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Artificial Irrelevance? Or can AI enable boiler-price heat pump installs?
00:53:54
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast. Coming to you today partly from Australia, but although my guest today is in the uk, the world can be a very confusing place. What isn't confusing is that we are in the middle of an incredible industrial shift, if you like. We are now starting to see the building blocks because we're only at the very beginning of this transition. The building blocks of technologies that don't require us to burn fuel but to still do the things that we need to do, like not freeze to death in the winter. You know, that would be quite an important one as well. You know, this is not about electric cars. This is about heat pumps. Now we're talking to someone that we have spoken to before on the on the show, Adam Chapman, who is one of the the big brains behind Heat Geek. Heat Geek is just an incredible organization and it's really worth checking them out. We'll make sure. I've put links to their website in the show notes to this episode. But also Adam is just an incredible enthusiast for that technology from a really good place, from a place of trying to decarbonize homes and trying to save people money because strangely enough, drilling big holes in the ground, extracting gas, storing it in big things tanks, then shifting it down pipes and then putting it on boats quite often on big ship right around the world and then burning it once not, hope not incredibly efficient way of heating places. Whereas generating electricity offshore on, in solar, on land with, you know, hydroelectric, with nuclear, that's a lot more contained, a lot more, less dependent on importing endless, you know, billions and billions of pounds worth of fossil fuel and so and then using electricity to heat your home and in an incredibly efficient machine called a heat pump. And that is what Adam is talking about. But there is an addition which I'm not going to talk about now because what they're doing now is truly extraordinary which is why we really wanted them to have them on the show again. So I'm not going to say any more about it. I'm going to let Adam explain. So please welcome to the Everything Electric podcast, Adam Chapman from heat geek. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy tech are funded by our fun packed test drivetastic events in the north west and Greater London and our events down under. Next up, Everything Electric Sydney 2026. Plus check out EverythingElectric store for merch and much more. Adam, thank you so much for joining me. And this is so, it's so exciting. I just think what I'll just Try and do. My take on these things is that for years, decade, all our lives really, for the last say 150 years, we've had really the basic system which was you burn stuff and it does things which have been really good. I'm not saying it's bad, it's been really helpful. It's helped the human race move on and then you've got a lot of other stuff that's there as a result of you burning stuff. And in the last, it's, I kind of think 10 years it's become genuinely plausible to do the things that we need to do, which is not, not freeze to death, move around in machines, you know, all those sort of things where we don't have to burn anything. And I think what you're doing has pushed that to, you know, because I think that it's opened the world to a whole new lot of technologies and systems and ways of thinking about things that literally didn't exist. You know, even in 10 years ago. There just were, there might have been some stuff about it in a sci fi novel, but not in the real world. And now it's in the real world. Bloody extraordinary, excuse my French.
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A
I'm so glad you're as excited as I am. And that means you realize what not only we're doing, but is, is available, like what's quickly become available to us has just come around the corner so quickly. And I suppose our new thing that we're launching is just a great example of it and how technology, the combination of technology and humans together, because we're not leaving humans behind or certainly not in the plumbing in the heating industry anyway. We're going to need those for a while. It's one of the most secure jobs left. So I guess the best way for me to start explaining perhaps what we're doing is explain the before. So Heat Geek are known as the best heating engineer training sort of service to train heating engineers to be able to do totally beautiful bespoke systems with the absolute highest efficiencies, how to calculate all of your radiators and pipe work. And when you, when you do all these extra calculations, you can really get these super, super high efficiencies. If it's very manual. There are, there's software out there, but it's still doing a manual thing. It's still just, you know, basic maths really. And with all of that is a lot of fat. So you have to assume on Christmas Day, for example, we, we got, we have to keep your house hot on warm on a Christmas day, obviously. So, so we're going to assume that your window's open to, to let some fresh air and we're going to assume you need extra hot water. So we end up oversizing. We have all this sort of fat and contingency.
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B
Right, I see. I'm with you. Yeah.
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A
And so HIK are kind of known for the training, but also we do installations and all heat pump installations. And so we're known for probably, well, the most efficient and probably the most expensive installations that you can get. Right, great. Not very helpful when you're trying to transition an entire country. And that is our aim. So what's happened in the last year since I last spoke to you was, is we've been actually secretly. Well, not secretly. We've definitely got permission from the homeowners, been collecting data on, on all of our installations.
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B
Right.
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So we've got the, the both sides of the equation we've been in and we've scanned their house. I think I talked to you about the scanning software we have before. So we have a digital image of their house and now we've got three years of measuring thousands of homes to see how it performed in real life. And what we saw in that was pretty astounding. It's that we were overperforming left, right and center. And actually to get these same efficiencies, we can install way less. We were throwing in stuff. We knew there was a bit of gap, you know, a bit of fat, but we did not know it was that much. So what we've developed is a piece of AI software called Zero Disrupt. It's an AI assisted algorithm, I'm told is the correct way to say it. I'm not the tech person, I'm just the heating person. There's much more clever people than me in my company and it, it analyzes our thousands of installations that have been in and running and the thousands of designs and looks at anyone house after we've scanned it and says, well, actually you probably only need to replace this radiator here and you can reuse your old tank and you can hit this efficiency or you could select a different efficiency and it might change a different radiator or swap the cylinder. So now it's just putting in what you need for any one efficiency. Anyone who may have bought a heat pump before, you have to go through this long winded conversation of flow temperatures and we're going to try and design your system for this flow temperature. It's a bit of a strange concept for homeowners. Why do they care what flow temperature their radiators are? They want to know what their efficiency is because that's what pays back on the bills.
