At this time of year, the hardship of an Irish winter is the furthest thing from our minds. The evenings are long, the garden’s looking gorgeous, summer is here at last. And as a bonus – no heating bills for a few months!
For most people, these milder months are an opportunity to not think about the pressure and cost associated with heating our homes; to take a break from the boiler and the bills until it’s time to switch the heating back on in the autumn.
This, however, is an opportunity missed. Believe it or not, summer is a great time to start planning your next heating system. And if your current system relies on an expensive, inefficient oil or gas boiler, now’s the perfect moment to start thinking about installing a heat pump in your home – here’s why.
Boilers break down. Although most fossil fuel boilers have a lifespan of up to 15 years, after 10 years the risk of breakdown is hugely increased due to a combination of rust, corrosion and everyday use. If your boiler breaks down in summertime, the disruption will be fairly minimal – your heating is likely to be off anyway – but if it dies in the depths of winter, you’ve got an emergency on your hands.
So now that the pressure is temporarily off in terms of keeping your home and family warm, you have an opportunity to take a long, hard look at your boiler. Does it look good? Does it still operate at 100% Does it have plenty of life left in it? If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no’ then you have a decision to make about how you’re going to heat your home going forward – luckily, now is a good time to make that decision.
The other main reason why summer is a perfect opportunity to start planning for your next heating system is because these are the quiet months for the industry. Now is a good time to arrange a consultation with your local heat pump installer or One Stop Shop because as soon as the Irish heating season begins again, they are going to be much busier.
There’s no mystery about why heat pump installers are so sought-after. Ireland’s transition to renewable energy-based home heating systems has accelerated hugely in recent years, and the Government is continuing to incentivise homeowners to ditch their fossil fuel boilers in favour of clean, efficient, sustainable heat pumps.
Heat pumps for unrivalled energy efficiency
Heat pumps offer unrivalled efficiency – way more than oil or gas boilers – to deliver consistent heating and hot water using far less energy. They also use mostly renewable energy (outside air) making them the most sustainable way to heat your home. And imagine never receiving another oil or gas bill again? That’s what you get with a heat pump.
Installing a heat pump is also one of the most effective ways you can improve the energy performance (Building Energy Rating or BER) of your home, which in turn increases the value of your property. And here’s where that first consultation with an installer can be worth its weight in gold – finding out where you need to get to, and how to get there.
Of course, this all depends on where you’re starting from. Broadly speaking, there are two typical scenarios that see homeowners embarking on a heat pump journey and availing of the relevant SEAI grants to help fund the renovations.
The first scenario is for people whose homes do not need a huge amount of work for a heat pump to operate efficiently. These properties would have been built from 2007 onwards and have a BER B rating. Here, the homeowners would likely be looking at individual measures (e.g. wall/attic insulation and an air-to-water heat pump) and would go through their local contractor/installer to manage the work.
The other scenario typically concerns older homes that need a full package of energy upgrades or ‘deep’ retrofit to get up to the required BER rating. These measures could include a heat pump, wall/attic insulation, solar PV and new windows/doors, and would be managed through SEAI’s very successful One Stop Shop system.
Start with a technical assessment
Although the roadmaps are different, the starting point in both cases will be a detailed energy assessment of the building fabric of your home, which will identify where heat is being lost from the building. This assessment will also provide a list of energy upgrades needed to get your home to a minimum BER2 rating as well as an estimate of how much the work will cost.
Once you have that information, you’ll know exactly where your home stands in terms of energy performance. After that, it’s up to you to decide if you want to proceed with the upgrades that will future-proof the heating and hot water needs of your family home. Whatever you decide to do, now’s a good time to get started.
Make the most of the summer by locating your local installer and finding out if you are one of the 250,000 Irish households that is ‘heat pump-ready’.
Browse the Daikin range of heating and hot water solutions here.
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