The environmental impact of a heat pump depends greatly on its efficiency.

Heat pumps are powered by grid electricity. Most of the UK grid supply is generated from fossil fuels or imported nuclear supplies. The key efficiency factor for a heat pump is its Coefficient of Performance (COP) averaged across a full year cycle. This is the Seasonal Performance Factor (SPF) and is the ratio of heating and hot water produced (in kWhs) against the amount of electricity required to run the system.

Our Whitbread Premier Inn project in Tamworth produces a peak COP of 6.25.

That means that for every 1kWh of electricity being used to run the pump, the system is producing 6.25kWhs of heating and hot water. The resulting SPF is also very high. This significantly reduces the emissions of the building, making the heat pump extremely environmentally friendly. What's more, the latent solar energy stored in the ground providing the heat source is fully sustainable because the system is correctly designed and installed so that we are never extracting more energy than nature is putting back.

That depends on the size of the property, what capacity heat pump is required and whether the property is new build and therefore, highly insulated, or older with higher heat losses.

As a guide, for a newly built four bedroom property with good insulation, an 11kW heat pump will need 300-600m of ground loops depending upon the soil type. 

A 1,000sqm period country house might require a 60kW heat pump and 2,000-3,000m of ground loops, again depending upon the soil type.

isoenergy rarely installs coils of collectors in the ground, called Slinkies, as we believe they risk over-extraction except in very specific circumstances.

Over-extraction will damage the long term efficiency of ground source heating system. We have frequently encountered slinky systems that permanently freeze the ground due to excessive extraction

The asnwer is simply No. Both Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs) and Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) can be installed into new builds, listed buildings, mansions, schools, churches, bungalows, in fact any type of property you can think of. As long as the installer understands the bespoke nature of every building, a viable renewable solution can be achieved.

isoenergy specialises in just such a service, and has challenged misconceptions about where a heat pump can be installed for over 5 years.

See our section on the Feed in Tariff for up to date information on how you can benefit by installing Solar PV panels.

Solar panels gain most heat / electricity facing due south and being pitched at 35 degrees. A survey or understanding of shading on the potential area is essential to ascertain whether or not a solar system is suitable. Shading reduces the the amount of hot water produced in solar thermal panels and greatly affects the efficiency of solar PV panels.

If there are 10 PV panels on one string, connected together, and one panel is hampered by shading, it will affect the entire string of panels. Isoenergy ensures this is avoided before we recommend a solar PV solution to a client.