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Yeah.
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And so we've designed this around shifting the paradigm from flow temperatures and complicated speak to this is the efficiency you're going to buy and this is the absolute minimum you're going to need to do to your house to get that efficiency. And in doing that, we've gone from the most expensive in the industry to the cheapest with the same high quality installers literally overnight. So we're in like a bit of a whirlwind over here. Our sales have tripled. Great, great for us. But it's more importantly for us. It's about decarbonizing homes. We know that we're on a. We found the solution. So average install has been, or our average base install without any of the like pretty extras that you can buy on top is three grand. So we're now. The average boiler install is three and a half grand. So we're now cheaper than boilers. This is phase one. We're still learning from these installs and we're still tuning the system. This is going to go down in price over the next year. I don't think it's going to go down loads but it's definitely going to start. Carry on going down. This is the first step. So this, this what, what's come out the other end of this taking us from ten grand installs down to three overnight has been just insane. I knew it was going to be good, but I did not know it's going to be that AI is really good turns out.
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B
And can I just, can I just quickly ask is that essentially you're using the. Physically you're using the same equipment. It's not like you're, you've got like, oh, suddenly found a heat pump that cost 40 quid as opposed to 5,000 or whatever.
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A
You're using the same stuff.
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B
It's just that the system so much more efficient to install.
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A
The core thing you're going to need is a heat pump to replace the boiler. If you don't have a cylinder hot water cylinder subscription, you're going to need another hot water, a hot water cylinder installed.
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B
Right.
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A
However, typically we would to get to some kind of whatever efficiency we'd normally swap 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 radiators. We definitely swap the cylinder and we'd also put like quite big super, super high efficiency cylinder. This thing has broken down all the different vagaries between much cheaper cylinders and gone well Actually the cheap cylinder's still going to hit the efficiency. You don't need to get this super sassy one. You can still. Why are you paying for the extra if you're looking for this efficiency, you've got options of efficiency you can choose. Then this is all you need. And all of those things combined, including re piping systems. We were repiping systems way too often because people are often told that it needs to be re piped. We've actually been in analyzed real world, not done the calculations and actually you don't need to re pipe really ever any of your systems. I honestly don't think and I don't want us to be the only people doing this. I'm sure there's going to be other bigger companies or different software companies out there that are going to be shortly following us and good because our number one thing is decarp is not about a race for us. We want others to be involved. I think this is the way of doing things now. It is to. And we're not trying to take put heating engineers out of jobs or anything like that. This is to allow them to go and do their best work, do the thing that they're, that they were trained to do sitting down, doing calculate. You know, a heating engineer spending days doing calculations and orders on the phone is not an efficient way to decarbonize a country. You just want them in putting stuff in and that means their kind of job's better too. So yeah, it's better for everyone around really. It's a more fair deal.
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B
But then so to get to that, just so you might have mentioned this, but your enthusiasm is like, it's incredible. It was so wonderful.
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A
Match yours maybe.
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Yeah, but it's the. So I'm just trying to understand the steps that you've gone through. So you've got all this data about houses that you've already converted. So you've put heat pumps in, they've got the hot water tanks, they've got the right radiators, they're staying warm. They're much more efficient than the old gas boiler. I've got, I've got a few questions about gas boilers. We'll come back to that in a minute. But you've used that data and you've put that through the AI muncher.
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A
I'll tell you exactly what we've taken is so we have all of our engineer, our heating engineers, we send out an iPad to. And the iPad has a LIDAR technology which scans rooms. So we scan the house and it creates this 3D picture of a house in the computer and see, I told you I was as technical as you. And we also record what their. The hardness of the water in their area, the heat exchangers, coil size inside their hot water cylinder, how much their hot water, their flow rate of their showers, all of these parts, how many occupants there are, the age of the occupants. Every little bit of data you put in will help it. It will give it more information to come up with a more accurate and a more. Let's put it this way, the less information you give it, the higher tolerance we've got to give it for risk factor. So we have to put extra stuff in. The more information we give, the closer you can bring that in and we guarantee the efficiency anyway. So if you did select 380% efficiency, which we can come back to if anyone's confused about 380% efficiency, if we did come out at 375, we would pay to go back and maybe make a radiator a bit bigger or we tune up the flow rate or something like that. We have never had to do that. We've had actually had this guarantee for three years. We've never actually had to do that yet. And these systems have been in and running. We would been doing it in stealth for the last year. So the first one went in last November, so that's now coming up to a year old, the first sort of cohort that went through. So yeah, it's all about going to the home, collecting as many data points as possible. And the more data points we give it, the less it will give you or sell you unnecessarily for your selected efficiency.
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B
Wow. That is. I mean, it is because it's such a dramatic change in cost. You know, it's not like if you said, well, it had to cost ten grand, but we've done all this work and now it's like eight and a half. We've saved one and a half. I mean, that would be impressive. Yeah, it's way more than that. I mean, that's what. Yeah, that is really kind of shifts the whole needle an enormous amount, which. Because, I mean, the thing that's intriguing about it is that in, in a similar way to the negative stuff about electric vehicles, which I've been very exposed to for far too long and it just washes over me now. But there has been a kind of. Not a kickback but a kind of pushback ago. Oh yeah, Heat pumps won't. It's just the same argument. Heat pumps won't work for me. The technology is not there yet is a term I really, really gets up my nose.
