An Air Source Heat Pump Installation Like You’ve Never Seen Before (UK Case Study)

In this video we film an Air Source Heat Pump Installation like you’ve never seen before…

Come with us behind the scenes to a Hybrid Heat Pump install where we transform the efficiency of this home up to 160% from around 40%.

We met with Allen Hart to take him through the installation process and discuss the many benefits and capabilities of an Alpha Hybrid Heat Pump Boiler System.

The hybrid heat pump offers the efficiency of a heat pump with the reliability of a gas boiler. Watch the video to find out more…

#airsourceheatpump #heatpump #efficiency #installation

So welcome back to another video and today we’ve traveled down to London to come and film The install was certainly the last day of an install of a hybrid heat pump so this is a gas boiler combined with a small 4 kilowatt heat pump working together to bring around

160% efficiency to this property now in this home here we’ve actually removed a floor standing gas regular boiler it was in ideal Mexico they’re about 40% efficient so the efficiency of this property is going to be transformed let’s go inside and take a look so this was the location of the old

Floor standing boiler it was sighted just there and now we’ve installed this gas combie boiler this is the ech 33h so this is the one that works with the hybrid system we’re going to have a vertical flu going through the same place where the old flu went and as you

Can see all the pipe work here has been replaced and this builer is now cited and ready for its flu we’ve also repipe the entire property so because this is going to be on a hybrid heat pump we’ve had to improve the flow of the um essential heating water and also the

System because it was a really old system it wasn’t going to be suitable for this new hybrid so what we’ve done is we’ve repiped all the cir throughout the property repiped all the radiators and we’ve even replaced all the radiators in the property as well

So why have you gone for an SOS heat pump on this or a hybrid heat pump cuz this is not this is not a normal heatable job no it’s not a normal heatable job we do do the hybrid systems online so you can actually buy one of

These hybrid heat pumps on the website what we’ve done here is this property is on the edge of London well it’s in London it’s in wam Stone and it’s solidated construction it’s got wooden frames the client had a really old inefficient boiler choices the client had was was replace that for a high

Efficiency gas comi but the client wanted to go a bit further and just reduce his dependency on gas now we did a survey and we looked at a heat pump wasn’t going to be suitable without significant expenditure throughout the property even with the government’s Grant coming into it insallation new

Windows maybe floow installation new windows roof insallation probably even internal wall insallation it’s a solid brick construction and it’s got solid floors in the ground that’s not just the cost it’s actually the disruption of the house I’ve actually done that at my house so I understand putting insulation

On the inside of your property is quite um yeah takes up a lot of time and it’s very intrusive in your property so what we’re not saying here is that heat pumps aren’t suitable for the UK’s housing stock what we’re saying is there are individual cases where high efficiency

Gas comi boilers are a good choice if you and then the next step up from that would be a hybrid system if you can’t have a full air source heat pump then installing one of these hybrid systems reduces your gas dependency and changes that system efficiency by up to about

160% so it’s just different solutions for different customers yeah different solutions for different customers and it’s tackling the problem of net zero this is a transitional product so do you want to tip me around and show me the installation yeah let’s go and check it

Out so we’ve got a berer in here so this is just a is this just a standard comie boiler then this is just a standard Combi boiler yeah so essentially it’s a 33 k what HB so it’s the hybrid heat pump boiler it’s a Combi boiler so it’s about

93% efficient on its own it’s going to do all the hot water in the property it’s also going to support the the air source heat pump to be the most efficient setting so it guarantees to run on the cheapest setting so why why would you just not put a standard com

Boiler in so a standard com boiler would work absolutely fine in the property and that’s a choice for the majority of consumer consumers for a consumer who’s looking to do their bit so help towards net zero reduce their dependency on gas the hybrid unit works really well

Without the expense or the intrusion of having a full s4c pump right then let’s go and have a look at Su system yeah yeah so any of the pipe work that’s microbore from the old system that’s coming out because it’s not going to work with the hybrid system so all the

Cirs and all the radiator tails are being replaced for propriate yeah so I noticed upstairs there’s loads of put loads of new copper in so this system is full Copper there’s no plastic pipes out in this no plastic this is real high-end install yes this is a bit

Of a project for heatable as well so the reality of this install is that we are data collecting at the same time here so we want to know how efficient is this system going to be in this customer’s home now this for us is above and beyond

What we would normally do in a system um because first of all we wouldn’t have attached a hybrid to it if we didn’t think if it if it was going to be it wasn’t going to work properly we’ve had to upgrade it but heatable has actually

Invested some money into this job to get the data and further understand how these products can work so I can see here this is where the old rator were yeah this is the old radiat and again this is the old microball pip work that’s all been removed so there was one Radiator in

This room so this would have been quite small actually would it for this room small radiator yeah now what we’ve done is we’ve we’re replacing all the radiators in the property and first of all people are going to look at these and think why are they not a high efficiency convector radiator well

