Frequently Asked Questions

The short answer to this is no, you don’t need a new or well insulated home for a heat pump to work, but it very much helps! A heat pump puts heat into your house through radiators or underfloor heating. As long as the heat pump has been designed to put enough heat into your house, it will work. Insulation, however, will reduce your heating bill and the amount of heat needed to keep your house warm so is a great long term investment and will mean you need a smaller heat pump.

Yes! Heat pumps can work in any house – providing the system design is right. The idea that they only work in certain houses may have been true more than a decade ago. Today, heat pumps are very different technology. As long as the heat pump system has been designed correctly to provide the amount of heat needed to keep you warm, a heat pump will work. A well designed heat pump can even save you money compared to an old gas boiler in an old, poorly insulated house.

In Bath we have a large variety of housing stock. From Georgian houses, Victorian Terraces, 1960s & 70s developments as well as a lot of newbuilds. This means that installation costs can vary widely. At Mysa Heating, we treat every project individually and tailor solutions to each property and your needs. In smaller projects, costs can be as little as £2000-£3000 where the existing hot water cylinder is retained, but more usually around £5000-£6000 with a new cylinder after the BUS grant is subtracted. For more complex projects in large houses with significant upgrades to achieve high efficiencies, costs can be significantly more.

Yes, absolutely! At Mysa Heating we take a comfort first approach to heating system design and balance this with high levels of efficiency. We take you through the design steps and decisions to make sure the system will keep you warm and comfortable all year round. To help do this we’ve studied how people perceive comfort and warmth in homes to make sure we get this right for every project.

A well designed, installed and commissioned heat pump will not cost a fortune to run. Often, they’ll cost less overall to run than an old gas boiler and even many modern ones.

An air source heat pump (ASHP) is a highly efficient heating system that literally pumps heat that is in the outside air into your home. This means that it moves heat rather than generating heat like a gas or oil boiler does. This means that the energy used by the heat pump is only the energy needed to extract and move the heat from the outside to the inside. This is why we can see as much as 6x the heat energy produced compared to the electrical energy used to run the pump – i.e. efficiencies of up to 600% with good system design.

Yes. Modern heat pumps are designed to operate effectively, even when outdoor temperatures drop well below zero degrees C. What is particular about the UK climate is that it is damp and the air holds lots of moisture. Due to how heat pumps work, they can often go into regular defrost cycles between about 0-5 degrees centigrade because of this moisture in the air – this needs to be considered when specifying the heat pump for an installation.

A modern condensing gas boiler burns fuel to create heat at roughly 90% efficiency. Often overlooked is that the overall efficiency of a gas boiler depends on the whole heating system – the controls used, the state of pipework, radiators and balancing. Because of the whole system effect, we often see modern boilers only achieving 80% or less efficiency. Heat pumps move heat rather than creating it and they can now achieve efficiencies of more than 500% (expressed as a Coefficient of Performance, or COP). This means lower carbon emissions and, with careful system design to get these efficiencies out of the heat pump, running costs that can compete with or beat gas — especially as the gas-to-electricity price gap narrows over time.

Heat pumps can be made to work in any home. Key factors are how much heat your house needs to keep warm, the size and type of heat emitters (radiators or underfloor heating), and available outdoor space for the unit. All these factors feed into an important cost/benefit assessment to make the system work for your needs and budget. We carry out a full home survey and heat loss assessment before recommending any system, so you get an honest view of what’s achievable at what price for your property.

Simple and straightforward installations can take as little as 2-4 days. More complex installations requiring pipework upgrades, new cylinders and large scale upgrades of radiators or underfloor heating can take much longer. We take a collaborative approach to design and installation to provide the right balance for you between time, cost, and performance.

Heat pumps are fundamentally different to gas or oil boilers and because they run at much lower temperatures, the heating system parameters are very different. While fossil fuel boilers can overcome some system deficiencies and also mask poor efficiency because of much lower fuel prices, heat pumps are much more sensitive to system characteristics and have tighter boundaries. If the heat pump system design is poor, then costs and impacts on comfort are much more significant.

Not always. Heat pumps work at lower flow temperatures than gas boilers, so existing radiators sometimes need to be upsized to deliver the required heat output. During our design process we assess your existing radiators to consider which may need replacing. We also run through different scenarios to give you an idea of how keeping existing radiators compares to upgrades from both a comfort and life-time costs perspective.

We currently work with Grant, Nibe, Stiebel Eltron, Panasonic, Vaillant, Viessmann and Ideal. We are technology-neutral, which means we select the most appropriate manufacturer and model for each project rather than pushing a single brand.

Bath and surrounding areas have a wide mix of buildings. At Mysa Heating, we treat every project individually, tailoring solutions to each property and your needs. In smaller projects, costs can be as little as £2000-£3000 where the existing hot water cylinder is retained, but more usually around £5000-£6000 with a new cylinder after the BUS grant is subtracted. For more complex projects in large houses with significant upgrades to achieve high efficiencies, costs can be significantly more.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) is a UK government grant that provides up to £7,500 off the installed cost of an eligible air source heat pump. As Mysa Heating is registered for the scheme, we handle the grant application and redemption on your behalf.

Most homes qualify for the BUS Grant and you will need a valid EPC (Energy Performance Certificate). We can advise you on eligibility during your initial survey but advise all our customers to check the Government Boiler Upgrade Scheme Website.

In many cases, yes — but it depends on your current heating system, how well the system is designed, your home’s insulation and airtightness levels, and also whether you are integrating this with solar and battery storage. Because heat pumps use electricity, they are sensitive to the electricity-to-gas price ratio. We provide honest running cost estimates as part of our design process so you can make an informed decision.