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A
Yeah, well, maybe this was the thing we needed because yeah, it was, it wasn't there yet for normal people. I wouldn'. Say most people don't have 10, 12 grand sitting there in their bank account. I'm from a very working class, normal background and I know what it's like. We can't. Giving posh people fun toys is not going to decarbonize the. Absolutely decarbonize the country. So we have to, we've got to bring this down to normal level. And the only way to do that is to. To beat the existing technology. And that's obviously gas boilers. They're three and a half grand roughly on average to replace. So now we're below that. Great. And you said so we're below that upfront cost. And they will say the heat pump will save you money every single year. So there's literally no reason to not pick a heat pump now, except for maybe the. Our current waiting time, which isn't actually that bad. But this is the other part it did because there's less time spent on site. Installers were having to look for like two week blocks, maybe three week blocks, which is like, oh, I can fit you in six months time. Is that okay? Now they're bringing those installs way further forward. So this is kind of our next bit. We're trying to get on demand. Emergency jobs is kind of our next target.
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B
So the actual install process is that much faster than. I mean that's got to be one of the reasons why it's cheaper.
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A
You're installing less stuff. You're not spending an evening designing system. They're not. This will automatically order the parts to the door. It kind of got all of that automation folded as well. So everything's like crammed, you know, squeezed down. And it just means they spend less time doing stuff they don't really like doing anyway.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that is. It is. And also, I mean the, the thing you mentioned in your video, you know that, that disruption, I mean that' makes me anxious now because I've had so many disruptions at home with all the stuff I've put in and now it's like, oh, there's someone coming tomorrow to have a look at the. What's it, you know. Oh God, yeah, it does. It minimizes that. Then it's not such a big change in the house.
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A
You really. So this is, this is a downside typically or certainly was a downside Is that right? These heating engines will come in and they take over your whole house for a week. You know, at least they're in every room, they're moving around radiators. I mean, you're in every room anyway for, for a gas boiler because you have to balance the system. But we're not in every room now. We're swapping our radiator. The average radiators to be swapped is 1. It's actually 0.8, so it's literally no different. So you're going to be in the boiler, taking out the boiler. The rest of the work is outside. So, you know, in theory it could be less than some boiler installations, work wise. Yeah, that's. Hence the name zero disruption.
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B
Yeah, but it's worth remembering. I mean, it's worth mentioning because this is a thing. I don't know and I think we may have discussed this before, but I don't know. It's so long since I had a gas boiler. I don't know how long they last. But what I do know is they do break down and they do go wrong, you know, because I've lived in cold houses where that happened. And I mean, so I haven't got a clue of what the average life expectancy of a gas boiler is.
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A
It's about 12 years. They can last longer if they're looked after and installed. Well, that's, that's seldom the case. So the average lifespan is 12 years. The average lifespan of a heat pump. A heat pump's actually simpler than a gas boiler. It's 20 years for a heat pump.
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B
Right.
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So it's literally just better in every way. And it does get to the point where you're trying to sell something and it just sounds like you're on the hard sell. But really it is genuinely a better offer.
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I mean, all the people I know who've got them said that that was their biggest first experience was the, was how much less they were paying to, you know, when they used to pay for gas and how much they pay for electricity now. I mean, it is less. It was very nice.
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A
So this is the kind of important thing that people probably need to understand if they're looking to buy one, is all about this, the efficiency. So unless we hit 335% efficiency, and the reason we get over 100% efficiency, for anyone that might be confused, is that we're not creating heat, we're actually just moving heat from outside to inside inside the house. We're moving heat using refrigeration technology exactly the same as your fridge in your house. So we move the heat from outside to inside one unit of energy. If we can make that create 3.35 units of heat, that is gas. That's parity with a gas boiler at 85% efficient. An 85% efficient boiler, which is, that's a modern boiler over the year is around 85% efficient.
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B
Right.
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A
They sell them at 92% efficient, et cetera. That's one point in time. No, gas boilers are 92% efficient. They're actually 83 to 85% efficient when you measure it across the year and do hot water. So if we can get up to 335, great, we've got gas parity. And that's on the price cap. If you go and also look at the many tariffs available, you'll be saving hundreds, hundreds a year. You'll save hundreds of pounds a year at 335%. Very easy to achieve with a heat pump because that's literally what it does. It multiplies the heat, the energy. So that's our minimum option on our front end. You can select. 340% is our minimum actually. And then there's tariffs you can choose and you can select anywhere up to 4, 450, sometimes percent, and you can choose how much you want to save a year. Doesn't really make too much sense to go up high because the amount of equipment extra you have to get installed for the extra high efficiency doesn't really return in a sensible amount of time. But the options are there anyway. This is about clarity and so homeowners can really like see what the value is. And we have like a web web page where you can go in and have a look what we estimate costs might be. Yeah, this is, this is the new paradigm. It's actually getting to what homeowners value. You're not selling flow temperatures. No one cares about that. And we're not talking about CO2 because unfortunately no one's paying to save. They want a faster car which happens to be electric or they want a nicer heating system which happens to be weather compensated. You know, we're selling or to save on fuel and you know, so we're really like getting to the actual point here. It does have a market case and boilers don't, I would argue.
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B
This episode is brought to you by Hong Kook. The Hong Kook ion tire is built exclusively for electric vehicles, engineered to deliver what EV drivers need most. Confident grip, quietness, energy efficiency and long mileage. As the official tyre partner of Formula E, Hongkook proves its EV technology is at the highest level of performance and brings that same innovation to every ion tyre on the road. Here's a critically important question because I think this applies to both the automotive industry and the heating industry is. I mean gas boilers will have improved a huge amount since I was a kid, but have they reached a sort of plateau of efficiency and of longevity? You know, which is the same as you could say with a combustion engine. It's kind of amazing technology. It's been a huge amount of improvement since the Ford Model T, but now it's kind of stuck there. Whereas electric cars. The changes we're seeing. Electric in batteries. Extraordinary. Just freakish.
