Since April 2018, SEAI have been offering grants for installing heat pumps in homes.  Grants are no longer available for fossil fuel burning heating appliance such as oil and gas boilers.

As part of the heat pump grant application process a homeowner must have a Technical Assessment carried out on their home by a suitably qualified professional prior to applying for the HP Grant – The registered technical advisor.

Our Technical Advisor will provide a full specification report to detail if your home insulation levels are sufficient enough to be able to retain the heat from a heat pump effectively. If your house is not compatible with a heat pump the Technical Assessor will detail what additional upgrade works are required, along with an estimate of each insulation upgrade cost along with possible grants available to you.

If you already have your house insulated sufficiently, e.g. cavity walls pumped, new windows installed and attic insulated to 300mm you may be eligible to apply for the heat pump grant, but a Technical Advisor will still need to do a BER survey to prove the house is efficient enough to retain the heat for the heat pump. In some situations a current existing BER may suffice if it recent and no changes have been made since.

Our Technical Advisor will carry out a room by room survey on your home to ascertain the building fabric and ventilation heat loss. The building fabric heat loss is the heat lost through the building elements of the house, such as the floors, walls, windows and roofs. Ventilation losses include those from percentage of draught stripping, air permeability index, chimneys & flues, sheltered sides, draught lobby, vents & extracts. Default U-value figures can only be used for elements that have not received insulation upgrade works. This means that if you cannot prove insulation upgrade works have been carried out (with documentary evidence acceptable to SEAI), we cannot include it in the BER.

Our HP Tec Assessment includes:

• A current as is, BER with advisory report – if there is no current BER.
• Approx 1 hour sit down discussion after the survey to go through what is required and options available.
• Full specification report detailing upgrades required to make the house suitable for a HP.
• HP technical assessment  grant form filled out.
• Ongoing support by phone and email through any upgrades.

There is a €200 SEAI grant available towards this Technical Assessment.

A Final BER is required once all works are complete. – there is a €50 grant available on this – depending on other grant works undertaken.

All SEAI grants are payable at the end, once all works are complete.

Even if you decide not to go for the Heat Pump grant, but implement the recommendations in the specification report, you can be assured that your home will be economical to run and comfortable to live in.

At EcoEfficiency Ireland we are ready to assist you with the grant application process.

WHAT IS A HEAT PUMP?

A heat pump is a device that transfers heat energy from a source of heat to what is called a heat sink. Heat pumps move thermal energy in the opposite direction of spontaneous heat transfer, by absorbing heat from a cold space and releasing it to a warmer one.

Heat pumps are machines that extract heat from one place, upgrade it to a higher temperature and move it to another place. Heat pumps work by circulating refrigerant liquids between two heat exchanger’s with a compressor pump.

The most common everyday items that use heat pump technology are fridges and freezers. Warm air is extracted from inside these appliances and vented outward. Heat pumps are also used for home heating. They extract heat from a heat source but instead of releasing it into the air, like fridges and freezers, they put it into water that circulates through radiators or under-floor heating

In order for a dwelling to be suitable for a Heat Pump, the dwelling’s Heat Loss Indicator must be below 2W/km2.

HLI= (Fabric Heat Loss+Ventilation Heat Loss )/(Floor area of dwelling) [W/(K∙ m^2 )]