With heat pumps becoming adopted as the realistic low carbon solution by more housebuilders as the Future Homes Standard looms, lower noise and sleeker aesthetics are coming to the fore as the goals to aim for. James Parker reports

The Future Homes Standard (FHS) 2025 may have been somewhat confusingly subsumed into the Government’s conjoined Future Homes and Buildings Standard, but one thing is absolutely clear, it’s full steam ahead for heat pumps to meet the provisions of the FHS.

The Department of Levelling Up, Housing & Communities has stopped short of explicitly pushing the whole housebuilding sector to adopt heat pumps, given the unlikeliness of being able to identify appropriately green sources of hydrogen by 2025 to put in adapted gas boilers or new hybrid options. However, the centre has certainly made very warm noises about heat pumps, given their ability to cheaply, greenly, and relatively easily produce space heating for homes using electricity alone; Government’s expressed aim is to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.

The Heat Pump Ready scheme is the embodiment of this, a £60m package of funding for manufacturers and the industry to boost innovation in developing heat pumps for UK properties. However by September, only 24 ‘innovation projects’ had received funding (of £15m in total), for projects such as making heat pumps cheaper and easier to install.

Alongside this, the £5K Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant for homeowners towards their heat pump installation is providing strong leverage for retrofits, but the picture for new build is somewhat murky when it comes to incentives for housebuilders; it seems to be more ‘stick’ than ‘carrot.’ 

The Government fudged a complete ban of gas boilers in its Heat and Buildings Strategy, which was expected to ban the traditional standard home heating solution from 2035. Instead it just expressed an ambition to phase out all fossil fuel heating by that point, which has led to head-scratching in the market. Housebuilders legally obliged to create homes which emit 31% fewer carbon emissions by 2025 are however turning to air source heat pumps as an obvious cost-effective solution for most homes, aware of the constraints they can still pose. 

Heat pumps in themselves may not be the eco heating panacea – they tend to produce a lower COP (Coefficient of Performance) at colder external temperatures, and having a large fan, they do emit a hum. Also although their size is being brought down all the time for domestic properties, it’s hard to see where many urban terraced homes will be able to place them, apart from somewhere on the roof, if they don’t want to compromise their limited back garden spaces. But they do appear to be the most realistic solution on offer currently, given the challenges of hydrogen.

MAKING LESS NOISE IN THE MARKET

Samsung recently launched a high temperature, low noise heat pump to try and make a major move to counter industry assumptions that the technology wouldn’t be able to supply the normal 65˚C-and-over water which radiators require in older UK homes. Heat pumps normally output between 40°C-60°C, says the firm, but its new EHS Mono HT Quiet (pictured on page 24) has been designed to “consistently provide up to 70°C for domestic heating purposes,” thereby providing a way forward for the retrofit challenge in particular. 

As well as higher temperature, the quieter (as low as 35 dB), and sleeker new arrival is being championed by the manufacturer’s ambassador, architect Charlie Luxton. Its slimline dark grey chassis should turn architects’ – and enlightened housebuilders’ – heads, as a low carbon option with its own aesthetic selling points.

Another compelling claim for the unit is that in the company’s own lab tests (despite one of their caveats being that “results may vary depending on the actual usage conditions”), it “reliably provided 100% heating performance even in weather as low as -25°C.” Less controversial is that it’s technologically as well as physically smart – the unit can be remotely controlled from a phone, allowing people to monitor energy usage daily, weekly and monthly at a glance.

PUMPING UP THE EFFICIENCY

Housebuilder and Developer spoke to Charlie Luxton at Samsung Eco Heating Systems’ London launch of its new quieter, high temperature heat pump HT Quiet. He told us that he believed that the move to heat pumps was driven by a wider set of forces than just the Future Homes Standard, and was simply a no brainer: “It’s the reality of global warming; it will make gas a thing of the past, until we get a viable, green hydrogen, and even hydrogen is a gas.”

The architect commented that in the short to medium term, heat pumps are “likely to do the vast majority of the heavy lifting,” because we won’t be able to insulate all of the UK’s 27 million existing homes, particularly with the UK having one of the “oldest, leakiest housing stocks in Europe.”

Luxton says that a decade ago, options like biomass were considered for mainstream housing upgrades and new builds, however they have proved “complicated.” He adds that at that point, heat pumps hadn’t seen the refinement which the market is now producing, and there were “quite a lot of installation issues, certainly with some ground source installations.” He says that the COP which air source heat pumps can now achieve year-round is now approaching that of their more expensive and complex ground source counterparts.

He believes that there is “an enormous amount to do” to encourage and drive developers, but that “strict legislation enforcement is definitely coming” to that end. He added that, with the Building Regulations bringing a “step change” on insulation and overheating, we “are definitely moving in the right direction.” 

When it comes to the cost of heat pumps (albeit they are cheaper than solutions like ground source), Luxton says that “we need to look more holistically at cost of upgrades – because if homeowners are actually investing a little bit more on the insulation, the heat demand will be significantly lower.” This will make the overall cost/benefit ratio more appealing, and he adds that energy prices are “not going back down to 14 pence per kilowatt hour; that age has gone.” 

“I think the whole conversation around installation costs is going to be a very different one in two years’ time. I think people will be more open .” Luxton says that the way consumers have begun to really interrogate their cars’ MPG performance will, thanks to the energy crisis, cross over to their homes. “By the end of this winter, people will know what their bills are.” 

FEELING THE HEAT

Achieving the numbers needed (and the Government’s hoped-for target of 600,000 heat pump installations by 2028 seems incredibly daunting), means not just manufacturers having the right product, but installers able and willing to cover the ground. Luxton says that heat pump technology is not the problem – achieving the efficiencies needed comes down to correct specification, installation, and consumer use. “It’s about educating people; you can’t just whack on a heat pump and turn it off; you will lose efficiency – the best thing is slightly lower flow temperatures; it’s like flying a plane gently rather than erratically.” He adds: “There has to be an education process of the consumers.

Luxton believes that “there are good installers, but we need to roll that out.” And by that he means installations on a “national, industrialised scale.” This is not something we have seen in retrofit, never mind new build, on this scale, and it will require a much more concerted effort from government, working alongside housebuilders, installers, and manufacturers. 

The mythical national retrofit strategy needs to happen now. Charlie Luxton suggests that direct intervention is needed to up the industry’s game now to tackle the scope of the energy efficiency improvements needed – in a timeframe of unprecedented shortness. He concludes; “Everyone is moving in the right direction, we just need to stick a rocket up everyone’s behind. Because this problem is vast, and needs a lot of work.”