Possible Opportunities

[Worcester]

Had a coffee yestardy with Sam Waxman of ... Waxman Energy

They are looking to develope a trusted network of 10 installers around their heatpump range.

We are training and investing in all areas renewable, so that we have teams to install PV, Thermal, Heatpumps, Woodburners and Biomass, plus teaming up with a couple of local insulation companies. Our main customer base is Oil and they are the best candidates for heatpumps. Some can be retrofitted without major changes to the heating infrastucture (radiators pipework etc) and that is going to be a growth market.

So - if, like us, you are in this for the long haul (and you're more than 45 miles from Worcester ) - it might me worth giving then a call.

We've also just started a major advertsing campaign which is highly focussed to the AB's demographics in the same patch promoting whole energy solutions, so it all fits well for us. and British Gas, SSE are helping us as energy costs becomes more and more an issue.

I guess we are taking a different approach from MCS Renewables, as I don't believe that any of our specific demographic market would sign over to the Green Deal option, especially when finance can be found at the same rate without all the hoops to jump through.

 

[Worcester]

Aha !! Just saw Murdoch's post on the main forum under the BG prices increases entry. Bit of deja vue here

 

[Gavin A]

I'm doing a hetas accredited biomass course this week, with heat pumps next on the list, as we have a heating engineer in the firm, and I've got a limited scope heating / plumbing ticket for solar thermal anyway, it makes sense.

there's 200 solar PV installers inside 20 miles of us, but only 2 that combine PV, SWH, Heat pumps and biomass. I've done a wind installers course in the passed as well, but could probably do with refreshing it if we decided to dip our toes in that market as well... but I think sorting the renewable heat side of things out fully will take most of the winter anyway.

What heat pump kit are waxman selling?

I'm also not touching green deal with a barge pole for similar reasons I think.

 

[solarsavings]

Waxman are selling samsung heatpumps.

EDIT: Actually They're not I was thinking of segen.

 

[sambotc]

I'm doing a hetas accredited biomass course this week, with heat pumps next on the list, as we have a heating engineer in the firm, and I've got a limited scope heating / plumbing ticket for solar thermal anyway, it makes sense.

there's 200 solar PV installers inside 20 miles of us, but only 2 that combine PV, SWH, Heat pumps and biomass. I've done a wind installers course in the passed as well, but could probably do with refreshing it if we decided to dip our toes in that market as well... but I think sorting the renewable heat side of things out fully will take most of the winter anyway.

What heat pump kit are waxman selling?

I'm also not touching green deal with a barge pole for similar reasons I think.

the hetas course is very good Gavin, is mick taking you for it from sure fire do you know?


i did the course at the windhager factory and I have done a fair few courses to be fair, but the hetas biomass course stood out as the most comprehensive. I had already done H003 and H004 so just sat the H005 but I believe you can do a 5 day course which allows you to do biomass on its own?

The only thing is you need to do H006 flue installation course in order to install and internal chimney through a floor which they didn't say about until the end! Still not done it yet as haven't needed to! Just waiting for a response to a wood pellet quote I put in last week.

 

[Gavin A]

think I'm on a different course - it's the napit, sevenoaks / plumb center one in bristol, but hetas accredited.

Can't say I'm hugely impressed tbh, eg skimming over heat sink rads with a glib 'you'll not really need to do this with the new automatic boilers'. Well maybe, but then we might be asked to service the older gravity fed units, or even install some smaller less fancy units that do actually still need this function.

TBh I've been looking into it for a few years, so think I'll be able to sus it out anyway, but it's all a bit slap dash and not very specialist.

 

[Eco Deal]

do you need unvented hot water for that gavin ?

 

[Gavin A]

yep, and tbh a fair amount of plumbing and heating experience is assumed in the course, with some raised eyebrows about my level of experience even though we've been doing solar water heating for 3-4 years (not that many systems though tbh).

I was still first to finish the tests, with all but one question right first time, and that one was pretty ambiguous. So I think I've got the theory side of it better than most of the experienced heating engineers, which isn't surprising as I've been looking into it for years.

There's a few key things they took as read though that I've never done before like smoke bombing the flu to test it, but I'll be working with our gas safe heating engineer for these installs anyway, so he can teach me that side of things.