26/08/2026
"They kept their radiators."
That's the part most people don't expect when they ask us about a heat pump.
This one's in Acharacle. The old oil boiler had been bolted to the back of the house for years, and you can see the tank sitting in the garden behind it. It's gone now, and a Panasonic Aquarea L Series 7kW sits in exactly the same spot.
Not just the same spot either. It's on the old boiler's own base. Part of the reason we specified the L Series here is its footprint, compact enough to fit what was already there. No new groundwork, no new pipe runs. We raised it on stands above that base, mind, because that corner takes water when the weather does what the west coast does.
What didn't change: every radiator stayed where it was, and so did nearly all the pipework. The indoor unit and the new hot water cylinder both went into the loft, so nobody lost a cupboard to make room for it.
The only things we replaced were the things that needed replacing.
That's not luck, it's the survey. We do a room-by-room MCS heat loss calculation on every house, which tells us the flow temperature the existing radiators can actually deliver. Get that right and most of them stay. Skip it, and the safe thing to quote is a whole new set. More cost, more mess, more days in your house.
£9,000 Home Energy Scotland grant, being £7,500 plus the £1,500 rural and island uplift. Estimated £900 to £1,200 a year off their heating costs against oil, based on our MCS heat loss calculations.
If you're off-gas anywhere in the Highlands and you've been told a heat pump means gutting the house, it's worth a conversation. We'll survey it properly and tell you honestly what your house needs, including if the honest answer is "not yet".
Acharacle, Ardnamurchan. McInnes Group, MCS certified and Home Energy Scotland approved.
