Heat Pump
Assessment
Get independent advice to help you decide whether an air source heat pump is right for your home.
From £450*
For homes in Bath & North East Somerset and parts of Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. Please see our FAQ’s if you’re unsure if we cover your area.
*for a standard Heat Pump Assessment for homes with 1-5 bedrooms. Optional add-ons available from £50.
What is it?
Heat pumps can significantly reduce your home's carbon emissions and may help lower heating costs. However, the benefits vary from home to home, and getting the design right is key.
Our independent Heat Pump Assessment provides impartial advice tailored to your property. We'll help you understand whether a heat pump is a good fit for your home, what type of system would work best, and what changes may be needed.
Unlike installers who are often focused on a specific system, we take a whole-home approach, helping you understand your options, what to expect, and the trade-offs involved.
You'll receive guidance on:
Heat pump suitability and sizing
Potential heat pump and hot water cylinder locations
Radiator requirements
Planning considerations
Installation and running costs
Potential carbon and financial savings
Who is it for?
The assessment is ideal if:
You’re considering a heat pump and don’t know where to start
You’d like independent advice before contacting installers
You’re considering a heat pump with other home improvements
You want a clearer understanding of likely costs and savings.
Drawing on our Heat Geek training and experience of local housing types, we'll help you approach the installer market with clarity and confidence.
You can also choose from a range of optional add-ons if you’d like more detail or support for a larger renovation project.
Your Heat Pump Assessment will include:
A home visit
One of our Heat Geek-certified assessors will visit your home to carry out a detailed survey. They’ll discuss suitable locations for a heat pump and hot water cylinder, radiator requirements, as well as best-practice principles behind effective heat pump design and day-to-day use.
Expert recommendations
You’ll get clear, impartial guidance on the type of heat pump system best suited to your home, including any radiator upgrades or other measures that could improve performance.
Summary report
After the visit, we’ll carry out a detailed heat loss assessment and provide a personalised report covering radiator sizing, heat pump and cylinder location, an installation cost estimate, as well as both financial and carbon savings associated with our example system that we believe to be suitable for your home.
Making it happen
Once you’ve received your report, we offer a follow-up call with your assessor who will answer any questions and help you plan your next steps.
Want to get a quote from an installer?
If you simply want to go direct to an installer for a heat pump assessment then you can apply for a 50% off Home Assessment Voucher from Retrofit West.
Retrofit West have partnered with Heat Geek, a network who provide high-quality heat pump installs by trained and trusted installers. With this offer, a Heat Geek installer would provide their own heat pump assessment and quotation, which could then be delivered by that installer.
This alternative option may be good for you if you want to move quickly and are keen to work directly with an installer from the start.
What’s the price?
Our standard Heat Pump Assessments are available at a single price of:
£450 (including VAT) for homes with 1-5 bedrooms.
Prices for 6-bed homes and above are available on application.
We calculate the number of bedrooms based on any habitable rooms upstairs, such as loft conversions, studies or nurseries, so please include these even if they're not currently being used as bedrooms. Think about how an estate agent might describe your property in terms of the number of bedrooms.
We can also offer desk-based assessments using plans for new homes - price available on application.
Tailor your assessment
If you'd like more detail or additional support, you can choose from a range of optional add-ons.
These are particularly useful for larger projects, homes undergoing wider renovation works, or anyone wanting to explore different options in greater detail.
The Heat Pump Assessment costs £450 for 1-5 bedroom homes plus the cost of any optional add-ons you choose (all prices shown include VAT).
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If you’re interested in getting solar PV and a battery, we can review your home’s potential and advise on how this would interact with your heat pump.
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Wondering about how a different flow temperature would impact on overall cost and efficiency?
We can run an extra scenario exploring a new flow temperature, and advise on the likely impacts of this on cost and radiator requirements.
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Considering an extension or some significant insulation upgrades as part of renovation work?
We can run an extra scenario to analyse the impact of these changes on the size of heat pump required for your home.
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Interested in whether your heat pump could do cooling as well as heating?
We can advise on the potential for your heat pump to offer cooling as well as heating, including advising on compatible heat pump units and any design stage changes that would be needed to enable cooling.
Note that providing cooling via standard household radiators is difficult, so our advice will focus on the use of underfloor heating or the addition of one or more fancoil heaters alongside radiators, as there is more evidence for the effectiveness of these options.
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Are you concerned that your home is not well represented by standard energy models (perhaps because it’s older or of more traditional construction)?
We can install smart heat loss data loggers in your home to monitor actual heat loss over a 21-day period.
This will help you better understand your home’s true heating requirements.
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If you’d like support with checking quality post-installation, we can offer you a video call three weeks after your install is complete to:
Check how your system is running
Talk through any issues you are encountering with using the controls
Identify any questions or actions to take back to the installer to optimise the system.
Ready to book a Heat Pump Assessment?
You can choose a standard assessment as it comes, or enhance it with optional add-ons through the booking form.
If you’re unsure which optional add-ons would be most beneficial, you can book a free initial call with an assessor here.
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“We feel empowered by all the knowledge gained through the process, as well as confident that we're going to make great decisions on the install – and for our home efficiency too.”
Max, Bath
FAQs
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A key benefit of a BWCE survey is our independence. While installers often only work with one or two manufacturers, we're not tied to any installer or product and can help you assess what’s best for your home from a wide range of heat pump options. Equally, while an installer’s home survey will provide you with one quote, our report can used to secure estimates from multiple installers.