- [22:03]
A
100. So there's three. There's 1.3 million boilers sold last year. And. And they've got so many components in now to get them to these super high efficiencies which actually only work out. 85 efficient.
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B
Right.
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A
But it's more and more stuff has gone in and more stuff to go. This is why they. They don't actually last that long because they've got so many refinements. They're little bits.
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B
Right.
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A
Break and so. But we only sold 60,000 heat pumps last year in the UK. Right. So with less parts in them. So with the economies of scale, if you can imagine swapping one for the other. An oil, it would cost an absolute fortune if it was down at 60,000. The only reason it's so cheap is because it's mass produced. If you literally swap those two numbers around, it would be even more of a convincing case.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So this is just part of what a transition looks like. I think we're in. I think it's hard for people to realize how much of a big time and a big change we're in. Because when you're in it, it seems like small changes. We are undergoing something huge and like, it should be exciting, like embracing it. Unfortunately, it's a little bit political as well. So I don't know if people enjoy that or not. I don't enjoy it personally.
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B
No. Normally. No.
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A
God. It gives a platform though. Right? You know.
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B
Yeah. But I did think of you. I saw this. So I like. There's a couple of mates of ours. You've got quite a big house and they've got, I think two heat pumps in the garden and they look like what I think heat pumps are. It's a box with a round grill on the front and you can see a fan going around inside.
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80S gray. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. And it's gray. Exactly. And then we went to this, we did an episode about it. This very large stately home, effectively, you know, a mid sized, posh, really old house, like 15th century, amazing old place. Beautiful. And they've. And it's completely solar and heat pumps and all that stuff. But the heat pumps they had, I'd never seen before. These were kind of big dark boxes and I stood right next to it. It's behind a hedge and there was a thrush singing in the hedge and.
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I was going, I can't, I can't hear.
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Are they on? Are you sure they're on? Yeah, they're on, yeah, yeah. I mean, unbelievable. I mean they had a lot of. They had about 16 of them because they're heating this massive product. That was a really big installation.
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A
I'm glad you've raised that. This is probably an important point for people to realize how different the modern ones are.
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B
Right.
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A
They are now so quiet. I mean they can get loud and, and when they. I say loud, they're louder. They can get louder when it's like minus two outside. That's going to be their max loudness. It's still like 50 decibels. It's not. You would have to walk up to it and you know, feel the air, etc. When it's not minus 2, when it's 0 degrees, 3 degrees, you literally do not know it's on. So actually if you average the sound over the year, it's way, way, way, way quieter than a gas boiler.
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B
Right.
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A
Because the gas boiler has a tiny.
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B
Flu it's trying to go through.
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A
It's just playing the flute the whole time, you know. So yeah, the modern ones, they look better and they sound better and it is just going to continue evolving I think. I honestly don't think the technology improve efficiency much further. I think we're at the max there. Refrigeration technology has actually been around for years. What will happen, I believe though, this gap, this three and a half, 3.35 times gap between the electricity cost or it's four times gap between electricity and gas. The government know that in order to make this to electrify homes in the uk, they're going to need to shrink that and they're actively working on it and talking about ways they're going to do it. So that's basically going to be done. It's just how it's not just uk all countries are doing this. Yeah, we have the biggest gap actually, so we've got the furthest to go. But even the countries and smaller gaps are still working on you know equalizing gas gas and electricity costs. And so when you do do that these things are going to boilers will be. Only the ultra wealthy will be able to afford to push carbon dioxide into the air through their gas boiler is you won't be able to afford to run it literally. I mean even if they kept G Gas gas stable and didn't like inflate it so you're not paying more than you should do. Why would you pay two, two grand a year when you could be spending £500 a year on your heating. We're using heat from outside. We're not buying it from Russia.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that's what we do. We're buying it from Russia. We're getting rid of 15 of it and flushing it down the drain because we don't. Our gas boilers aren't that efficient and then, and then we've got our final price when the sun is outside heating up the atmosphere and we can literally just capture that and put it now it's mad to think that we've made this complicated you know because I mean.
- [26:51]
B
That was one thing you mentioned that which I could. I really recognized it when you got sort of. You had an internal rant about it is the. Is how. How the government subsidizes oil and gas which no one ever talks about. You know they always go about your wind turbines. They get subsidies and all that stuff. You go yeah they get 40p.
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A
That is a big. I can't. I wish social media didn't exist. This is really created a thing inside of me this but if it was any good the government wouldn't be paying for it. Great. So we get 500 million for heat pumps a year. That's really, really helpful. That's going to clean the air that you breathe by the way. It's probably going to save X in NHS health whatever. It does seem to be missed that fossil fuels get 17.5 billion and if you every single year to help with exploration etc in. In tax breaks, blah blah blah. If they didn't get that your gas bill would be. It just wouldn't be feasible for anyone. Yeah, really. And so we're already on a non level playing field now. Let's also factor in the amount of time that they've had that for. So we've been, we've been subsidizing fossil fuels for say 100 years and so we've built up this industry that we span around. You know we've got hyper efficient. No wonder heat. Heat boilers are so quick and cheap. To put in the minute we're trying to spin up a new industry, saying new heat pumps have been around a long time, but at this scale, it's new.
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B
Yeah.
