In Praise of MCS

Its a bit unfashionable but I think its time someone gave a whoop up to MCS.

For those who dont work in this sector MCS is a quality system, its used to set a standard in solar and heat pump installations. The reason it exists is to track who is getting government grants and where they all go.

It is NOT designed to make sure you get a good installation, but it is designed to make sure that your installation follows a prescribed route and there is a paper trail in place showing how you ended up with the system you have.

Its very fashionable to get on a high horse and slag off MCS, tell everyone its not fit for purpose, it leads to bad systems and it is way too heavy on the paperwork. All good points so lets looks at them one at a time:

There is too much paperwork, I completely agree, at last count there are 68 pages of paperwork to fill in for every job. I loathe paperwork, but we live in a society where all anyone is interested in is covering their arses by creating lots of forms. Our society believes that more paperwork guarantees a better job.

But think about it for a second, there is no way on earth that the government is going to come round with load of tenners to gift installers ￡7500 to install a heat pump without there being some accountability. Imagine what the vile newspapers would say if the government splashed a load of money on us the "renewables benefit scroungers".

MCS do let you automate some, or even all of the paperwork, so if you are filling it all in by hand you have to ask what on earth you are doing. Red tape is rife in our society, its not just in the world of MCS. I feel its my job to simplify all processes as much as possible and automate if possible.

If you do the process efficiently you dont have to do all the paperwork until you get the order so you should be getting paid to do the mountain of paperwork.

Its not fit for purpose. This statement is complete rubbish. MCS does not and will never insure you get a nice, neat well set up system, Its not designed to do that at all. If some shyster comes in, throws in the system, it looks crap and doesn't work properly, this is nothing to do with MCS. MCS is there to track your funding and to insure the system is designed properly. Once the system is designed MCS responsibility ends. They dont police your installation.

It leads to bad systems. MCS gives some rules about how you design a system, it gives a set of benchmarks but it doesn't actually tell you how to do the maths. Its totally acceptable for you to use any software you like to size up the kit. No one goes over your maths. It just tells you to do a heat loss on every room and supply a unit that will cover the peak heat loss, that's it.

If you badly measure the house, and then badly work out the heat loss , then choose a unit which is twice the size it needs to be, that's your choice. It satisfies MCS, but you are the problem MCS is not.

If you work properly with MCS you can adjust your maths to make it much more accurate, you can give your customer more information than the minimum and present it in any format you like. Its actually very flexible.

But there are still some who hate it and will rant in the comments below. So I have some advice for you.

"There are 7500 reasons to like MCS"

If you dont like it I recommend you completely boycott the whole thing.

Start installing heat pumps with no MCS.

Don't do any of the paperwork

Don't do a heat loss,

Oh! and dont get the ￡7500 grant.

Its your choice, follow the rules and get the dosh, dont follow the rules and dont get the dosh.

Think about it the BUS grant (and its predecessor the RHI) props our entire industry up, Just imagine what your business would look like without the massive ￡7500 heat pump benefit. Now shut up and embrace the MCS, its your meal ticket, you will miss it when its gone.