The net zero village where heat pumps are the only option
One housebuilder leads the way in eco-savvy homes by ditching gas boilers.
New homes are popping up quickly on a 5.5-acre patch of land west of the River Severn, just outside Worcester. Developers won planning permission to put up 55 new high-end family homes in Hayfield Grove a year ago and are hoping to have the properties finished by early 2024. From the outside, the village will look much like any other new development: red-brick houses with dark roof tiles and groomed gardens. But the homes in Hallow, West Midlands, have one major difference to the majority of British houses: none are connected to the gas grid.
“If someone wanted a gas boiler [here], they couldn’t have it,” says Andy Morris, Hayfield Homes’ managing director. Instead, each property is being fitted out with air-source heat pumps – grey boxes whirring gently to the side of the house. These devices work like a refrigerator in reverse, absorbing heat from the ground and outside air to then pipe into home heating systems.
The devices make a soft whirring sound and the heat pumps in Hayfield Grove will be kitted out with acoustic feet to limit the impact of vibrations.
“The noise is minimal,” says Morris. “It’s one of those things you get used to. We don’t notice it at all and I don’t think a homeowner would either.”
Residents will be able to set the room temperature with thermostats like any other heating system.
“You can set it to a temperature to run constantly if you want – or a little bit higher in the evening and drop off at night,” says David Knight, senior site manager for Hayfield.
The devices at Hayfield Grove sit to the side of the house, larger or smaller depending on the size of the home: A five-bed home is heated with a ninekilowatt heat pump, falling to fourkilowatts for a two-bed.
Morris says: “We do a home demo with all our customers – but they just treat it as a gas central heating system.”
Hayfield’s new houses, which are expected to fetch up to £850,000, are a glimpse into a possible future for national home heating – and illustrate the challenges of getting there.
Heat pumps are touted as the future of home heating by the Government as it seeks to hit Britain’s net zero targets.
Yet a national rollout is flagging, amid uncertainty and apathy from many current homeowners.
Affordable homes in Hayfield’s new development also feature less heating infrastructure than full price new builds, raising the prospect of a two-tier energy system if and when heat pumps are fully rolled out.
Hayfield Homes is one of the first housebuilders in the country to go heat pump only, but others are starting to follow suit as regulations on carbon emissions toughen. “We wanted to stay ahead of standards,” says Morris. “I remember sitting in the boardroom in 2019 when we were making that decision. I had just come home and my daughter, who was nine, was saying, ‘What are you doing about the planet? Are you doing heat pumps?’ That generation is so aware.”
Gas-fired central heating systems proliferated in the 1970s and 1980s, and roughly 85pc of UK homes are connected to the gas grid. That will have to change if the UK is to hit its legally binding target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Home heating systems account for about 14pc of the UK’s annual emissions, which reached 427m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2021. Retrofitting homes with heat pumps, and other infrastructure needed to make them work, is costly and complicated. But ensuring new builds are green is a much easier task. Building standards coming into force from 2025 will push fossil fuels out of new homes. Both heat pumps and hydrogen, the cleanburning gas, are being considered as alternatives. Heat pumps have so far emerged as the front runner while work continues to test hydrogen’s feasibility.
Morris says: “My initial thoughts [on
‘Trust the system, it’s going to work. Our customers take on board what we say – leave it alone and use it like any other heating system’
hydrogen] would be that the infrastructure needs to be there for it. It’s not a no – but for now it’s air-source heat pumps for us.”
Solihull-based Hayfield Homes decided to stop installing gas boilers in 2019, trying to attract wealthy ecoconscious home-buyers. It had a turnover of around £150m in 2022 and has forged a path others are now joining. Redrow last month became the first major housebuilder to announce plans to ditch gas boilers for heat pumps in new detached homes.
The FTSE 250 company, which built 5,715 homes in the year to July 2022, said the move will help customers “reduce their costs and carbon footprint”. Heat pumps produce more heat than they use in electricity to run, which means they can, depending on the set-up and energy prices, lead to significant savings on energy bills.
But the transition away from natural gas is not necessarily easy. Heating systems moving from gas to electric means more demand for electricity and constraints on grid capacity are emerging as a stumbling block to new developments. Hayfield has had to fund the creation of new electricity substations to meet the high demand at its homes, which also have electric car charging points and electric ovens. Trials are under way in some areas to work out whether heat pumps can be used in a way that eases pressure on the grid, such as by running them outside of peak times or short randomised delays to avoid sudden surges. “There are challenges, but it’s part and parcel of a new development,” Morris says.
Heat pumps can also be more complicated to install, with extra features such as underfloor heating adding to build costs. Combining underfloor heating with pumps can help the system run more efficiently, lowering running costs, as the pump has to work less hard to warm a room.
“It makes the whole floor a radiator, which is a lot more efficient because you are heating up the fabric of the building,” says Knight, the site manager. “Everything is warmed up.”
However, underfloor heating ultimately adds to the build and maintenance costs. Hayfield is not installing underfloor heating at the 22 properties allocated for “affordable housing” in the new development. The company says this is down to the housing association offering the homes, which chooses the specifications based on its own considerations. Either way, it raises questions over whether lowerincome households are getting fair treatment in the national shift to net zero. Hayfield argues the impact is limited. Private homes on the development will have an energy efficiency rating of A, while the affordable homes will be B. Both are far higher than the national average of D.
The cost of installing heat pumps in existing British homes is already believed to be getting in the way of their take-up and is a serious barrier to those on lower incomes. Homeowners are charged between £7,000 and £13,000 for installation. The Government is offering £5,000 grants to install the devices in existing homes, but take-up of the scheme has been slow. Only 10,000 of 30,000 vouchers available in the first year of the scheme have been issued so far, with two months left to go. Peers last week accused the Government of failing to promote the scheme, while homeowners are also cautious about the unknown.
Morris says: “They want to make sure they have a home where they are not going to have to change anything.”
Hayfield has so far completed 11 developments with heat pumps only and says homeowners quickly get used to the system. “We need to educate – trust the system, it’s going to work,” says Morris. “Our customers take on board what we say – leave it alone and use it like any other heating system.”