Most Common Asked Questions
Are you a division of the official Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS)?
No. The only similarity between us and the official Microgeneration Certification Scheme, is we share the same letters in our trading marks.
The official Microgeneration Certification Scheme can be found at https://mcscertified.com. MCS certified, certifies low-carbon products and installations used to produce electricity and heat from renewable sources. From solar panels to wind turbines, biomass boilers to heat pumps.
They are a standards organisation, who create and maintain standards that allows for the certification of products, installers and their installations. They are way above our pay grade.
Microgeneration Consultancy Services, is an independent consultancy providing design services applicable to heat pumps for home owners, installers, manufactures, architects and developers.
We follow the standards that are published my MCS but we definitely do not write or manage the standards.
Do heat pump installers have to be accredited?
Whilst any ‘competent’ heating engineer can supply and install a heat pump. Only accredited installers can issue an MCS installation certificate, these certificates are required for grant applications, building control and various other official bodies. So the very first thing you should check is that the installer you are considering engaging is accredited. You can do this on the MCS certified website https://mcscertified.com/find-an-installer/
Do I need to improve my insulation?
We often hear people saying that heat pumps only work in new highly insulated houses. Well that’s not really the case but good levels of insulation are sensible as they help reduce the amount of heat your home needs. Homes that do not require as much heating are more economical to run and the capital costs of installing a new boiler or a heat pump may be cheaper. Likewise the radiators or amount of underfloor heating pipes you require may well be smaller, which can be a cost saving
The simplest and one of the most cost effective insulation measures is loft insulation, if your home has less than 300mm of loft insulation, it would be worth considering improving this. Typical cost (2024) range from around £700 to £1500 for mineral wool type insulation.
How do you calculate the heat loss of my home?
Heat is lost through every external component of your home, including floors, walls, windows, doors and roofs. Additionally heat is lost through ventilation in a property.
In mathematical terms the following formula applies:-
Heat loss = Rate of heat transfer of an external element x the surface area of the external element x the difference in temperature between the room and the outside temperature.
What this means in real terms is that we need to measure the size of all your walls, floors, roofs, windows and doors. We then need to work out how good your insulation is. (This known as a U-value and is expressed as watts per square meter per degree kelvin – W/m2k) Then we need to estimate the external design temperature as this changes across the country. For example it would be reasonable to use a design temperature of -1.5C in Cornwall, whereas a design temperature of -6C may be more suitable in the North of Scotland. Once we have this information we can calculate the heat load of the building.
We don’t do the calculations long hand, instead we use some pretty sophisticated software which speeds up the whole process. The standard for calculating heat losses is BS EN 12831