Here you can find pretty much everything you need to know about heat pumps: how they work, things to consider, the effect on your energy consumption and the environmental impact for your home.
What are heat pumps, and how do they work?
Things you need to know before installing a heat pump.
A little bit more about us - and why we’re here.
Hopefully we've covered a lot of your questions below. If not, please just drop us an email and we’ll get back to you with a direct answer. If you’re the first to ask and we add your query here, we’ll send you some Thermly merch as a thank you!
All Thermly MCS-certified installers offer annual maintenance packages for their installations – and it’s a always requirement of the product warranty that they are regularly maintained in line with manufacturer’s recommendations. It is very rare that installers will offer maintenance packages for other installers’ installations, and if you are in that boat (and unable to get your system maintained by the original installer) you would be best off contacting the manufacturer of the system for further support. Please note we do not, and nor do our installers, offer maintenance for systems they have not themselves installed.
There are a couple of ways to go about this. There is the formal Retrofit Assessment route, which we would definitetly recommend if you’re after a full overview of the complete spectrum options available to you. This would include insulation measures like loft, cavity and solid wall insulation, through to replacement windows, upgrading heating systems and applying other renewables. It’ll typically cost you about £600, and you can find out more here: What is a PAS 2035 Retrofit Assessor? - Retrofit Academy. If, however, you’re just after a heat pump, solar panels or battery, then you can arrange a survey for these technologies through certified and trusted installers, and without the upfront cost.
That’s an easy one – but it does depend on your home. Head here, and in about 90 seconds you should have an answer personalised for your home: https://platform.thermly.co.uk/
Yes – that’s what Thermly is here for. Well, provided you want heat pumps, solar panels, batteries, or any combination thereof. We’re rapidly growing, so we’re not covering every area with every technology just yet, but press on and get a free and personalised estimate of the cost of these technologies for your home. These will be refined once you go forward to survey – at which point al of the real detail is worked out and a final quote provided.
We strongly recommend that when you install a heat pump, you should have it done by full certified installers – which should include Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) certification – who have lots of design and installation experience with the products they specify, are fully insured and are independently checked. Thermly’s network of installers have been through a robust process of assessment and checks to ensure they are competent, capable, local and can deliver the quality of installation you need. Once you’ve been through our quick assessment process, you will be able to see which of our installers is local to you, and then connect to them with confidence.
Well they could try, but you won’t get the government grant and there’s no guarantee it will work. We only engage local, fully Microgeneration Certification Scheme certified installers. We vet every installer on the Thermly platform and they need to demonstrate proven competency on the specific heat pump products they propose to install (i.e. manufacturer accreditation). We don’t let just anyone on the platform, just as you wouldn’t let anyone into your home.
Yes. Households can currently get a grant of £7,500 towards the cost (ch-ching!). The installer will apply for this for you if you decide to go ahead.
The Government wants to encourage homeowners to install a heat pump. Since April 2022 it has been offering a range of grants for an air source or ground source heat pump, and even better, these grants went up on 23rd October 2023. The current scheme is running until 2027. You can get one grant per property – and it’s currently worth £7,500. These grants help with the upfront cost of installing a low carbon heating system and encourage us all to make our homes more environmentally friendly.
In addition to the grant support, your local authority may offer additional low cost finance solutions, and over time we’ll be able to recommend and refer you to potential providers. If there are local council solutions in your area, we’ll sign post you to them when you go through the Thermly platform.
They should be no more expensive to maintain than a standard heating boiler – and as with standard boilers they should be serviced regularly.
It depends on your circumstances (is the sitting-on-the-fence politician’s answer). It’s a requirement of the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) that accredited installers don’t promise any particular cost saving. What does it depend on? Well, how long have you got? How much you paid. How well it’s installed. The efficiency and quality of the system itself. How you use it. How you used your previous system. What your previous system was and the fuel it used. How energy efficient your property is. And so on. We’d like to say – “yeah, it’ll save you £X grand per year” - but we can’t. If you’re doing this now it’s because you see the long term value in futureproofing your home, because it reduces your environmental impact and because fossil fuels are so passe. If the Government gets their heads round the problem, and decouples electricity pricing from gas pricing, you’re much more likely to be quids in too. But we’re not the Government, so we can’t promise that either.
Heat pumps operate ideally at lower temperatures – when they can be more efficient because they don’t work so hard. If your home is well insulated, and doesn’t lose heat easily, then it’s easier to maintain internal temperatures. This enables your heat pump to be smaller. It’s not impossible to whack a massive heat pump into something akin to a two storey tent, but we wouldn’t recommend it! The smaller the heat pump, the lower the installation cost, and the lower the ongoing running cost.
You should allow a few days, depending on whether you’re having radiators and pipework replaced.
An air source heat pump converts outside air into heat, whereas a ground source heat pump absorbs heat from the ground. The latter needs a pipe dug into the ground – either horizontally using coiled pipework in trenches, or vertically using pipework in a borehole, whereas the former needs a heat pump fitted outside the house. Watch our %%link%%video%%link%% to understand more about how an air source heat pump is installed.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and some people do like a big white box (we appreciate that’s probably not many). However there is a growing range of heat pumps and manufacturers are finally cottoning onto the visuals, with many more smarter looking external units coming onto the market.
As a minimum we would tend to recommend walls and loft are properly insulated before installing a heat pump. However, it may be the case that the costs of externally insulating a solid wall are prohibitive, in which case you’d need a bigger pump - and have to put up with the higher running costs. Our installers will talk the options through with you if you’re keen to progress.
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