Like many “green” technologies, heat pumps are nothing new, but it is true to say that their popularity has increased dramatically in recent years.
You already have a heat pump, maybe more than one, in your house. A domestic fridge uses the heat pump principle to move heat into your kitchen, from the fridge, reducing the temperature inside, and warming the room, slightly.
Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) work on exactly the same principle as your fridge, just on a different scale, moving heat from the outside air into your house for heating water and the rooms. Heat pumps consume electricity, but they produce more watts of heat than they consume, so the efficiency is greater than 100%. This is usually expressed as Coefficient Of Performance (COP) and typical values should be around 3 for well installed ASHP (3-4 for GSHP).
We highly recommend using trusted installers recommended by HNLC such as Cotswold Green Energy. Nearly all homes can have effective ASHPs running their heating if installed by a competent installer. Sadly we have also seen seen homes that are ideally suited for an ASHP have poor insulations carried out.
With the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant now at £9,000 (as of July 2026) for off-gas areas like Hook Norton it is unlikely that there will be a better time to switch from oil to ASHP in the next decade. Just contact us to make sure that the installer you have selected is one that HNLC has heard good things about.
Unlike ground source you don’t need quite a large area of land, so installation is simpler and cheaper. Performance is not as high, but the payback periods are better than for ground source.
Carbon savings, relative to oil, are good and if you join Hooky Energy Club then you can set the timings for your ASHP to make the most of the low priced electricity during the day throught the year.