“We’ve had ours for 16 years, and I’m thrilled to bits with it. Me and my wife wouldn’t have anything else. We’d never go back to a gas boiler”

Laurie, a retired vicar, and his wife, Kathy, took the step of adopting a heat pump when they retired to Norfolk in 2008. They, like many others, were curious about better heating solutions and were drawn to the environmental benefits of heat pumps, as well as a way to keep their home reliably heated throughout the winter. Even now, this same heat pump is working well.

While they had heard good things about heat pumps, they wanted to put this to the test. They made the switch and became some of the first people in their village to use a heat pump. As luck would have it, their long-time plumber, Richard, had recently trained as a heat pump installer. Richard even planned to install one in his own home to see the results for himself and be able to give his customers reliable advice based on his own positive experience.

When Richard mentioned that he was going to install one himself, Laurie explained, “that’s what clinched it”. When Laurie heard about how heat pumps are used across Europe, he thought: “If Norway and Germany can heat their colder winters on heat pumps, why can’t we?”. Once the heat pump was installed, Laurie says, the work was done and he could forget about it: “You can more or less forget about it and let it just do its job”.

This was the first heat pump installed by Richard, who purchased his own at the same time. 16 years later, it’s still keeping Laurie and Kathy comfortably warm throughout the winter, reducing their energy usage and saving on household bills.