The Graham Hendra Awards 2025

Welcome to the 4th annual Graham Hendra awards, a cynical and hopefully light-hearted view of the heat pump industry over the last 12 months. Don't worry if you didn't win, there are no real prizes, just the glory of winning.

Nicest person in heat pumps Clayton Browne

Clayton runs @EDF heat pumps and the HPIN - The Heat Pump Installer Network We first met in person at InstallerSHOW in the Summer. Hes a really nice bloke, happy to chat to anyone and a passionate fan of heat pumpery. He also invited me to EDF HQ in Clacton, a very impressive set up, well worth a visit. Great to meet you Clayton and see you again at installer in the Summer.

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Tosser of the year (for once I'm actually struggling with this one) you will have to decide if this is because the field is so big, or small. But this year I'm trying to be nice.

Best after care / service

There is one stand out winner here, Ideal Heating. These guys are setting the standard in after-care, tech support, training etc in our industry. If you want a master class in how to look after your customers then get in touch with these guys, or go and see what they are doing. Its a team effort, but for me Phil Scrafton, Andrew Johnson and Fergal O'Driscoll have done everything possible to look after me as a customer, really well deserved guys. Really impressive set up. And the heat pumps are very good too, they are sooooo easy to install. Even I managed it .

Best thing to add to your heat pump, to make it better

In 2024 the trend in heat pumps has been to remove all control and run the heating open, i.e. all the rooms heated at the same time in the hope that they all achieve the same room temperature. Just like we did in the 1970s before TRVs were a thing.

Recently we have seen the introduction of technology that can report back to the heater (boiler or heat pump) what's actually going on at every radiator and actively modify the way the heating system runs in real time. Adia, and COP Angel Ltd are taking data from the rads and making the whole heating system work perfectly on a room by room basis.

In 2025 we will see the return of independent room temperature control, imagine that, being able to actually set a room temperature from your phone in every room, "witchcraft".

Expect some blogs about this in the new year.

Worst software (The user hostile software development award)

It might not come as a surprise to you that I think most heat pump controls are pretty awful but this year has been special, I had the misfortune to look at 2 heat pumps this year which feature a snow man on the controller screen. Crap pictures on screen are the new thing in heat pump controls. The snow man is supposed to tell me, the home owner, something, but its not clear what.

On one controller the snowman tells me that its cold outside so I'm in heating mode, on the other controller the snow man tells me I'm in cooling mode, I'm making a snowman.

If you think having stupid pictures on the screen in any way helps the end user you win the worst software in heat pumpery award. Words FFS, I beg you, use words. THE HEATING IS ON.

Underperformer of the year

This one goes to all of the manufacturers who submitted a heat pump to MCS database in 2024 without a full data set.

There have been 401 new heat pumps added to the MCS database this year (2024) all of them have scop data from 35-50C, with scops varying from 3.13 to 4.23 at 50C flow.

Only 18 of the 401 units submitted have a scop figure for 60C or above on the database. The lowest scop at 60C of the 2024 entrants is the Octopus Cosy 6 at 2.89, the Highest is Midea's 10kW at 3.52. But at least they submitted some figures.

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Best SCOP on the MCS database

There is one clear winner, at every temperature (except 55C) the highest SCOP of any heat pump on the MCS database is the ACOND Grandis R.

At 55C its the Hitachi Combi 2.0 (6kW)

Both are great units.

(Update as of March 2025 according to MCS all heat pumps will have the same SCOP. to make calculation the run cost easier. expect blogs)

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Product of the year- Heat pump mover

In March 2024 , me, Samuel Powell , Ren Hendra, and Sam Hughes dragged my heat pump into place by hand, well I didn't carry it as you can see , the young'uns did. Apparently its heavy.

A few weeks later I saw the heat pump mover from Lite Work Designs at Installer show. Quite literally the only game changing thing to happen in renewable heat this year. Who knew? put wheels on the bloody thing and its easy. Brilliant, well done Michael Wyeth what a brilliant idea. https://youtu.be/IdMj3edlpOk

Worst engineer (and I use the term loosely) of the year

This year I worked with a homeowner who reported they were cold in the bathroom, the installer returned to site, firstly he blamed the heat pump, obviously. Its a common problem, warm everywhere in the house except one room, "its the heat pump mate".

Then he, the installer, decided to increase the radiator size in the bathroom by 100%. It didn't work, the Customer was still cold.

I was asked to intervene, When asked "is the radiator in the bathroom warm? "the homeowner said "oh no, its never got warm from day one".

Apparently just having a radiator in the room is all that matters, the getting warm bit is clearly new to some people.

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Best excuse for not buying from a supplier, the fella who told me he would never buy polypipe because his then wife (now ex wife) ran off with the polypipe rep. Brilliant.

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Best heat pump fault, customer livid, heat pump shit, oh hang on..........

Kevin Fisk sent me this one. Turns out if the homeowner whacks a ladder through the heat pump it stops working.

And finally the big one, Heat pump of the year.

Normally this award goes to my favourite heat pump, but this year I want to give this to a range of heat pumps which offer something a little different from the norm.

In December I went to Verona in Italy to Maxa Heating and Cooling they do a range of heat pumps from 6 -1023kW (that is not a typo).

I've worked on all sorts of units over the years, most offer only a small range of adjustability in the control, adding a hot water tank, setting up the legionella function etc. But ive never seen any that tell you how anything works, its all top secret.

MAXA are a chiller firm, (chillers are heat pumps that cool and heat) , it shows, as they started out doing commercial units they feel its a good idea to tell the installer exactly how the machine works, in every detail. The service manual lists EVERY function in complete detail. If you want to know how heat pumps actually work take a look at this manual.

MAXA publish everything and let you change everything, for example If you dont like when your unit defrosts and want to change it, go ahead, its all adjustable (and easy to put back if you mess it up) . This can be done in the controller, by laptop, a memory stick or via Modbus.

I congratulate Maxa Heating and Cooling for producing such a comprehensive range of units and giving everyone complete access to them making service, design etc simpler. It is not for everyone, but if you are a heat pump geek and getting under the bonnet is your thing, it might be the unit for you.

Richard Hopkins and Ian Goodchild at The Energy Lab UK are looking after this kit in the UK.

its lovely in this information age for a manufacturer to drown you in information.

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And finally Thank you and happy xmas

Thank you for reading my blogs over the last year, I plan to keep doing them next year, I get a huge kick out of doing them and occasionally some work. And a special thank you if you have bought my heat pump books from amazon. https://amzn.eu/d/12DTR6N

I'm looking forward to 2025, it looks like there is some good kit coming onto the market and some major changes to how things are done and what we install.

see you all at InstallerSHOW

Have a great xmas and happy new year.

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