Diagram of heat pump system

Why choose a heat pump?

In the context of ever rising energy costs and climate change, every household is in need of a heating technology that is future proof, cost effective and independant of fossil fuels.

Using nature's energy

Heat pumps make a significant contribution towards solving the problems associated with increasingly scarce and evermore expensive energy resources - supplying more energy than they consume by tapping into the freely available, inexhaustible solar energy stored in the earth, the ambient air or water and converting this for use in a heating system.

In fact up to 75% of the energy needed by the heating system is extracted from the environment, so the only energy required is electricity needed to drive the heat pump compressor.

Put another way, for every 1kWh of electricity used to run the heat pump, up to 4kW of useful heat is provided, giving the heat pump an efficiency of up to 400%.

Low running costs
Low ownership costs

The considerable contribution from renewable energy sources also helps to provide running cost savings over fossil fuelled heating systems and arguably more importantly, future proofs the system against energy price increases.

But fuel costs are only part of the story. Unlike gas and oil based systems, heat pumps require no costly regular maintenance or annual safety inspections. And because a heat pump has a reasonable life expectancy of 20 - 25 years, typically twice that of a boiler, the investments costs over the working life of the system are demonstrably lower.

Trusted technology

A heat pump heating system consists of 3 components: the heat source, the heat pump itself and a heat distribution and storage system.

Heat pumps are able to produce more energy than they consume by using the conventional refrigeration cycle to absorb heat from the environment and raise it to a suitable level for heating.

Key to diagram

  1. 75% of the energy is taken from the environment i.e. the air or ground and transferred to the heat pump
  2. 25% of the energy is sourced from the national grid in the normal way of supplying your electricity. This is used to operate the heat pump but with very low consumption.
  3. The energy from the air or ground is transferred to the refrigerant inside the heat pump's evaporator. This causes the temperature of the refrigerant to rise and change state from liquid to gas.
  4. The refrigerant gas is then compressed, using an electrically driven compressor, reducing its volume but causing its temperature to rise significantly.
  5. A heat exchanger (condenser) then extracts the heat energy from the hot refrigerant to heat water for central heating, underfloor heating or domestic hot water.
  6. After giving up its heat energy the refrigerant turns back into a liquid and is able to absorb energy from the environment, allowing the cycle to begin again.