house or a 1980s-built flat will be wildly different.
Nesta collected data from previous works carried out by qualified engineers to produce a calculator which estimates the minimum, median and maximum costs to fit a property with a heat pump. This also includes the cost of replacing radiators – many of which are ill-suited to work with the pumps. It also takes into account regional variations.
According to the calculator, it would cost £13,200 to install a heat pump in a four-bed semi-detached house in Surrey, built before 1930. This is assuming square footage of around 2,000ft².
Data from previous works carried out by MCS engineers in the area shows costs can vary between £11,500 and £15,000 – although this does not include the £5,000 government rebate paid by the boiler upgrade scheme.
A detached four-bed in Yorkshire, also built before the 1930s, would cost between £11,600 and £15,200, assuming a floorplan of 1,700ft².
Costs are not much lower for newer properties, according to Nesta’s calculator. A four-bed bungalow in the South-West, for instance, would cost between £9,200 and £12,700 to fit with a heat pump – even if it was built after the 1980s.
The savings households can make by installing a heat pump depends on the type of boiler they are replacing, according to calculations by The Energy Savings Trust, a charity.
An average-sized, three-bedroom semi-detached home, with radiator upgrades as required, for example, would save £590 a year by swapping an old G-rated boiler for a heat pump, and £115 a year for a newer A-rated boiler.
Homes with oil boilers, however, stand to lose money by installing a heat pump, the EST estimated. According to the charity, a household replacing a newer A-rated oil boiler with a heat pump would lose £135 a year.
It comes amid warnings of an engineer shortage, which could put in jeopardy the Government’s plans to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.
The Energy and Utilities Alliance, a trade body, estimates almost three times as many installers than planned will be required if the Government is to meet its targets for rolling out electric heat pumps.
