Like fridges, heat pumps don’t need an annual service | Letter

I read Mary Massey’s letter (2 November) with some surprise. She said that her heat pump needs an annual service and that this year it cost about £350. My ground-source heat pump has been heating my house for 18 years and it does not need or get an annual service.

A heat pump is essentially a big refrigerator working in reverse, and how often do you have your fridge serviced? That is another benefit of heat pumps. It has no burner and so it is not continually deteriorating; nor is there a fire-safety issue.

The company that installed it told me that a service every few years to check the ground loop fluid density and an overall lookover is sufficient, providing it is working normally. It is an electrical device. My service costs about £170.

Ground-source and air-source heat pumps are extremely efficient machines and can provide up to about four or five times the efficiency rates of boilers that use burners.
David Reynolds
Diss, Norfolk