How much does a ground source heat pump cost?

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The decision as to whether to buy a ground source heat pump to supply your home with heat and hot water will be based on the compromise between the savings you will gain from the reduction in your energy bills in comparison to the initial set-up and installation costs. The financial cost is the main consideration, but if you are environmentally conscious, the reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted will also be of interest to you.

Ground Source Heat Pump Systems

Obviously the cost of a ground source heat pump system varies depending on the circumstances of your home. There are three main parts to a ground source heat pump system: the outdoor, underground coils/pipes, the heat pump itself and the heat distribution system inside the house. The outdoor costs will depend on the digging of trenches or boreholes for the installation of the coils or pipes. Horizontal trenches are cheaper than boreholes, but of course you need to own more land to have a horizontal trench than a vertical borehole. The length of the trench, or the depth of the borehole, will also depend on the amount of heat required to heat the house. For example, 10m of horizontal trench with a coiled ground loop, will provide about 1kW of heating load. The pump itself will also have to be sized to correspond to the size of the outdoor ground loop, but in general they are around the size of a large fridge. The cost of the heat pump and ground loop is estimated to be between £6,000-£13,000 for a typical 8-12kW system, although it is highly dependent on the exact circumstances of the installation, particularly the size of the house that needs to be heated.

The Distribution System

The above cost does not include the distribution system, which in itself could cost several thousand pounds. The most efficient form of heating for use with a ground source heat pump is an underfloor heating system as this works best with the relatively low temperature water supplied by the ground source heat pump (which is much cooler than that from a standard boiler). The large area over which the underfloor heating system acts means that the whole house can be heated from this relatively cool water as opposed the more common set-up of having much hotter, yet much smaller, radiators. However, underfloor heating can be very difficult and very expensive to install retrospectively in some houses (particularly older houses) and as such it may not be a viable option. In these cases, radiators will have to be used. These radiators should be oversized so that the area of hot water is maximised. In a newly built house, it is both easy and cost-effective to install underfloor heating into the house whilst it is under construction. This is the ideal heat distribution system for a ground source heat pump as it is the most efficient and will therefore save you the most money in running costs.

Further Numbers

To get a reasonable financial benefit from a ground source heat pump and the heat distribution system used in combination with it, the system needs to output much more heat than the energy required to run the electrical compressor in the heat pump. This ratio is called the coefficient of performance (CoP) and should be at least 3.5. As an example, if the CoP of your system was 4, it would mean that you were getting 4 units of heat for every 1 unit of electricity you were purchasing from the electricity supplier. The efficiency of the system as a whole will greatly depend on how well insulated your house is. Having good insulation will give you a much more efficient system that will save you money in the long term. Of course, if your house is not well insulated now, you will have to factor in the cost of purchasing and installing this insulation into the initial cost of the ground source heat pump system.

Estimates as to how much money (and carbon dioxide emissions) will be saved by the ground source heat pump vary greatly as they depend on the exact system and circumstances. In particular they depend on the type of fuel that is being replaced, as replacing an expensive energy source, such as electricity, with a ground source heat pump will save you more money than replacing a modern, efficient gas boiler. As a guideline, if you are replacing gas then you can expect to save between £190-£410 a year and reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 0-1.2 tonnes. Replacing oil will give you a saving of between £160-£750 a year and reduce your CO2 by between 540kg and 1.8 tonnes. Replacing electricity will lead to savings of £840-£1000 a year and a 6-7 tonne reduction in CO2 emissions. Finally, replacing solid fuel heating would save £350-£600 a year and 5.6-6.5 tonnes of CO2.

Those figures will give you some idea as to whether it is worth replacing your current heating system with a ground source heat pump as they give you an estimate of the number of years it will take before the system pays for itself in energy bill savings. You will notice that it takes many years for this to happen, so it is an important change that you must stay committed to. However, circumstances may change considerably in the intervening years and energy costs may increase massively, meaning the system pays for itself over a shorter period. It may also add some value to your house (as the people you sell the house to will get all the benefits of the system without any of the set-up cost), so it could be viewed as an investment. Finally, due to the environmental advantages of ground source heat pumps there are certain institutions (such as the Energy Saving Trust) that will give you grants (up to £1200) to help towards the costs of the system, meaning it doesn't cost you as much personally.

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