He's got heat meters fixed to the pipework. Room temperature monitors. And gadgets tracking how much electricity his solar panels are generating.

Heat pumps: The 'geeks' obsessing over their new heating systems

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2023-01-24 16:00:14

He's got heat meters fixed to the pipework. Room temperature monitors. And gadgets tracking how much electricity his solar panels are generating.

Mr Wall, who works in IT, has made a hobby out of monitoring his household energy consumption and honing his heat pump's performance in a dogged pursuit of maximum efficiency.

Builders are moving towards the technology as well. Redrow, which builds more than 5,000 homes in the UK a year, announced that it will fit heat pumps as standard in upcoming housing developments - the first UK builder to make that commitment.

But currently, fewer than 50,000 are fitted in British homes annually and the UK is bottom of the heat pump installation league table in Europe.

There is, however, an intrepid band of pioneers out there. Eager adopters who say the country is ready to go heat pump crazy - and that they can prove it with their own hard data. These are the heat pump geeks.

Mr Wall is one of a small number of enthusiasts who regularly publish data online about how their heat pumps are doing. "I'm putting myself out there to say, 'This stuff does work, here's the evidence,'" he says.

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