To Hull and Back
Graham Hendra
Heat Pump Subject Matter Expert, Refrigeration and Air conditioning lecturer
It might have come to your attention over the years that I haven’t have a good word to say about the boiler industry. Their complete lack of interest in heat pumps has had a very negative impact on the take up of heat pumps in the UK, but it’s not all bad, I quite literally made a fortune selling heat pumps made by their rivals from air conditioning manufacturers, so thanks for that.
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When I was approached by Phil Scrafton who was a regular customer for Samsung gen 3 and 5 (remember them) when he worked for UK Alternative Energy and is now Technical Manager for heat pumps at Ideal / Group Atlantic to come and see what they were doing I jumped at the chance.
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I got on the motorbike and headed to Hull.
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My first impression when I pulled into the car park was “bugger me that’s a big training centre” Its massive, brand new, and nearly entirely dedicated to renewables. I have been to many a training centre and I can tell you yours is rubbish compared to this one. Its super modern, with beautiful classrooms, rammed full of kit and the sexiest refrigeration demo rig I’ve ever seen. Man, I was jealous. They don’t just teach low temperature heat pump design, they teach service, maintenance, F-gas the lot.? Apparently, it’s just one of many centres spread throughout the country. https://www.expert-academy.co.uk/w/
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I was shown around the tech floor where the renewables team operates completely separately from the boiler teams, they are not even in the same building. It made me think of one thing, these people are very serious about heat pumps. Each tech support engineer sits by a working rig so they can talk you through the problems on site, its spotless in there.
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Then we jumped in the car with Andrew Johnson Training Director and drove to the factory. As you pull up it doesn’t appear that big, but once inside the gates its huge. They churn out thousands of boilers a day and that’s not just buy a box from China and slap a sticker on it, they bend the tin, make the components, and build the boilers in house. It’s a super impressive set up and must have taken a genius to design it all.
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Then we went to the heat pump line, here they produce the controller for both the Logic Air and newly released HP290 and fit it to the pre-plumbed cylinders. The Ideal units are stupidly simple to wire, a single cable from pre-plumbed to the outdoor unit and self-commissioning just like my heat pump.
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The quality control is insane, a camera watches as the assembly as each part is completed, if a wire or screw is missed or even out of place the computer shows the operator what’s wrong.
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Then every, yes, every unit is run tested before boxing up. The heat pump is even wet tested with water to check all is ok. This is a great idea, but it can present a challenge - because the pump gets wet and then sits on the shelf for a while it can seize, so being clever they use the PWM drive to rock the pump on startup, to free it if it seized. I love that. So, by this time I’m a bit taken aback.
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Then they showed me the warehouse, there are thousands of boilers and heat pumps on the shelf, in stock, ready for immediate shipping. But it was spare parts I loved most. Ideal launched the new unit on Monday. In the parts warehouse they have every single part ready to ship before they have sold a single heat pump, Millions of quid’s worth of bits ready to go. If your unit breaks the parts will be with you tomorrow, no problem. This should make most heat pump suppliers blush. Be honest does your supplier offer that?
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So, a super positive trip, it made me think just one thing, thank God I’m not competing with these guys. The big boys are in town now, let’s get heat pumps more mainstream, me and the other old hands at this have had a crack at it, we’ve got the industry up and running but now it needs the big players to sort it out, make it slick and get the price down.
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Yes, Ideal sell boilers, it’s how they make their money. Its what’s paying for this set up, but they are on board the heat pump train now and I think they are going to make a big splash.
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Thanks, Phil Scrafton, for inviting me to Hull. Eye opening.
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I very highly recommend going to see the setup, ask for Phil and Andrew. After our night out in Beverley afterwards it’s a miracle I can remember any of this.
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Head of Business Development - Renewables - City Plumbing
6 个月I don't know why this one only just popped up in my feed but it was good to read it. Yeah, Ideal aren't messing about! Really serious operation with a load of 'proper heat pump people' there who know what it's like, know what can go wrong and have come up with the product and the service to make a huge success of heat pumps.
Clean heat |?Green electricity | System integration
6 个月Nice coverage. What makes me think is the ?total separation“ you are mentioning.
Company Owner
6 个月HP revolution will die as soon as our tax money will stop coming to this industry... I agree with Bruce Boucher and his comments. People need to have a choice of how they would like to heat their homes, they can't be forced . People have been forced to buy electric cars , sales started to drop as soon as the government dropped their support via various benefits. Your old diesel car is more eco and cheaper to run than your EV
Solar energy advocate and owner of SO Solar Advice; Green Flag Award judge.
6 个月A great read as ever Graham. The Humber region is shaping up to be a major UK centre for renewable/ low-carbon manufacturing, with MyEnergi on the other side of the estuary.
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6 个月As much as I admire Heat Pumps I also recognise that they have their place and in the UK this is new build projects and not existing older properties which are expensive to refurbish and in many cases impossible to do so. Councils have millions of properties like this and empty cofers to replace existing natural gas boilers and in reality unless they knock these properties down and rebuild (they won't as there is a property shortage) the route forward will be Hydrogen or Electric (which is expensive and needs mass infrastructure improvements), please can SGN start investing in hydrogen production and delivery in all areas of the UK. Well done on the nice training centre and the lovely factory but you still need components to fulfill orders so until (Ideal/Atlantic) make every component there will be problems fulfilling orders (where are our C30s Bill). Have a lovely day Paul Stevens