Customers warm to heat pumps in 2012

I've been reviewing the year in the first week of December. Not for nostalgic reasons but to prepare an application for the Heating and Ventilating News Awards next year. It brought to light that we have completed over 20 heat pump installations this year. NIBE have also just told us that we're in their top 3 installers in terms of heat pumps sold. Our man from NIBE also said that nationally sales of ground source heat pumps have been slow this year. This doesn't tie up with our experience as approximately half of our heat pump installations have been ground source. It makes me ask the question why are we bucking the trend - after all no RHI is in place yet. The industry is complaining that the slow decisions on the RHI is hampering growth in the renewable heating sector. Why have R A Brown had a bumper year? An old fashioned approach seems to work well - traditional values of service, no hard selling. We have opened a Renewable Heating Showroom this Autumn and this is being very well used by potential customers. A heat pump is a substantial purchase and it is reassuring for people to walk into a warm premises in the winter, heated by an air source heat pump. Yes they really do work. Preparing our application for the H & V awards also highlighted what lovely customers we have - we haven't always been good at getting testimonials at the end of a job but I e-mailed 4 customers for feedback/testimonials and they all replied within 12 hours helping me support our application. Another new year's resolution: get customers to fill in my new feedback form so I've got evidence at my fingertips of our consistently high quality service. In the new year I plan to use this new blog to discuss relevant issues in the renewable heating industry, look at topics concerning domestic heating in general and analyse how the Green Deal and other new schemes are working out on the ground. Having spent hours responding to the 116 page final RHI consultation from DECC I think I deserve a Christmas break. We wish everyone a toasty but energy efficient new year.