Case studies

Renewable Heat Case study | John Henderson

We spoke with one of our customers John Henderson, who approached us because he was getting oil bills in excess of £3500 per year. He has a 5 bedroom house in a rural area with lots of land around the house, so we recommend that he fitted a ground source heat pump.

We caught up with John to see how he was getting on with his heat pump and what his experience was was Renewable heat.

John Henderson

Why did you decide to go for a ground source heat pump?

We bought the house with oil fired heating and decided right at the outset that we were going to change it and ground source was always our preferred option. We had the land and it seemed to make perfect sense.

What research did you do beforehand?

We check on the web just to see what was available, how efficient they were and did they do the job. So it was a no-brainer.

Has it done the job?

Yes, a few tweaks here and there, but it’s doing the job.

What sort of bills were you getting before?

Between £3500-£4000 per year

How about your bills now?

£250 per month for everything.

So when you got this heat pump, you also became eligible for RHI.  How much are your payments from RHI?

Just over £1000 every quarter. It made the whole thing worthwhile, without a doubt.

How did you find the experience of having a ground source heat pump fitted?

Fairly straight forward, no worse than changing the boiler to whatever else we wanted, be it Calor gas or whatever. It was fairly seamless. We had a lot of work going on at the time and it was all just done in one go.

How long did it take in total?

3 weeks including all of the ground works.

How much disruption did you have in the house during this process?

A week to 10 days. It was fairly seamless.

Did you have any fears before you started off?

Yes. Would it actually work? We were doing a retrofit so it was a bit into the unknown, but you came along to do all of your measurements and calculations and said it would work.

How do you compare the house now from oil to a ground source heat pump?

Night and day! We don’t have the heating off. We just run it and don’t have to worry about checking oil.

Was there any part of this process that you found difficult of complicated?

The renewable heat application could be difficult, but you just came and sat down with us and we went through it all, filled it in and it went through first time.

You recommended us to other people, could you talk a little about that?

We moved my wife parents to the house across the road and we decided that we were going to do exactly the same for their house – Renewable heat pump, equally seamless and they are perfectly happy and went with the online kit as well. Which means, they are in their 80’s so they now don’t have to worry about their heating.

So if anything happens to their heating, renewable heat get a notification straight away and we can phone you to say that there is a problem…

You phone and tell us, before we know.

How did you find the experience of working with Renewable Heat?

No problems what so ever. You said when you would come and do the initial assessment, you did your calculations, you then left us to think about making a decision. Once we had made a decision you gave us a date, you stuck to that date and it was finished in the timescale that you advised. We have no problem recommending renewable heat. Although… you did cost us a fortune in biscuits….

Any other comments or feedback on Renewable Heat?

Renewable heat have been first class. The follow-up service has been faultless. You contacted us to let us know that there was a new facility available that you could fit to our heat pump so that you could remotely access our heat pump and make sure everything was fine.

And how are you finding that?

It’s just another thing that we don’t need to think about!

About the author

Barry Sharp

I founded Renewable Heat in January 2015 with my business partner Richard Hailstones. I have worked in the Plumbing and Heating Engineer sector for more than 15 years. I later went on to specialise in the renewable energy market as it emerged and grew.

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