I had heatpumps.co.uk for 30 years. It has always been an unbiased (I hope!) source of information, and now its content has moved to here. Don’t worry — I’m still here!
I have now officially retired 
, but the website content will live on much as it always has. It still includes, the Heating Simulator, various calculators and a series of blogs.
Along with my book, Heat Pumps for the Home https://www.crowood.com/book/ the site has provided hype-free, general information for many years.
I also have a YouTube channel with a mixed collection of videos https://www.youtube.com/
It’s been an interesting journey since the early 1980s, when there were only a handful of heat pumps operating in the UK. Back then, as a keen environmentalist, I visited Europe and Scandinavia, where the heat pump industry was already established. That experience gave me enough tips for me to design, build and install a wide variety one-off systems.
I never imagined heat pumps would become as widespread as they are now. It seems that most people have at least heard of them, and many now actually have them! Things are developing apace, but with wildly differing accounts of effectiveness, it’s sometimes hard to know where we really stand.
Are there more happy people enjoying warm, affordable heating, or more people experiencing deep frustration with expensive-to-run, ineffective systems and no obvious route to their improvement?
(See: https://johncantor.uk/2021/10/)
Social media both puzzles and depresses me. Alongside genuinely helpful advice, there is a great deal of misleading information. Why people so readily trust these un-vetted voices confounds me. But for those learning, how are they supposed to tell what’s right and what’s wrong? I do feel for those who seem to be struggling with seemingly very hard-to-solve problems.
I’m trying not to focus on the negative here, but it’s hardly surprising that such rapid growth would bring problems while manufacturers, installers, and users all find their way. Whatever people may say, heat pumps are simply ‘more fussy’ than conventional heating systems because they favour working in low-output-temperature conditions. It’s a multi-layered topic — building types, user needs, site limitations, to name a few.
Operating the system remains a thorny issue. How many users have yet to achieve the “low and slow” conditions that heat pumps love? How many have well-designed systems that heat intermittently without compromising efficiency…….I don’t know.
My work with OpenEnergyMonitor and HeatPumpMonitor has been very enlightening. It showcases many excellent, well-designed, ‘well oiled’ installation, and displays what can be achieved, giving a benchmark for what to aim for.
Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t revealed many of the worst-performing systems — People who choose to add their heat pumps to the 700-plus accurately-monitored systems on the site are usually people who have selected a good system and understand how to run it.
All this can get quite technical, but let’s face it, most people want to stay warm with the trust that their energy bills will be reasonable, without having to delving into the technical. At present, many installations are quite complicated, and sitting down with a cuppa and the instruction is recommended.
From my observations, many of the recent incentives, like Eco4, have not exactly helped, often leaving overly-complicated controls, and no instructions on how to control things. I feel that there is a lot of work to be done to help novices understand their systems and know how to run them. Whilst I personally think AI is extremely bad news for the human race, but respect to the design, operation and control of heat pumps. ….bring it on!
The uniqueness of heat pumps are often overlooked, to sit in a room where you know that 75% of the warmth has come from thin air is quite remarkable. It’s a technology that is certainly not going away and I think we will do more and more of it in the future.