Heat pump cost after the £7,500 or £9,000 grant, and who qualifies

The heat pump cost after the grant is simply your quoted price minus £7,500, or £9,000 off the gas grid on oil or LPG, because the Boiler Upgrade Scheme is claimed by your installer and taken off before you pay anything. Nobody hands you a cheque and nobody reimburses you later. To see whether your home is likely to qualify, the heat pump grant checker takes six questions.

That surprises people often enough to be worth leading with. The rest of this covers who qualifies, what the grant does and does not cover, and what actually drives the number the grant comes off. What we fit is on the air source heat pumps page.

The figures, if that is all you came for

• The Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays £7,500 towards an air source heat pump in England and Wales (gov.uk).
• It rises to £9,000 until March 2027 where the property is heated by oil or LPG and has no mains gas connection.
• Ground source is also £7,500 and an air-to-air heat pump is £2,500, though that one cannot be claimed yet because no installer has been able to get certified for it. Biomass has its own rate and its own rural conditions.
• The installer applies for it, the voucher is issued in your name, and the money comes off the quote.
• The install must be commissioned within 120 days of the grant application.
• Heat pump installs are zero-rated for VAT until 31 March 2027, then the rate goes to 5% (HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6).

What is the Boiler Upgrade Scheme eligibility, exactly?

gov.uk sets out a short list, and most houses clear it.

You must own the property. That includes a business property, a second home and a house you rent out to tenants. You must be replacing a fossil fuel heating system, which gov.uk defines as oil, gas, electric or LPG.

You cannot get a grant for most new build properties, for social housing, or for a property that has already had government funding for a heat pump or biomass boiler. Self-builds do qualify if you or the original owner built it and it has never been owned by a business. One grant per property, no hybrid systems, and no grant for replacing a heating system that is already low carbon.

The old rule about clearing loft and cavity insulation recommendations first has gone, which used to stop a lot of older houses.

How does the money actually reach you?

Through the installer, and only through an MCS certified one. Ours is NAP-75287.

We apply on your behalf, the voucher is issued in your name, and the grant is deducted from your price so you pay the balance. There is a deadline attached: the heat pump has to be commissioned and installed within 120 days of the grant application, or it stops being eligible. That is one reason we do not apply until a job is properly scheduled.

If an installer asks you to pay the full amount and claim the grant back yourself, something is wrong. That is not how the scheme works.

What does a heat pump cost after the grant is taken off?

Our own installed prices, before the grant comes off:

| Property | Installed | After the £7,500 grant | |---|---|---| | Two or three-bed semi or terrace | between £12,000 and £17,000 | between £4,500 and £9,500 | | Three to six-bed | between £14,000 and £18,000 | between £6,500 and £10,500 | | Cascade, two units for a big house | from £23,000 | from £15,500 |

Those cover the heat pump, the cylinder, the radiator changes the design calls for, taking the old boiler out and all the paperwork. They are ranges rather than a single figure because the spread inside a tier is real, and the part that varies is not the heat pump.

Here is what moves a quote within its range, in rough order of how much.

The heat loss, which sets the size of the unit. A well-insulated three-bed semi and a solid-wall four-bed detached are different jobs with different kit.

The cylinder, and getting it in. A straightforward swap into an existing airing cupboard is cheap. Building a home for a cylinder where there has never been one, in a house with a combi, is not.

Radiator changes. Usually two or three on a normal semi. Occasionally none. Occasionally a lot, if somebody has fitted microbore pipework or every radiator was sized tight to a boiler flow temperature.

Pipework and the condensate run. Old microbore is the one that catches people out, because it limits flow and often has to be replaced back to the manifold.

Electrical work. A dedicated circuit, and sometimes a consumer unit, plus the network notification.

Access and the outdoor base. Where the unit goes, what it stands on, and how far the pipe run is.

Ask any installer to price those lines separately. A quote that is one number with no design behind it is a number somebody has guessed, and it will move once the work starts.

What does a heat pump cost for a 3 bed semi?

A three-bed semi is the commonest job we do and the most predictable one, which is why it is the shape of house most national offers advertise against.

The pattern is usually a mid-range monobloc, a cylinder in the old airing cupboard or the garage, two or three radiators changed, and the outdoor unit on the rear or side elevation where the MCS 020 a) noise assessment passes. That job, with the grant deducted, is the cheapest route into a heat pump there is.

What moves it away from the pattern is almost always the cylinder. If there is nowhere for one, the job changes shape completely, and no headline price applies to you.

Be careful with national headline offers. They are real prices for a well-insulated newer home on the advertised energy tariff. What the headline usually excludes is radiator changes, the cylinder, and sometimes the survey itself, which is exactly where the cost sits in an older semi. Bring us one and we will go through it line by line.

Will it cost more to run than gas?

Do this sum rather than trusting either side of the argument.

A well-designed heat pump returns three to four units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses across a year. That ratio is the seasonal efficiency, and it falls as the flow temperature rises, which is why radiator sizing matters more than the badge on the unit.

Now take your own bill. Divide your electricity unit rate by your gas unit rate. If that number is lower than the seasonal efficiency in your design, the heat pump is cheaper to run than the boiler. If it is higher, it is not, and a heat pump tariff or solar is what closes the gap.

That is the whole argument, and it is why the design matters more than the brand. A heat pump run at boiler flow temperatures to avoid changing three radiators will cost you money every winter for fifteen years.

What I would tell you to do first

Get the loft done. It is cheap, it shrinks the heat pump you need, and it cuts the running cost of whatever you have now in the meantime.

Then get a proper room-by-room heat loss survey, not a rule of thumb off the floor area. If somebody quotes you a heat pump over the phone, that is not a design, that is a sales call.

And if your gas boiler is two years old and working, there is no shame in waiting. The grant has been in place a while, and a heat pump fitted into a house that is ready for it beats one rushed into a house that is not.

How to actually claim it

Is my house suitable for a heat pump covers heat loss, radiators and the cylinder question, and how noisy is a heat pump covers siting and planning.

When you want a real number, Get a quote with your postcode and we will book the heat loss survey. The grant is deducted from what you see. Or ring 01709 278248.