Heat Pump (a green option)

Heat Pump (a green option?).

Heat pumps are really quite good when it comes to the movement of heat around which means that it is great for saving fuel burning costs, however is this at the cost of the environment? Which begs the question:
Is the heat pump a green bit of kit?

The short answer is ‘No’. This is not the fault of the heat pumps themselves, it is more the fact that they operate with mains electricity. An Ilford Plumber knows how a heat pump operates. This means that the power taken from the national grid to power them is supplied from older coal, oil and gas fired power stations.
Not only are they burning fossil fuels but they burn them inefficiently so by the time it reaches you its efficiency has reduced by at least 20. This makes a carbon footprint of 17 which is huge! Being really efficient is all that a heat pump can do to get the carbon footprint down something that is comparable to natural gas. Should you, however, buy your electricity from a green supplier or even generate your own using photovoltaic solar panels (PV) heat pumps suddenly becomes a different beast. You can’t use the PV panels directly because they tend to work best in summer when the pump isn’t working, and they cant supply the starting load needed by the pump. However you can cover the costs of running a heat pump by selling your voltaic electricity back to the national grid, and you don’t need large amounts of PV panels to do this. If you manage this then not only are your heating costs zero, you can definitely hug a tree with a clear conscience. Ilford Plumbers are qualified professionals that can explain the use of and also install heat pumps.