An Air Sourced Heat Pump in use
Now having had practical usage of our ASHP (Air Sourced Heat Pump) I thought it might be a good idea to update the story with a look at how it has performed over the months, including the start of the current winter.
After the installĀ our heating needs have been well catered for. It is important to understand that a heat pump does not operate like a gas boiler. The āinstantā heat does not happen in the same way and therefore it is suggested that any temperature set-back is relatively small. We have a single temperature zone set at 20 deg C throughout the property and set-back to 19 degrees overnight. What this means is that the heat pump never needs to suddenly reheat the whole house by several degrees and in fact, the comfort level in the property is higher than previously experienced.
What does have to be taken into account is that the heat pump can either heat the home or heat a hot water tank and therefore it is important to time the switch over to provide need for both heating and hot water usage. We have learned and adjusted this during the past 10 months although, it is possible that we will use a different schedule over winter months so as to minimise impact to heat needs early on winter mornings.
As Iāve mentioned elsewhere, I do monitor the home with a system called Home Assistant giving me a single point of access to temperatures, power usage of different appliances, water usage, solar and battery feeds along with warning alerts for various potential problems.
We added the heat pump to significantly reduce our emissions from gas usage (reduction of 96% achieved) and from reading the experience of others, we expected that the heat pump would offer an improved level of comfort for the family. This has been very successful but at what cost?
While we do not yet have a full year of bills using the heat pump, we are now into winter usage and our bills have reduced compared to the previous year. It is difficult to directly compare because there will be temperature differences as well as our usage but certainly our bills are less while our unit rate for electricity has increased (more on this to follow after a full year). If I simply look at the recent cold spell, our bill for December-January (we are billed 8th to 7th each month) is less than at the same time last year.
There are several considerations to take into account:-
ā¢The difference in how the ASHP works compared to a gas boiler
ā¢Settings required for your heating schedule being different to ānormalā
ā¢Hot water heating being not āon demandā if previously using a combi boiler
ā¢How solar and home battery storage helps even more with an ASHP
At least, there are more points of knowledge now out there to guide the way but certainly, our experience using the heat pump has been very good and beneficial to our comfort as well as doing a little to reduce our part of damaging carbon emissions.
