1980s terraced house with underfloor heating - heat pump?

Hello everyone,

after a heating fire in the basement at my parents' house, the pellet heating system is history. A new one is needed. Two options:

a) new pellet heating: the problem is that this entails further modifications due to the new fire protection regulations (for example, the chimney must be raised by over 2 meters).

b) possibly a heat pump, especially if the insurance does not cover a new pellet heating system.

The house is a mid-terrace house (only 2 exterior walls) from the 80s, partly fitted with new windows in the 00s, a (probably slight) insulated roof, and underfloor heating throughout the house, which heats the house well without making your feet hot. There is a very small photovoltaic system facing south (2kWp, already quite old). The heating engineer was here today with the chimney sweep. Both said that calculations would have to be done first to see if a heat pump would even work, and if so, operation would be significantly more expensive than with pellets.

I would have thought that with the underfloor heating and the other conditions this would actually be a no-brainer? Which type of heating now brings the water to a temperature suitable for underfloor heating is irrelevant, right? Or am I missing something?

What consumption has there been so far? With what temperature was the underfloor heating operated? Otherwise, have the room-specific heating load calculated cheaply by Heckmann and have a heat pump designed. Or not, if the calculation turns out to be too poor. Basically, I see the heat pump as a well possible heating system even in old buildings.

You can have it calculated sometime, but it actually doesn’t sound bad regarding the heat pump. What I’ve noticed so far: if you mention a heat pump to a chimney sweep, they immediately speak badly of it. Ours recently urgently tried to discourage us from it, saying it’s completely unrealistic for our house, etc. A few days earlier, we had received the energy consultant’s calculation, which showed that it is quite feasible; we only need to replace 2 radiators, which are simply too small for the rooms (which we had already suspected). The chimney sweeps might fear the redundancy of their profession.

If you mention a heat pump to a chimney sweep, it is immediately disparaged.

Our chimney sweep did not complain.

We lowered the heating temperature of our old oil heating system for one winter to test whether our radiators would be sufficient with the lower temperature of a heat pump.

Our brick house is from the seventies, all the windows are new, and meanwhile the heat pump has been installed. At the moment it is our first winter test, but so far it has not been cold.
For such days, we have the option to heat additionally with the wood stove.

Hello I have to say I also have a terraced house from the 80s. There was a heating system from 1989. We were also faced with the decision between a gas heating system or a heat pump. We decided on the heat pump. I have to say that we also have underfloor heating everywhere. With such an old heating system our consumption was 16000 kW gas. With the heat pump since 1.9.2024 we are at 1300 kW electricity. If everything goes well I expect savings of about 1000 euros compared to the old heating system.

Today the installer of our heat pump was here because it had stopped producing heat after loud rattling in the part outside with the fan.
It happened on a holiday, as expected.
It was simply switched off and on again and is running at the moment.
The installer couldn't say what the problem was (he didn't know it yet), for that the manufacturers have to send someone, which they will hopefully do soon.

We were and still are aware that this technology is still "something new" and that there can be problems accordingly.
I find it so clearly better not to burn gas or oil (as we did before) that I accept this somewhat uncertain situation without hesitation.
New technology needs time to be developed to perfection and if no one uses it, nothing will come of it either.

We have 2 wood-burning stoves in the house and wood in the garage, so in case of doubt we can manage that way for a while.