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A
With a fraction of the investment. There's. There's a complaint that it's changed. And this is really just people resenting change. That's all it is. It's actually not about anything practical. This is an emotional psychological problem with someone saying, I don't want to be told what to do. You don't have to be told what to do, but if you're sensible, you'll say, I can spend a lot of money on a thing, or I could, you know, not spend a lot of money on a thing, and it should just be that. That dictates it. But if you're going to do it, make sure you do it fairly and balanced. Don't say, I don't like this subsidy, but I'm okay to pay this subsidy.
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B
To pay this huge one.
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A
Yeah, you know, that's. That's not a fair comparison. And it is. And it's a blinkered view.
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B
Yeah. And it was also, I think, critically important that, you know, the two things that are happening at the moment. One is, will we start drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea, which will have enormous government subsidies? And then, you know, the kind of simplistic argument is, well, that will reduce our domestic gas bill. No, it won't. They'll sell it on the open market. They're not going to give it to people in England because they want to be nice. They'll flog it won't make any difference to the gas price whatsoever. It will. Absolutely not.
- [29:37]
A
Not. Yeah. I mean, it's the same.
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B
And that's the thing is that. Yeah, I think that was the one change I think we've seen, which I'm sure you're aware of as well, but we've really seen in the last sort of couple of years is I think most people understand that the price of electricity went up and the price of gas went up. But the reason the price of electricity went up was because of gas. It wasn't because of windmills. You know, that was a really important aspect.
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A
Bonkers, isn't it, at what people want? They'll believe what they want to believe. And renewables do bring down the cost of electricity, so it only means people are making more money. And people, people, people. They don't want to believe it because they can't see it. And they can't see it because they're hidden from it. Because the gas sets the price. Heat pumps are a hack around that. Because we get the energy at the other end, we actually, your home, can benefit from that free energy, that multiplication effect. So, you know, we're on a. I think we're on a. This boulder is now moving. It's starting to freely roll.
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B
Right? Yeah.
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A
And I think, like, all of these things, the more heat pumps make sense, the more solar panels make sense, the more batteries make sense, the more heat pumps make sense. You've got this sort of, you know, I. I think this kind of thing's. It's done. It's that, what speed can we push this thing forward right now?
- [30:57]
B
I mean, the other aspect that will directly relate to this is finally, because it's taken years, the emergence of actual vehicle to home and vehicle to grid technology that is becoming cheaper and more usable and blah, blah, blah. You know, the new Nissan Leaf is built specifically for its battery to be used in the home.
- [31:22]
A
I think you say these things to people and they're like, oh, that's a cool concept. I think when they start living it. It and then they start doing it, that's when I think the real big shift will be like, right, we just need to move in. We'll be all in then.
- [31:34]
B
You're right.
- [31:35]
A
That's going to be the big. A big. Yeah. Especially being able to leave it parked at home and feel the. Feel good factor of, like, I've just absorbed a load of free energy or, you know, or help the grid or whatever. Whether you believe in climate change or not, that's indeniable.
- [31:50]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it is. It is a. It is. I mean, it is very exciting and it is. I think it's a harder sell. I mean, you know, I don't want to constantly do comparisons between electric vehicles and heat pumps, but I think it is a harder sell. And I think you've done an incredible job, you know, because there is a sort of, I don't know, the psychology of cars. The more I've learned about it, the more confused I am and the less I understand about it, because it's like, oh, yeah.
- [32:18]
A
Oh, hang on.
- [32:19]
B
Oh, that's. That car's beautiful. I go, is it? Oh, yeah, all right. I'm sure it is. I don't, you know, and it's such. Such an emotional thing, isn't it, that I'll like the Renault 5. As soon as I saw the Renault 5, I go, oh, that's great. Now then I thought, why do I think that's great and not that one over There, which is.
- [32:35]
A
Yeah.
- [32:35]
B
You know. But then with heat pumps, it's, you know, it's not you. You know, a car can be sexy, I suppose.
- [32:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [32:44]
B
I mean, I don't.
- [32:46]
A
You can enjoy a car. How much do you enjoy your heating and that. That's. I mean, it, it is more comfortable. So like, like. But yeah. You're trying to tell people. You're just a dead horse when you try and tell people.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah. I think if you've lived in a house that's really cold, you really appreciate heating. Yeah.
- [33:05]
A
With the gas boiler. In theory, what you're saying there, I would just like to add as well, like, this isn't just. This isn't me, it's our company, which is cover more people than me. But more importantly, it's the enthusiasm and the, the, the, the love for this industry that our heat geeks up and down the country. We've got 2,000 heat gestures up and down the country going in and they're like putting all, all the research they do in the evening behind new values in houses and also thing. And sharing that with the customer and advising them on stuff that's not even to do with them. They're just like, they love their job so much.
- [33:40]
B
Right.
- [33:40]
A
They are true eco warriors. That's really like what we're doing. Trading on in one way is their enthusiasm and they'll be there till the. Till till the last night. And Bolt is in the perfect place. And that's the part. It's a community thing, really. Heat Geek is actually a community of super nerds. It's heat Geek. We spend ridiculous times amount of time on social media talking about the nth degree of the H vac heating ventilation in your house and how to really find. Because it's a fascinating topic and it's like endless how much detail you can go into. And, and so that's really what Heat Geek is actually all about. And so this, this whole thing that we've made isn't replacing those people, this is bolstering them up with an AI attachment. We're, you know, making sort of cyborgs type thing. And I, I just want to, like, I, I certainly want this, this mentality to stay in our company, and I'm sure it will for as long as I'm alive at least, is that we never ever want to replace humans. We are trying to, we're trying to lift these up on a pedestal that they should be on. Which is what. This is why these guys aren't. They're independent engineers. We're not employing. They deserve to go and, you know, run their business the way they want their own things. Yeah, we're passionate about that. This whole transition should not be forgetting the little guy. This should be a great opportunity for small businesses to thrive and grow. It shouldn't be snatched by, you know, and that's no discredit to stuff that OCTOPUS are doing, etc. We wouldn't be here without octopus. They're incredible. Thank you very much. We're riding the bow wave. But I do, I am passionate about this specific part of making sure small family businesses can, can survive. Yeah, exactly. Not just survive, but literally grow. There's a lot of opportunity here and a lot of opportunity for people that may lose their jobs on the AI wave.