Another benefit is our bespoke approach. While many installers jump straight to presenting you with a proposed design, we take the time to explain key trade-offs such as the balance between system efficiency and the number of radiator upgrades, and will then tailor our design report to reflect your needs and preferences. With our Optional Adds-ons, we can also offer more in-depth support on a range of issues such as extensions, insulation upgrades, adding solar PV and batteries, analysing different flow temperatures, cooling and in-situ heat loss monitoring.
Finally, if you decide to go ahead with a heat pump after your survey, we can support you contacting installers and securing quotes to make that happen. We do this through relationships with local installers — although importantly our partnerships are non-financial (we don’t accept referral fees). Our calculations, which are based on a home survey, can then enable more accurate initial estimates than the high-level desk-based software that installers typically use for providing initial estimates.
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Our Standard Heat Pump Assessment is suitable for most house types. However, our Enhanced Heat Pump Assessments offer additional modules of support on a range of issues and can be good for anyone planning further works or wanting to optimise system efficiency.
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Yes – we can produce an efficient design for homes at any stage of construction, including from paper plans. Please enquire through our booking form, and we will send you further details.
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Our heat pump assessments are available to anyone in the BWCE area, including Bath & North East Somerset, along with parts of West Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. You can check if your household falls within this area on our map.
If you live outside of this area then please visit the website of our trusted partner Futureproof (run by leading climate change charity, the Centre for Sustainable Energy) who offer a similar service.
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To help us prepare and keep survey costs low, we ask that you:
Complete a questionnaire about your home and energy use
Provide us with a plan of your home, if you have one
Share your energy bill data, or (if you’re with Octopus) half-hourly smart meter data – this is optional, but helpful for our modelling.
During the 2-3 hour home visit, we will:
Ask about your home, preferences, timeframe any other planned work
Measure the building and assess the fabric to model heat loss
Explore potential locations for the heat pump and hot water cylinder, including any trade-offs
Discuss whether new radiators or underfloor heating may be needed, and where
Take internal photos (used only for the report and stored securely).
After the visit, we’ll write your bespoke report. Once you’ve had time to read it, we’ll book in a debrief call, where you can ask questions and request small changes.
After this, you may want help in using your report to get quotes from installers. We can provide further follow on support after your survey to help you, all the way through the installation process if you wish. We can discuss this on our debrief call, or please contact us for further details.
And if you’re interested, we can let you know about BWCE community projects you might like to get involved in – such as Home Energy Neighbourhoods or our Community Energy Network.
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Unfortunately Retrofit West is no longer offering discount vouchers for independent third party heat pump assessments. Retrofit West discount vouchers are now limited to Heat Geek accredited installers, who will use it to subsidise the cost of providing their own heat loss assessment as part of their quotation service.
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Yes – we offer several hours of free post-survey support on the path to installation. This can include:
Sending your survey to local installers to request quotes
Helping you evaluate and compare estimates
‘Translating’ your report into language that installers understand
Following up with installers on your behalf, if needed.
If you want further support after our free support has ended, we can discuss continuing on an hourly paid basis.
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Usually, installers have two stages to their quoting process:
An initial estimate, often produced using desktop tools and assumptions, with no home visit
A detailed quote, after a full home survey, which can cost several hundreds of pounds (typically absorbed if you go ahead with the work).
All the installers we’ve dealt with so far have been happy to provide initial estimates based on our reports free of charge. As our reports are informed by detailed measurements taken during a home visit, and take into account your needs and preferences, you can expect more accurate initial estimates from installers than you would otherwise receive from the high-level desk-based software that installers typically use for these estimates.
If you decide to proceed following an initial estimate, the installer will need to visit your house to confirm the details of your heat pump design and provide you with a full final quote. The visit will cost the installer several hundred pounds in staff time. Most installers bundle this cost into the final quote price and would not charge for the visit if you pull out. However, a few installers do charge upfront for the home visit. As our surveys provide much of the information installers will gather during a home visit, they can save installers a significant amount of time and some therefore reduce the cost they charge for the home visit if you have had a survey from us. However, not all installers will do so – and as we have no financial or contractual links with any installer, the decision is ultimately up to them.
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Recent changes to permitted development rules make it easier to install a heat pump without planning permission (known as ‘permitted development’).
The Planning Portal has a full description, but here’s a summary of what’s new:
Noise control: Heat pumps can now be placed closer to the edge of a property than what was allowed before
Updated sound calculation: A new method reduced the likelihood of needing planning permission due to the noise of a heat pump
Volume restrictions clarified: There’s now clearer guidance on the size of units allowed under permitted development.
Below are exemptions to permitted development for historic areas:
Permitted development rights do not apply for installations within the curtilage of a Listed Building or within a site designated as a Scheduled Monument
On land within a Conservation Area or World Heritage Site a planning application is needed if the air source heat pump needs is installed on a wall or roof which fronts a highway or is nearer to any highway which bounds the property than any part of the building.
Our assessment service will advise whether you need to apply for planning or listed building consent.
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The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) gives homeowners in England and Wales up to £7,500 towards the cost of a heat pump. It’s a simple process that’s led by your installer. The grant has recently been extended, giving more households time to take advantage.