There’s two reasons one of them is what we’ve done is we’ve increased all of the sizes of the radiators throughout the property and in this instance and upstairs we’re going to take a look in a minute we’ve actually installed three radiators as oppos to one the reason they’re not a white stainless steel

Press Conor is the client is ultimately paying for this job and the client has specified he wants these radiators so what we’ve done is sized them in a manner to get the effic icy for the system because this is another reality around heat pumps and going green look

At this property it’s very well finished it’s a stunning home inside the client doesn’t want white press steel radiators we’ve provided a midg ground solution here for him to so in an idea World you’d have big massive triple radiators on here and we’d get the lower the lowest flow temperature possible yes and

That would give you more efficiency with the system but again this is about being real know being real and being practical about these Solutions and this I think is a good compromise here’s some more examples of realities around being consider I’m working around problems when you’re installing these high

Efficiency Technologies as you can see here you’ve got very patined single glazing it’s not very energy efficient but it gives the house the look the client wants they have installed some secondary glaze in and these are the new radiators that are going on as you can

See all the PIP work is all brand new so we’re going to get we’re keeping the look we’re bringing in the efficiency and the client is happy and that’s the main and like you say it’s not all about you’ve got to please the customer the customer wants what they want and there

So if they want a fancy radiator they want a fancy radiator yeah 100% yeah so what we’ve done is tried to make them a size it’s going to give the output that we need in the constraints that we’ve got and that is the solution that we’ve come

To so we talked earlier about this property being a solid brick construction well if you’re interested to find out the construction of your home’s walls and you can do that pretty easily by taking a quick look at them now if you see these bricks here these are stretches that’s the wide part of

The brick if they’re throughout your whole construction of your wall then you likely got a cavity if you don’t have stretches throughout and you’ve got these featuring regularly these are headers this is the end of the brick then this denotes that you’ve got a solid brick construction Wall I’m having to be up here cuz obviously the guys are working down below we don’t want to get in their way but we’ve actually got the airs Source heat pump onto the roof now the guys have got the flow and return um coming up from the

Combi boiler so they’re going to go into the back of this unit we’re just mounting it to the feet I’ve ordered the wrong feet and didn’t Supply the bolts so they’re having to use their own we’re going to get that sorted a minute we’ve got Dan here from Alf he just arrived as

Well so he’s going to run us over how this unit Works yeah you’re right all right so Dan’s joined us now from alpha the guys have got the heat pump onto the roof they’re just connecting up the flow and return for that and we thought we’d just take the opportunity to cover off how this system works and also I’m we not

Prepped you on this Alan asked us before why we’ve gone for a hybrid heat pump on this property okay all right good question and this is your project at Alpha mhm and um this is a solid brick wooden window it’s in an area I think it’s like a it’s not

Conservation but there’s restrictive covenants on what your house can and can’t look like client wanted to upgrade their system they had a floor stand in idal Mexico right okay 10 mil micr mhm um and wanted to go green where possible and get some efficiency reduce their dependence on gas so we’ve had some

Questions saying why didn’t we fit a full heat pump yes I mean it’s the obvious answer is cost there isn’t it so moving with an ech hybrid from a floor standing boiler we’re leaping we’re Leaps and Bounds ahead in technology um to put a full heat pump in this property the level of

Insulation upgrades and stuff as well I think we looked around it outside external wall insulation is pretty much off the cards isn’t it with the intricate details of the building um there’s coing inside there’s all sort of wood paneling everywhere so you got to go if you’re going to go internal

Insulation you can’t really do it um so it does just come down to cost and I think we were talking earlier on Alan was asking some questions around you know could you put a heat pump in this and and the answer is you probably could

Um but you’d be spending a lot of money and making a lot of cosmetic changes to the property so what we’ve done is put an ech hybrid in we’ve repiped it which is all the noise in the background at the moment because it was on 10 mil so

We’ve sort of made the best effort we can where we’ve had to compromise a little bit is the client specified his own radiators um and they’re a cast not a cast they’re a steel classic look sort of radiator look radiator they’re not the ideal one we would pick in terms of

Efficiency but at the end of the day it’s got to be sympathetic to the property and they’ll still function yeah yeah thanks thanks to the controller really thanks to this and that’s what brings on to this now so just dead brief cuz I’m some people might already

Watched this it might be the first time they’ve heard about hybrid how does the hybrid work so real simple it’s a it’s a heat pump and a boiler has the ability to work together but the clever bit is inside the controller so we input our gas and electricity prices so whatever

The customer is currently paying for their gas and electricity prices goes into that little controller then every time we ask that controller to call for heat it simply looks at outdoor temperature what flow temperature it needs to achieve on the on the weather comp and then which product is cheaper

To run at that moment in time and then they work in tandem so the air source heat pump will do the heating of the property but when it’s required the boiler will do the heavy lifting yeah that’s it so and the air source doesn’t do the hot water no so the boiler you

