Lukewarm baths and low bills: how I learnt to love my heat pump

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What I’m about to say is controversial: I love my air-source heat pump.

It’s taken two years and no small amount of trial and error to reach this point, but I can finally say, with a certain degree of smugness, that it heats my four-bedroom detached, single-skin and glazed Grade II-listed cottage both efficiently and effectively.

In the past, I was consistently told that a heat pump would not work in an old house with little insulation. It will cost a fortune, they said. But I admit that I enjoy nothing better than to prove others wrong. And I also had little choice in the matter, being off the mains grid for gas and sewage in my very rural Hampshire village.

My cottage is warm (sometimes too warm!) and my energy bill (£175 a month, year round) is only marginally higher than that of a friend with a one-bedroom flat in a high-rise block.

While the average cost of installing a heat pump is still ridiculously high – the latest estimate from the Climate Change Committee is around £11,000 – running costs are not. My village is atop a chilly hill, and with no other fuel, my electricity consumption includes everything: lights, laptop, TV, radio and other all appliances, including an electric Aga for cooking that also sits on slumber 24/7 from October to May.

As the owner of a heat pump, I quickly learnt to ignore the critics and snarky comments from the odd neighbour, who chose instead to have an oil tank in their garden. The fact that my home is now toasty 24/7 signifies that I might have been right.

In fact, when setting the controls, I fought with my installer to run the pump at lower temperatures than they recommended for comfortable living (though still allowing the pump to work optimally). I grew up in a draughty, cold house and prefer putting on a jumper during the winter than walk around the house in a t-shirt at the expense of the environment.

But I don’t like being cold, either, and my cottage is still a lot warmer than most homes I visit.

It took me two winters to get to grips with running an air-source heat pump because I had to unlearn all previous heating habits – I’d only ever had a combi boiler before. Scared of “vampire devices”, I turn everything off at the wall and never leave my TV on standby.

The concept of a heat pump whirring constantly in my garden was very foreign, and sounded expensive, but it’s quite the opposite. Turning up the thermostat and expecting your home to be warm 10 minutes later won’t work well with a heat pump – and it will cost. Instead, they need to be “long and low” for the best efficiency.

My thermostats are set at 15C during the day and 17C at night, and due to the way the pump’s weather compensation settings work (I still don’t properly understand this, but they basically predict the weather and adjust themselves automatically), my heating is often always on.

Following advice, I insulated where I could. I’ve given up arguing with my council over getting planning permission for double glazing and opted for thick, heavy curtains that I draw at dusk. I tripled the insulation in my loft last summer, and during the renovation, I chose a special lime plaster with thermal insulation properties. I don’t know if these small things have made a difference but I hope so.

I do wonder whether a pump would heat a Victorian house with high ceilings quite as well as mine. My cottage has low ceilings and small rooms – two of the four bedrooms are small so it has less to heat up.

The biggest downfall for me is hot water. The heat pump just can’t match a combi boiler on this, despite my water being heated three times a day. After a cold day outside in the countryside, my bath is only ever half full and tepid. In the depths of winter, I feel like I can never really get warm.

There is no real piping hot water, although I do get perfectly nice showers. Another heat pump oddity is that the hot water and heating can’t run together, and hot water will always take precedence.

Another downside is that you need a PhD to work the thing. Neither technology nor information retention are my strong points. The company that installed my heat pump, Power Naturally, were and continue to be amazing, to the point that I am on first-name terms with the entire team.

There is a brilliantly supportive online community of heat pump owners, too. I’m a member of several Facebook groups where help is always at hand, whether discussing how to replace the batteries in thermostats or set our pumps to holiday mode.

My last comment on living with a heat pump is noise. I chose a quiet machine, but it still creates a whirring sound when working which can be for hours on end. My nearest neighbour is across the lane and there is a garden between us, so I’m unsure how I’d feel about installing one – or living next to one – if we were in closer quarters.

If I was in a terraced house it would be a nuisance, though there are clear guidelines that they must be 1m away from other properties and under a certain decibel threshold.

Mine is one of an estimated 300,000 dwellings (1pc of the UK’s 30.4 million homes) to have a heat pump. The Climate Change Committee recently told the Government more than 17 million heat pumps must be installed in the next 15 years if we are to hit current targets. I’m sure only a small percentage of those homes will be detached and in their own space.

But technology is improving all the time, and I love the fact that I’ve been ahead of the curve. Air-source heat pumps are always a talking point, and in the past four years, conversation has moved from being totally derisory to taking great interest.

So, armed with my now good working knowledge, I am trying to urge others to adopt these marvellous machines. There’s a reason why heat pump installations are booming even in cold countries like Norway and Sweden. Sure, they have a few quirks, but they work.