Priya Nathan

A heat pump hot water system typically uses a third to a quarter of the electricity of a resistance tank for the same hot water. Against gas the comparison depends entirely on your gas tariff, which is the part most calculators skip.

Cold-climate heat pumps use vapour injection and smarter defrost logic to hold output as it gets colder outside. The rating tells you the equipment can keep working, not that it'll be cheap to run at minus fifteen.

Ducted systems heat and cool a whole home from one hidden unit; splits do it room by room. The right call depends on your ceiling space, your budget and how you actually use your rooms.

The honest answer is "it depends on your local gas and electricity prices" — but here's the framework for working it out for your own home, instead of trusting a marketing brochure's number.

A heat pump doesn't create heat from electricity the way a bar heater does — it moves existing heat from one place to another. That distinction is why it can deliver 3–5x more heating energy than the electricity it consumes.

A correctly sized heat pump and an oversized one can look identical on the invoice. The difference shows up in your running costs for the next fifteen years, so the sizing method the installer uses matters more than the brand.

Most households can't (or don't want to) electrify everything at once. If you're prioritising, here's a sensible order based on payback, comfort and the size of the load you're replacing.