The good news is the government is about to make grants of up to £5,000 for installing heat-pumps. This is a quick rule of thumb if you should be thinking of taking up their offer.

First of all, there are only a limited number of grants given out each year, so you have to be fast. These are some of the points you should consider before changing your heating system:

l Your existing boiler is over 10 years old or has come to the end of its working life. It is the old type of boiler and not a condensing boiler.

Things to bear in mind:

It may not save you any money or keep you warm enough unless your house has very good insulation standards, such as the new standards starting on 15 June 2022.

These are the other pointers to consider first –

Your building has cavity walls with insulation between, or the building has internal or external insulation retrofitted.                                                                                                                                      lYou have double or treble glazing with heat retaining coated glass, all with warm spacers.

Loft insulation of 300 mm thick.

Fully working draught proofing.

You already have a hot-water storage cylinder.                                                                                                                                           It would help if you had solar panels or get them installed at the same time.

Your ground floor is a solid insulated floor, built after 2005 which would normally have some insulation under the concrete, but may need to check.  If you have a suspender wooden ground-floors, which can be quite draughty, you may need to have them all taken up and put insulation under them, unless you have a big crawl gap under the floor. You can sometimes put a thin insulating board down over all your ground floor.

This also means all your doors have to be adjusted and sometimes changed. Both jobs are expensive and normally would have to be done with professional advice and help.

One thing not to do, don’t block your underfloor air vents, this may cause damp under the floor and may even raise the radon gas as it can’t get out, both are dangerous.

If you have suspended wooden ground floors, (even works with solid floors) you could try a good old trick and put down the thickest underlay and carpet you can buy, they would give you some measure of benefit, but not as good as full underfloor insulation; but a lot cheaper.

Make sure the biggest gaps in the floor are sealed first.

You may need to change your radiators for a larger radiator due to the cooler water system.                                                                                                                                            If you can’t tick off all these measurers first, it may not pay you to install heat-pumps just yet, until you have got a full survey of your house and found out if it will work well enough to keep you warm in the winter without having to turn on extra heating.

The sad fact is most older homes will not benefit very much from heat-pumps, unless a lot of remedial work has been done as described above. A well-insulated (eco) home with solar panels and heat-pumps, could reduce their energy bill by up to 80% , that’s a lot of money. There are some big variations depending on the type of building and how you use it.                                                                                                                                                 I hope that helps and make sure you take independent advice and not just the company you choose to do the work, this way you won’t get ‘sold to.’ This is a big fundamental step to take, and you can’t go back once installed.