- [35:39]
B
Yes. I mean that's, I mean, to go back to the AI part of it, it's really. I'd never, as soon as I saw you explain that, I went, oh my God, of course I'd never. Because I mean the. What gets, again, what gets the attention and gets everybody is the, is the AI video, you know, the kind of fake videos and the, and then people writing essays with or, you know, all that stuff. And it's kind of. I understand why that happens, but actually what clearly is happening, it's in medical, you know, development of medicines, understanding, you know, really complex biological problems and now this. I've never heard of this before, but the fact that you can feed all that data in which, you know, human beings, there's no question there's very skilled human beings would be able to do what the AI has done with that data, but it might have taken them.
- [36:29]
A
Quite a long time. It would take about a year to do a house, probably.
- [36:32]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're doing something, something that is very labor intensive, very time consuming in much less time. Which means that. Because, I mean, I think one of the sides of which I'm sure you're aware, but one of the sides of the fantastic AI revolution is there's a lot of computers using a lot of electricity to do that.
- [36:53]
A
That.
- [36:53]
B
And that's something or that we're beginning to deal with now.
- [36:57]
A
But this is. So whether you believe in climate change or not, I know I'm mental that I even have to say that in 2025, it doesn't actually matter because if, if we're going to be part of AI as a country like AI is the next wave. We need more renewables into the grid, which you need more heat pumps installed because we can't be using that gas for our gas boilers. We need to use that gas to generate more electricity.
- [37:22]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:23]
A
So it's all the, it's got to the point where there's no route left back for, for those sort of denial denialists. It is only gonna economically help us to feed more renewable energy into the grid or use renewables to take less from the grid. So, so you, you're right, that, that is a, that, that is another challenge. But definitely I can't. I've got enough. I'm trying to sell a heat pump. I've already got something big enough for my hands.
- [37:50]
B
No, exactly. No, you don't, you don't have to deal with the AI. Energy consumption. That's not your, it's not your thing.
- [37:56]
A
Is what I'm saying.
- [37:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if you're going to use all that electricity to run all those computers, let's do something really genuinely useful with that.
- [38:05]
A
Great.
- [38:05]
B
That's. That's incredible technology, you know, which I think you're, you're clearly doing. And I mean. No, it's not just that. Not just you. Obviously there's other ways of doing it, but I'm less thrilled when I see an amazing, you know, yet another. A completely manufactured video of, you know, a lion turning into a pile of dust. I don't even care, you know, whatever you do what you want. I don't know. But, you know, that is, that is chundering through, you know, gigawatts of power to do that. It's kind of. Yeah, that's a bit questionable.
- [38:34]
A
100.
- [38:35]
B
Can you get, I mean, in your, in your video that you. Where you explain this. Can you kind of just roughly take me through what. How the price can. You were talking about it can be down as low as a pound to install it, or how that system. But what, what are the components of that? How does that come about?
- [38:56]
A
Well, specifically on the price, we are accessing the government grant of seven and a half thousand pounds. So for any quotes that do come through that are just literally free, they're actually costing seven and a half grand and the government are buying for your entire, entire insulation. So although we've gone from sort of ten grand down to three grand, and we've got old customers come back who've had 19 grand installs from last year, they come back to us and they're now down at 4. Like, it's just. Everyone's getting cheaper quotes now. Although it's come down, the bit you pay has come down dramatically like 70%. On the actual big scale of things, it's come down say 50% in the price or whatever. It's just the bus grant has cut off the bottom and rightly so. So sorry, what's the bus.
- [39:47]
B
Just explain what the bus grant is so we know.
- [39:50]
A
So the bus grant is something homeowners don't have to try and access. If you use an MCS heat pump installer as part of your installation, if you have a gas boiler already, you will receive a seven and a half grand grant or the installer will receive a seven and a half grand grant in order to take that boiler out and put a heat pump in. If you've already got a heat pump already, you can't access the grant.
- [40:13]
B
Right.
- [40:13]
A
So basically seven and a half grand off a home upgrade which could improve your, your epc, could improve your house value, all that kind of stuff, obviously to try and drive this, grow this industry. And this industry is on a massive growth trend. So. So that's what it is. It's written, it's written in. We have it till 2029. You know, I don't know who's going to come in after that. And so I don't know how long it's going to be around. So we're, we're encouraging to make the most of it.
- [40:45]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:46]
A
Basically not trying to drive a sale, you know, but.
- [40:49]
B
No, no, no, but I mean then, so that, then you. So it would be possible as a homeowner then. So you've got a gas boiler that's about the end of life that, I mean, that seems to be one of the, the big driving is when the people I've spoken to, our gas boiler was kept conking out. We had to guy the guy. A guy was coming out all the time to fix it and it was. So we decided to put in a heat pump. That's. I've heard that story many times. But at that point then could it, could it be done for less than three grand for the homeowner? Is that, is that what you're saying?
