Beyond the air-to-air heat pump headlines

UK – Graham Hendra, Heat Pump Development Officer (Europe) at Haier HVAC Solutions, remains unconvinced by the decision to extend the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to include air-to-air heat pumps.

It has been all over the news that air conditioning, or air-to-air heat pumps, are now eligible for a grant from the government. But look beyond the headlines and it’s not quite what it seems.

First there is no plan (and never has been a plan) to chuck cash at Mrs Miggins for having a 3kW wall mount in her bedroom. The grant of £2500 is designed to contribute towards, not pay for, an air conditioning/heating system.

Most people have pooh-poohed the idea, saying they can’t air condition a whole house for £2500. They are right. The government is not paying for your heating system, just like it won’t buy you a load of new radiators. It is contributing to the overall cost to help.

The whole scheme is not completely finalised and right now there are zero air conditioning units which are accredited to get the grant, so don’t panic.

This is what we do know:

• You, the installer, will have to be MCS accredited. If you are not it’s bloody hard work to get on board. MCS is a quality control system and it can take weeks of paperwork to get accredited.
• There are schemes where your supplier will sign off your installations, called umbrella schemes. Ask your supplier for details.
• You need to be F-gas registered to install the kit, obviously.
• You need a technical person to sign off your installations and they need Level 3 City & Guilds refrigeration (RACHP). You read that right… Level 3, NOT Level 2.
• The scheme only pays out if you remove the boiler and heat all the rooms with air conditioning only.
• You don’t get the dosh if you have a boiler or an air-to-water heat pump, or radiators or under floor heating, but you do if you use just air conditioning. Literally no one in the UK does this.
• The air conditioning will need to heat the whole house, not just a room or two.
• You can’t do a heat loss and bang one massive wall mount in the hallway and hope like hell it will heat the whole house, you animal.
• You can heat the water any way you like but you can’t use an air conditioning unit which also incorporates a hot water cylinder.
  

For me the most interesting bit is the qualification. Every two years in the UK I estimate that we train 200 refrigeration engineers. This is based on the numbers I trained at Eastleigh College and multiplying it by the number of places you can do this course. The basic course Level 1 and 2 takes two years.

Some go onto Level 3, but only a small fraction, in my experience less than 25% of the people doing Level 1 and 2 complete Level 3. So, I estimate we as a country churn out 30-50 engineers a year at Level 3. If anyone has better figures, please enlighten me. That means there are a tiny number of us with this qualification. 1000 at most in the UK who are active today. Now you could of course go and do the course yourself but that will take you three years. Good luck, Level 3 is bloody hard!

But this is just the state of play today, I’m sure it will evolve before its official launch in the summer, so keep your ear to the ground.

It’s all in all a terribly badly thought through scheme which many, me included, think will be taken up by precisely zero installers and consumers. But what do I know?