Book your air conditioning installation with OVO

That's a very practical solution Noel. It reminded me of the solution for heating up a child's small paddling pool. Spread out one or more black plastic bin liners at the bottom of the pool first thing in the morning and by the afternoon you have quite warm water. We then move a large portable gazebo over the pool to keep them in the shade. Full sun is about 1kW per square metre.

Yes ! I did that with two school friends back in 1976 when camping - a washing up bowl of water left out in the sun ready for hair washing after a day swimming at the beach. Campsite was v basic, a field with a loo and a cold tap. 

One thing that makes A2A particularly interesting is that it does not necessarily have to replace everything at once. For some homes, using it for most space heating and cooling while keeping an existing boiler for hot water or the coldest days could be a much lower-cost transition.

The grant rules may favour a full conversion, but from a practical point of view the hybrid option could still make a lot of sense depending on the property and how much heating demand the A2A system can actually cover.

​@TimTom420  That's a point which is really worth making. An A2A system is cheap enough for you to ignore the BUS grant and have a hybrid system which is what I've had for the last two heating seasons and it has been very successful. The A2A cuts at least 85% of my gas use and it only comes on the few days that you actually need more heat or you need to even up the temperatures around the house.

You have the option of using gas for hot water tank heating but as it's only ~55% efficient (the 90%+ efficiency is for radiators only) then having an immersion heater is an option but you need the right tariff for that so that you don't pay too much of a premium for HW heating. I use Agile but EV tariffs can be good too if that is relevant.

If you are thinking of getting A2A then I hope it goes well for you. The aircon this year has been great at limiting temperatures to 23C in our house.

Peter