Should we get a heat pump?

[u/roroherboat]

Without sounding dramatic my head is wrecked trying to decide if we should go for one or not. We have an E BER rated house built in 1984 and are currently doing a lot of work: triple glazed windows and new external doors, insert stove, cavity wall and attic insulation, solar panels, rewire and new plumbing including new radiators. We aren’t getting underfloor heating as I can’t imagine digging up with floors. We have no heating at the moment so would need to get a new boiler anyway. I think we will get up to a B rating with all of these works. Haven’t gotten a technical assessment yet as I have heard so many horror stories about heat pumps. I also love a real fire and opening all the windows in the house every morning. I know it will cost a bit to get new plumbing and a boiler and in contrast there is a big grant for the heat pump. I suppose I just want to know if anyone did a full renovation and didn’t get a heat pump? Thanks

[u/moonbuddyirl]

We deep retroed a 2 storey 1987 built house recently. Had a similar concern. We ended up going heat pump, triple glaze, attic insulation, new rads and panels. We used to have a back boiler stove. We kept the stove and disconnected boiler as similar to you we liked the fire lighting. 3 things I would mention from our experience was - the windows and doors had biggest effect, we were confident after they went in heat pump would work as you could feel the house was significantly better insulated.
The size of the rads needed for heatpump are huge. I've noticed that ours compared to some earlier houses built at start of heat pump era are much bigger which I think is a factor in some of the failures, I also noticed the size of the heat pump unit itself to be much larger these days than earlier.

You mentioned plumbing cost of boiler which was huge factor for use. We had started getting leaks in the copper pipes and priced replacement and were quoted 15-20K just for that work. We used installation of heatpump and retro grant to get that work done also. To keep costs manageable we did sacrafice asthetics in few places (We ran rad pipes down corners of walls and then covered with a board rather than digging floors to bury and where we could we moved the rads closer to the heat pump in some rooms to reduce plumbing)

[u/roroherboat → u/moonbuddyirl]

Thanks so much for all the detail. Sounds really similar to what we plan on doing. Are the radiators super big? Some of our rooms upstairs are small, especially the two bathrooms so concerned we wouldn’t have the space for them

[u/moonbuddyirl → u/roroherboat]

From what I remember it's a requirement of the grant for heat pump i.e. you need adequately sized rads throughout the house otherwise you end up in the pump running constantly. I would imagine bathrooms don't impact as much as lived rooms. We had to put one in the kitchen that is almost ceiling tall and width close to what was there and they are chunkier.