Still have a comie boiler comie boiler still does 100% of your hot water yeah so it’s your instantaneous hot water you don’t have to worry about storing it and on and off times and things like that um and then what the heat pump will do is when it’s milder

Temperature probably like today is perfect it’s probably like 14 15° yeah that little heat pump will probably run 100% of the heating it won’t need the backup of the boiler right okay and if the temperature dropped yeah so what might happen is the heat pump still might be cheaper to

Run what our controller does is every 20 minutes it checks am I raising temperature is my low temperature raising and if for whatever reason it’s not it will bring the boiler on us back up so we’re still in we’re in hybrid mode we’re still saving energy against

Having a boiler on its own right okay and in the worst case scenario is it was absolutely freezing the heat pump could never do it the boiler kicks in and you still got heat in youry yeah yeah so and and the average position over a year I

Can’t remember the exact stat was it about 60% less dependency on the space heating for gas yeah yeah so on on an average sort of two three bedroom house this probably being more towards the more uninsulated end because of the single glaze Windows we’re looking

Around 50% of the Year 50 to 60% of the year the heat pump will do 100% of the demand W this is pretty impressive isn’t it so what the client’s going to get here is a really really efficient system there’s going to be some green offset go

Some some credentials going in there for the fact that he’s not fully on gas he’s got a bit of independency away from gas that’s it and it’s almost like a very transitional product isn’t it because in 5 10 years time if the client decides he wants to change these Windows he wants

To do some insulation then he can sort of start moving to the heat pump what we’ve done here for them is we’ve piped it up in such a fashion that that would be pretty simple to do but right now today this client had a 40% efficient

Boiler is now going to get up to potentially 160% isn’t he on the right conditions on the right day so massive saving um Allan’s we go the heat pumps getting installed now we’re going to connect it up um and then hopefully by the end of the day we’ll have the

Heating and hot water back on with the the heat pump running the guys have got a bit more work to do to get us there but we’ll catch up in a bit okay so we’re on the roof this this is the hybrid unit it’s got its feet mounted on

It and it’s going to go against this wall here George is just doing the pipe work and insulating that now so we’ve brought the floor and return up um so the boow is just below us here um all that going to get boxed in and insulated

Later on but this is just the unit I wanted to cover it off dead quick um what size heat pump is this output size so it’s a 4 Kow heat pump output input is 2.7 the most it can draw from the grid is 2.3 2.3 so 2.3 KW is about 12

Amps is it it’s 10.3 amps near near go div by 250 yeah um so low electrical draw mhm but has got an efficiency rate in what the cop rating on this so the the seasonal coefficient performance is 4.14 which is 4 14% mhm so for every one

You put in you get four back out mhm yeah Okay cool so 2.3 in four kilowatt out and then this is what’s going to do the bulk of the like we said before it’s going to do all the cycling for the for the heat in the property bu does the hot

Water and it’s just connected on these two insulated flexes here that’s it they’ll go in and then does it it’s got a weather sensor in this as well yes this little tiny wire here on the back just sticks out the back it’s just our weather compensation probe that’s just

Reading the outside temperature times so as standard this comes fully weather comped mhm and it will read the external air temperature the internal temperature yeah and then the smart Tech controller that’s what’s making the decision on use this much from the boiler use this much

From the heat pump or heat pump only or boiler only yeah yeah so to not get too technical your boiler has efficiency of roughly 90% so if that’s running on gas that’s at 10 P per Kow hour this heat pump needs to be roughly over 300%

Efficient to make it viable to use the heat pump because of the cost of electric cuz it’s three times as much you got it so simply our controller is looking it can the heat pump beat the gas boiler every time we call for heat so and and you guarantee it’s always

Going to be on the most efficient setting that’s it yeah that logic is in the controller so you can’t you can’t override it cool and then how noisy are these you you won’t even hear it really yeah and it’s it falls under peral permitted development right so it’s just

Got to be it 2 m the window yeah so because we’ve got a barrier here and it’s not visible the the distance is 3 m right okay fantastic you got plenty of space got plenty of space so super quiet they’re really basic they don’t really need servicing just cleaning out yeah so

No servicing like you would on a gas boiler where you’ve got analyzers and checks to do like that but yeah just the general clean and maintenance of the unit really and do you need to put glycol in these no so we you you can put glycol in it’s an option for the

Installer however we do Supply freeze valve that’s that’s fitted inside the heat pump at the right correct position in and that tends to be what most installers like to go for the issue if you’ve got a heat pump that needs glycol is if you ever drains it down and

Doesn’t put it back in it freeze expands first that is that is a problem yeah so this is just straightforward inhibitor and usual water yeah fantastic no problems at all so we’re going to get this installed today get it set up um we’ve got to shoot off now so we’re not

Actually going to be here for the the end results we got to get back to Warrington but George has kindly offered to take over the camera skills with his iPhone and send us some footage and we’ll do a voice over once it’s all done and Settled A A