- [41:21]
A
Absolutely, yeah. It depends on what you choose. So the, the components are you can have it just outside your, your boiler flue and if you've got a flower bed there. Well, sorry, we're gonna have to have a heat pump in the flower bed. But if you would like to move it around the side of the house, that's obviously going to cost more. We've got to run more pipe. Yeah, these are the. So, so the base install could be as little as zero or three grand or whatever and then you're paying for the extras. And if you want to pay for extra efficiency, then we're going to swap more radiators and the quote builds up. So, so this whole thing was built around some phrases that we've internally got, which are seekers, people who love technology and they want to go, and they've already got an EV on and they're, they're researching into heat pumps and they're telling you what flow, temperature they want and then switches. And what you're talking about is switches. A switcher is someone just needs heat. And so when heat geeks go out to potentially replace their boiler, these heat geeks aren't just installing.
- [42:15]
B
Oh, so they might install a gas boiler as well.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not through us, but we help the heat pump part. They're out repairing the boiler. That boiler's probably on the blink now. You need heat, you don't need a new boiler, you need heat. And so by creating this offer, we've got an expensive heat, which is your gas boiler, which we can do for, you know, four grand or we got this two grand option or whatever it is here. And here's all your extras. And this is what I say exactly how much money, money you should save over the following years, should the tariffs stay the same. That's a bit of a muddy area. So we guarantee the efficiency. We can't talk about how much money saved because we can't guarantee the tariffs. Yeah, and so the offer's kind of clear now for them. They can literally give you a quote immediately on site after a quick scan of the house.
- [43:00]
B
Right.
- [43:00]
A
And, and, and so, yeah, you can build up your system and then there's a potential path if you select 340 efficiency and you're only saving one or two hundred pounds a year. The, the, a decent tariff you've got. You'll also have. Oh, if you swap these radiators, you can up, you know, over the next, however long you're doing up your house, you can up your efficiency even more.
- [43:23]
B
So you don't have to do it all at one time. Effectively.
- [43:26]
A
You can, you can, we, we force you to do the minimum to get gas parity on the current energy price cap. But you will save money when you're using smart tariffs, etc as the minimum. And then there's, if you want to go up to 400% efficienc, there's a list of radiators that the engineer will tell you which radiators you can swap, et cetera.
- [43:48]
B
Right.
- [43:48]
A
So that's how it kind of looks. And that was really our aim with making this was, all right, we've definitely got the seekers in the bag. Any seeker looking for a heat pumps, definitely coming to Heat Geek. We're all over social media, they know that we're super nerdy. How can we fix the 99% of the population, which are people who have never heard of a heat pump or don't really understand what it is, and their boilers on the brink blink.
- [44:14]
B
Right.
- [44:14]
A
It's on the blink. And, and so that's what this does. It literally fixes that.
- [44:20]
B
Right.
- [44:20]
A
Essentially, yeah.
- [44:22]
B
And then in terms of, you know, people skilled enough to do the job, I mean, this, I think we did discuss this last time that how critically important that is. I mean, is that. Is there a skill shortage there or is. Are there now enough people that have trained up or are training up to kind of, of do the job?
- [44:41]
A
What, what, what we, what we would say is there's enough heating engineers in the country, they're just doing the wrong thing. So they're putting in gas boilers.
- [44:51]
B
Yeah.
- [44:51]
A
Instead of putting in heat pumps. So, yes, we need more people in the heating industry. We needed that anyway. Really. It's kind of, it's such a seasonal thing. It generally, we've not had apprenticeships were killed off, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago. So that, that's really had a detrimental effect effect. So, yeah, we have a training program. Obviously we have the most difficult training in the industry, but we help people through, etc. Etc. Yeah, people can come and take our training and go and do their own heat pumps, etc, and design their own heat pumps. What we do differently in Heat Geek is we kind of nurse them, we monitor every single one of their installs, we go out, we do a site visit, make sure that they, you know, have clean shoes in the house and make sure they speak. We do so many verification checks and we have to do all these verification checks because we take responsibility for the job at the end of the day from our AI software, because it's our software, we can't say to the heating engine, no, you used it, it didn't work. We have to take. So if you didn't hit the efficiency of something went wrong or the installer fell ill or something, we would take that and we put another equally trained engineer in and get the job done for the same guaranteed efficiency. But going back to your point, I think this is totally surmountable with using the existing workforce. It does need boosting. But like, we're not at that point yet. We're just, we're. They're still putting in gas boilers. A part of our task is homeowners don't really. Homeowners listen to the heating engineer. They're not asking about whether heat pumps work or not until they, they need a new boiler. And then if that heat heating engine that's in the house goes, yeah, boilers in the brink. Oh, heat pumps. Now you don't want one of those. They don't work when it's cold or whatever.
- [46:32]
B
Yeah.
- [46:32]
A
Then we're in a losing battle. So part of our job is to educate these heating engineers on our free YouTube channel to enlighten them to the reality of the truth, which is they work in bloody Scandinavia, so they work in the UK and they definitely save money. So in all houses that's another myth. I make sure I have to say in this, in this pod. And our data proves this, heat pumps work in all age homes. You don't need to worry about the insulation etc. I'm not saying not to get insulation, you should get insulation, but you don't need it to make a heat pump. Payback. We guarantee 340 efficiency minimum in any home, any age. 1800s, whatever. It's not all of that was blown out of proportion. It wasn't a thing. It's just that those houses are more difficult to make heat pumps work in if you've not done the proper training. All of our engineers done the proper training, they'll walk through those houses. That's just another, you know, bit of bread and butter for them. It's not, it's not anything difficult, it's just if you don't know what you're doing, you're more likely to get caught out in one of those. Or the other way to look at it is if you don't know what you're doing, you could probably install a heat pump in a new build and it'll probably work just fine. It won't be the max efficiency but it won't be costing, you know, an arm and a leg. So they just present a little bit more challenge and, and again our data is dugging in. Dug in prove that entirely true that heat pumps work everywhere. You can heat a shed on the moon with a heat pump.
