OPINION
DON’T BLAME HEAT PUMPS
Construction procurement is dysfunctional and prevents clients from reaping the full benefi t of new technology such as air source heat pumps, says Janet Beckett
There has been a lot of recent negative press about ‘air source
heat pumps’ (ASHPs) with the ventilation heat recovery type being particularly featured in consumer rights programmes such as The One Show. As a CIBSE engineer I often say to
people that ‘we don’t really do houses’. However, as ASHPs have appeared as a ‘new’ technology I fi nd myself becoming increasingly involved with dwellings – mainly sorting out the enormous mess that someone else has left them in. There is of course nothing new
about ASHPs. I specifi ed my fi rst one around 27 years ago for the Duchess of Devonshire. I am sure she would have been thrilled with its energy saving properties, had she known it was there. I also remember endless lectures about the Carnot cycle and thinking… what, why? It took me a while to see the benefi ts. There is nothing wrong with the
basic science and technology behind an ASHP. However, if we wish to use these ‘new’ technologies effectively then there is a real problem with the way in which buildings are currently ‘designed’ and procured in the UK. I say ‘designed’ because of course the heating systems in houses do not
If we wish to use these ‘new’ technologies effectively then there is a real problem with the way buildings are currently ‘designed’ and procured in the UK
The principle behind air source heat pumps is sound
usually have any design input, or not as we (CIBSE engineers) would know it. In one case we looked at, the tenants
were cold, had insuffi cient hot water and their energy bills were huge. The story began where the project manager had issued a performance specifi cation for a design and build appointment
to the big main contractor. The latter shopped around for the cheapest M&E sub-contractor, who, despite having some training on ASHPs, didn’t fully understand how that unit worked in the context of the whole house heating, hot water and ventilation. It was also evident that the ASHP
18
CIBSE Journal August 2013
www.cibsejournal.com
SLAVO VALIGURSKY /
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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