Heat pump lobbyists think new boiler ban is ‘unfair’ – Emma Gatten 9th August
No, I won’t replace my oil boiler with a heat pump – Jill Kirby – 9th August
The Conservatives’ crusade against oil boilers is alienating rural voters – letters 0 9th August
Oil boiler ban could be watered down – Emma Gatten 8th August
It will cost me £60,000 to replace my oil boiler with a heat pump – Tom Haynes 8th August
Tory revolt against ‘premature’ net zero ban on new oil boilers – Emma Gatten 7th August
Six articles in the space of three days. Three of them written by the same author. But do they have a point?
There is a clear link in their argument between heat pumps and oil boilers. I suspect that there is a further link between oil boilers and old rural homes, exactly the type of place that you might expect a Telegraph reader to live, they know their audience.
Oil boilers are used mainly where there isn’t a mains gas supply. They typically have large 1000+ litre kerosene tanks that need to be refilled by tankers – roughly every 6 months. The cost of this fuel rocketed throughout the energy crisis – going from about £500 to fill that a litre tank to over £1,000, it’s now back down to about £600. For a large house the numbers could be 3 times larger or more.
The Telegraph reader’s rural house may well have single glazing and poor insulation. Heat pumps work best in well insulated homes, the flow temperatures are lower, and it takes longer to raise the house temperature, they run best when on all the time, and in a drafty house they may struggle to get to a comfortable level. They also typically run best with large radiators or underfloor heating. The £60,000 number included £45k for a ground source heat pump, a very different solution to what most houses will need, and a further £15k for insulation and other improvements.
The 2030 deadline is a challenge, if your oil boiler fails in 2031, but you hadn’t planned to renovate your home, then that heat pump bill will come as a shock.
I switched from oil to a heat pump a few years ago. As you will see in the photo we can live comfortably when it’s very cold outside. The cost of conversion was about £10,000, and we got a grant of about £7,000 towards this (now reduced to £5k). The cost of electricity and oil has worked out to be roughly the same.