- [47:56]
B
Yes. There's not a lot of atmosphere on the moon, I suppose, but yes, maybe.
- [48:03]
A
I might be exaggerating in that specification fractionally.
- [48:05]
B
I just thinking, although, when they, when they landed on the moon, they took their helmets off, go, oh, the air is very thin. But now though, and what about you know, this is a little obsession of mine because when I drive around seeing new builds going up and there's one down the road from where I live, where they're building, I think 15 houses and I was like, almost in tears. They've all got solar. They've just put the roof on, they've all got solar panels and they're all south facing on the south. And you just go, oh, my God. Finally. And these are brand new houses. A small development, brand new houses. And we've been to see developments where they do that. But what is the, what is the situation with installing heat pumps in those. In new builds? Because it just.
- [48:49]
A
They're fighting against it. It's like. It's just. I, I mean our, our main aim in heat geek is the retrofit market because there's not enough houses anyway. Right. So we're trying to get the, you know, the 28 million houses. I do think it's going to have to be. I mean, they're being pushed by the government. There's lots of plans and things in place to, to get them over the thing. I do think personally it's going to be a bit of a follower market. As in, once heat pumps become the norm, why are you going to go buy a house with a gas boiler? That's the first thing I've got to swap. Yeah, we're just waiting for the people's mentality to shift to. If you're viewing a house, even if you're going to a viewing gas boiler in there, you know that's going to need swapping like that. And this is the point we're going to get to, you know, where, where they're seen as a job to do and it's going to create a house price shift downwards if you've got a gas boiler, because you're going to have to replace the it. So I think that's. They're laggards. Builders are like. They're. They're just building for. Well, you know what build. Modern building practices are like the walls are paper thin. It's not the same as it. So I think that they're always going to be. Yeah, we have had governmental things in place to force them over but they just get pushed back and it's. And now like no one wants to do anything in politics now, do they? No one wants to say boo to a goose. Yeah. So all we can do is what's in our control, which is try and convince heating engineers and homeowners for their existing and appeal to real people. And not big businesses. I'm done with them. They're not going to do one.
- [50:20]
B
But what it sounds like is, regardless of all that kind of. Kind of negative attitudes, you're busy. I mean, it's not like you're not. You're not sitting there twiddling your thumbs. You've got, you know, huge amount of work.
- [50:31]
A
Excited. We've actually sort of. So we've barely begun. We have a ton more we can do to strip this process down, make it way more simpler and easier. The heating industry is, or was so archaic and it looks quite impressive to some people what we're doing in the heating industry, but really, it's just that the practices were from the 1950s and we're just bringing in 20 work first technology that is being used in IT and everywhere else into an industry that got mothballed and not cared about because it's just. Just toilet fitters and whatever it's plumbing, it's just disrespected or lack of respect. And so, yes, we've done this thing, this is a big jump, but we've now got the. So we're now going to monitor those installs and the data goes back into the design software, which is going to ever refine it. So we're going to get it even more accurate and even cheaper over time. Plus, there's some things I can't talk about yet, like methods of doing the surveys and things a bit more quicker. That should just mean you should be able to order at the press of a button and, you know, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, more to come. Loads more. Yeah.
- [51:39]
B
Fantastic. I mean, it's so. It's so uplifting to see your enthusiasm for it and your positivity about it, because it's. It's so easy to just hear the moaning and the negativity and that's like. Yeah, I know. Yes, I know. But I mean, I think. Think, you know, that would. My argument would be so.
- [51:56]
A
Well, yes, I.
- [51:57]
B
But I think you'll find that a heat pump is more efficient and the way. And you've got to think, are we. You know, all my arguments are like, yeah, what. You know, I barely know what I'm talking about at all. And that to hear that is just really, really exciting, that it's someone who.
- [52:10]
A
Weren'T wrong to defend it.
- [52:12]
B
No, no, I know. Yes, I know. But no, that's. It is brilliant, Adam, it's such a joy to talk to you and it's so good to hear what you're doing and we will I'm sure we'll talk again very soon and, you know, and good luck with it all. That's fantastic what you're doing. I just. I'm really blown away.
- [52:29]
A
I really appreciate that. Thank you. Means a lot coming for you and thank you for. For having me on the pod and giving me a chance to scream and chat about it. I want to tell everyone, obviously. Yeah, yeah. You know, this is just the beginning for. Even if you've not got a heat pump, you've got a heat pump already. You should subscribe to us, follow the channel because we're. This is going to be a fun ride for us. We've got loads more fun stuff coming up, bro.
- [52:48]
B
Excellent stuff. Thanks so much.
- [52:50]
A
Thanks for having me on, Rob.
- [52:57]
B
Oh, I really hope you enjoyed that. What an amazing. Just amazing enthusiasm. I got fair. What. I got swept along with it. Not surprising, really. That's all. We got a lot more episodes to come. Please do subscribe. Please do tell your friends about this show, particularly if they're talking about that heat pumps and they don't work. They're not really any good for me. I'm getting there, all that stuff. It's really worth trying to get people to watch these things, to see that there is. There is some genuine information about heat pumps going around the world that will actually, you know, they work anyway. That's enough for me. Do come along to our live shows. I don't know when the next one is. I can't even tell anymore. Say that. But they're brilliant. We'd love you to. To see you there. And if you can't get to those. But then please do continue watching everything electric tech. And as always, if you have been, thank you for watching.