Heat pump myths everyone should be wary of

The poor heat pump has received a bit of a bad reputation, and in my opinion, it’s a little unfounded. Depending on which headline you read, it’s either the obvious future of home heating or an expensive mistake that leaves you shivering through January.

For anyone weighing one up as part of a renovation, or simply when the old boiler is clearly on its way out, that mix of strong opinions probably isn’t helping you. Having written copy for a large heat pump manufacturer (not naming names) for the best part of 6 years, I like to think I know a decent bit about them. So with that in mind, I’ve come up with some of the myths that are most widely spread, against what the evidence actually shows, to help you make your decision.

 

Myth 1: They’re too expensive

This is absolutely the biggest myth I see all the time, and actually it’s the one that will immediately stop people from thinking about buying a heat pump.

It’s true that a heat pump does cost more upfront than a like-for-like boiler swap, but the headline price is not what you actually pay. In England, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme takes a flat £7,500 off the cost of an air source heat pump, and installations currently carry 0% VAT until the end of March 2027. Once both are accounted for, typical installed costs land somewhere around £6,500 to £10,500, rather than the eye-watering figures often thrown about.

The full picture, including what pushes your own quote up or down, is worth understanding before you rule anything out, and this detailed breakdown of heat pump costs in the UK sets it out clearly. The gap between a heat pump and a new boiler is far smaller than most people assume, and for plenty of households it has closed almost entirely.

 

Myth 2: They don’t work in cold weather

The idea that heat pumps give up when it gets cold is just wrong. They keep working well below freezing, which is exactly why they are the standard choice across Norway, Sweden and Finland, where winter makes a British cold snap look gentle. Norway has heat pumps in roughly two out of every three homes. The technology doesn’t switch off when it reaches 0 degrees outside, it just has to work harder, which a properly sized system is built to handle.

 

Myth 3: They don’t work in older or period homes

There is a persistent belief that heat pumps only suit new builds. In reality, plenty of Victorian and Edwardian houses, and much older properties, run perfectly well on one. It’s actually all about how the system is designed. An older home with solid walls loses more heat, so the system has to be sized around an accurate heat loss survey rather than a rough guess. Once you’ve got this understanding and you know where the heat is lost from your home, it can stay warm with a heat pump.

 

Myth 4: They’re noisy

Anyone picturing a jet engine bolted to the wall can relax. A modern air source heat pump runs at a low hum, closer to background conversation than to machinery, and most owners stop noticing it within a few weeks. There are even regulations around this, and under permitted development, the noise must not exceed 42 dB(A) measured at the nearest neighbour’s window, and that must be checked before anything is installed. Where a unit does turn out to be intrusive, it is almost always down to poor positioning rather than the technology.

 

Myth 5: They’re expensive to run

This one catches people out because electricity costs more per unit than gas. The part that gets missed is efficiency. A gas boiler is, at best, around 90% efficient, turning most of the fuel into heat. A heat pump delivers three to four units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses, because it moves warmth from the outside air rather than burning anything at all. This basically gives them an efficiency of 300% to 450%.

That efficiency largely cancels out the higher unit price, and on a heat-pump-friendly electricity tariff a well-designed system can cost the same or less to run than the gas boiler it replaced.

 

Myth 6: You have to rip the whole house apart

The fear of months of upheaval, floors up and every radiator torn out puts a lot of people off. HOWEVER, this isn’t generally necessary, and most existing radiators work fine with a heat pump, and where some do need upsizing it tends to be a handful rather than the lot. Yes, it would be wonderful to have underfloor heating throughout your entire house, but unless you’re planning a large renovation anyway, it’s probably not worth the mess and definitely isn’t a requirement for heat pumps. A typical installation takes a few days.

 

Heat pumps are not magic, and they are not a con. They are a mature, well-understood technology that works in cold weather and in older homes, runs quietly, and, once grants and efficiency are taken into account, costs far less to buy and to run than the myths suggest. If you’re intrigued about a heat pump and whether it could work for your house, I’d highly recommend that you contact a few UK companies about getting a quote.