Heat Pump Installation

How does the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme work?

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme gives households in England and Wales a £7,500 grant towards an air source heat pump replacing a fossil-fuel boiler. The installer applies for the grant and deducts it from your bill — you never handle the money — but the installation must be delivered under the required MCS certification scheme to qualify.

In practice: we survey the property, design the system and confirm eligibility — the headline requirements are that you own the property and the heat pump replaces a fossil-fuel system — then apply for the voucher on your behalf. The paperwork burden sits with us, not you.

Two honest notes. First, the grant covers air source heat pumps regardless of your current fuel, but the economics look strongest replacing oil, LPG or an elderly gas boiler. Second, scheme budgets and rules are set by government and do change — we'll confirm the current position at your survey rather than promising from a web page.

Is a heat pump right for a Victorian Surrey home?

Often yes, but not always, and not always yet. Victorian and Edwardian solid-wall houses — the classic stock in Surbiton, Kingston and Thames Ditton — lose heat faster than cavity-wall homes, so they need larger heat pumps, bigger radiators and sometimes insulation work first. A heat-loss survey gives you the real answer in numbers.

Solid walls aren't a dealbreaker: plenty of period homes run happily on heat pumps. But the heat loss drives everything downstream — the size and cost of the unit, the number of radiators that need upsizing, and the running cost every winter after. Where the survey shows a room losing heat faster than any sensible radiator can replace it at 45°C flow, the honest fix is insulation or secondary glazing first — loft and floor insulation are often the cheap wins; solid-wall insulation is a bigger decision we'll discuss straight.

We're a heating firm, not a heat-pump sales operation: if your house isn't ready, we'll say so, tell you what would make it ready and roughly what that costs, and offer a well-fitted boiler as the sensible bridge. A deferred heat pump done right beats a rushed one every time.

What does an air source heat pump cost after the grant?

After the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant, a typical air source heat pump installation in this part of Surrey costs £3,500–£7,500. The pre-grant price of £11,000–£15,000 covers the heat pump, a hot water cylinder, radiator upgrades, controls and the full system design and commissioning.

Where you land in the range depends on three things. System size: a well-insulated three-bed semi needs a smaller unit than a draughty five-bed detached. Radiator work: some homes need two radiators upsized, some need eight, and a few are better served by adding underfloor heating downstairs. Hot water: heat pumps need a hot water cylinder, so homes coming off a combi boiler add the cost of a cylinder and its pipework, while homes that already have one may only need it replaced with a heat-pump-ready unit.

Running costs are the question behind the question. A heat pump delivers roughly three units of heat per unit of electricity across the year when well designed — the SCOP — while a good gas boiler delivers a little under one unit of heat per unit of gas. Whether that saves money depends on the electricity-to-gas price ratio at the time, which is why we model your actual usage at the survey instead of promising savings we can't guarantee.

Will a heat pump actually keep my house warm?

Yes — a correctly designed heat pump keeps a home fully warm through a British winter, including the cold snaps. The failures you hear about come from undersized systems, radiators never upgraded for low flow temperatures, or surveys that never happened. Design is the whole game.

A heat pump heats differently rather than worse. Instead of a boiler's short, fierce blasts at 70°C, a heat pump runs long and gentle at 35–50°C, holding the house at a steady temperature rather than swinging between hot and cool. Most converts come to prefer it — the house feels evenly warm, the system is near-silent indoors, and there's no morning wait for the place to heat through. Modern units hold their output in sub-zero weather; they're standard equipment in countries far colder than Surrey.

The honest conditions: the radiators must be sized for the lower flow temperature — which is why upsizing several radiators is normal in a retrofit, and why we calculate it room by room rather than guessing. And the system must be commissioned properly, with weather compensation set up so the flow temperature tracks the outside conditions. Skip either and you get the cold-house stories; do both and the heat pump simply works, year after year.

Heat pump vs new gas boiler: the honest comparison

A heat pump wins on efficiency, carbon and the long term; a gas boiler wins on upfront simplicity and works in any house tomorrow. With the £7,500 grant, the fair comparison is a £3,500–£7,500 heat pump system against a £2,500–£4,000 boiler swap — closer than most people expect.

The case for the heat pump: three-ish units of heat per unit of electricity against a boiler's less-than-one per unit of gas, falling grid carbon every year, and insulation from whatever happens to gas prices over the 20-year life of the kit. The case for the boiler: lower upfront cost even after the grant in homes needing lots of radiator work, no disruption beyond a day or two, and running costs that stay competitive while the electricity-to-gas price ratio stays wide.

Our position, as a firm that installs both and is Gas Safe registered for all gas work: there is no universal answer, only your house, your bills and your plans. If you're staying ten years in an insulable house, the heat pump maths usually comes good. If you're selling in two, or the survey shows a fabric-first job that needs doing anyway, we'll say so. The retrofit assessment exists to replace opinion with numbers — yours included, ours included.