Heat pump installation in Honiton: off oil for good, designed room by room
Honiton is two heating markets in one postcode: mains gas along the Georgian High Street, oil tanks in almost every village around it. We are the MCS-certified heat pump specialist that designs for both, room by room, with the £7,500 to £9,000 grant handled and deducted upfront.
James and the team provided a first rate end to end service, our old oil boiler failed on Good Friday and within 3/4 weeks we were up and running with a new energy efficient air source heating system. Totally recommend Eco Pro Renewables Ltd to anyone who asks
James Stalker, owner
NAPIT MCS assessor
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What your Honiton installation includes
The majority of heat pump problems are design problems. Get the design right and the technology just works. The design takes the effort, and honestly that is what your money is for. Every installation includes:
- A heat loss survey of the whole property, room by room, with no reliance on floor area or postcode averages.
- A system shaped by that survey, sized for the coldest day of the year without straying into oversized and wasteful territory.
- A clear radiator plan. We tell you which, if any, must be upsized to work properly once the temperature comes down.
- The heat pump, a new cylinder made for heat pump systems, and all pipework and controls, all supplied and fitted.
- Commissioning and optimisation, so the system runs efficiently from the first day rather than months later.
- Smart controls and weather compensation where they are worth fitting, so the heat pump tracks the weather and what the house is calling for.
- A full handover so the running of it is clear, plus aftercare whenever it is needed.
Underfloor heating is on our list too, and if it is already installed that is a real advantage, since it suits low-temperature heat perfectly.
Oil country: the real heating story around Honiton
Honiton made its name on lace and antiques, and the Georgian High Street still trades on both.
- Its heating splits in two, though. In the town itself, most streets have mains gas or electric heating and housing from every decade.
- Drive five minutes out in any direction and that changes. Up the hill towards Dunkeswell and the Blackdown Hills, out through Awliscombe and Combe Raleigh, down the Otter valley past Gittisham, mains gas has never been laid. Out here, heating means a tank in the garden, an oil boiler in the utility room and a delivery lorry you hope arrives before the gauge hits red. It is also where most of our heat pump installation enquiries around Honiton come from.
Those enquiries tend to start the same way.
- The boiler is fifteen or twenty years old and the engineer who services it has started muttering about parts.
- Winter fills sting more each year, and the price depends on which week you ring round. Somewhere at the back of your mind sits the January scenario: tank low, boiler dead, and a wait for whichever engineer can get to you first.
Our air source heat pump installation service ends that arrangement.
- The oil boiler goes, and a single outdoor unit and a modern hot water cylinder take over.
- We disconnect and cap the oil line and leave the tank safely in place, or remove it and dispose of it legally if you add removal as an optional extra. These are air-to-water heat pumps, so your radiators and hot water work exactly as they did before, minus the deliveries.
James Stalker, the owner, designs every system himself from a room-by-room heat loss calculation and installs it with his own vetted teams. That includes the older stone and cob properties around Honiton that other installers turn down.
Why Honiton homeowners choose us
Any heat pump installer can quote for Honiton. Here is what you get from the one who designs the system himself.
You deal with the owner, and our about page tells you who that is: ex-army, a heat pump engineer since 2010, more than 100 heat pump installations.
- James does the assessment at your kitchen table, designs the system and commissions it, and the aftercare stays with him.
- Ask a hard question about your property before the install, and after handover the answer still comes from the man who designed it.
★★★★★
“James Stalker is the most reliable man I know.”
Stephen M. · Google review · five stars
He audits other installers’ work.
He audits other installers’ work.
- James is a freelance NAPIT MCS assessor: heat pump companies across the region are inspected against his judgement.
- He knows precisely what a badly designed system looks like, because finding them is part of his job. That knowledge goes into every install he designs.
Room-by-room heat loss design.
- Every quote is built from a measured heat loss calculation, never a floor-area guess.
- That is what prevents the two classic heat pump failures: an oversized unit that short-cycles and wastes electricity, and an undersized one that struggles on a cold Blackdown Hills morning.
Older homes welcome.
- Thick stone walls, cob, a 1970s bungalow with its original radiators: none of it rules you out.
- A fair share of our enquiries around Honiton come from owners who have already been told no by someone else. Heat loss is measured, not assumed, and the system is sized to what your house actually needs.
Grant handled and deducted upfront.
- As an MCS-certified installer we apply for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme on your behalf and take it off your invoice before you pay. You never fund the grant yourself and wait to claim it back.
- And afterwards you get James, not a national helpline, for servicing and anything that needs putting right. We also cover Feniton, four miles west.
What homeowners say on Google
Grants and costs for Honiton homes
We handle the whole application as your MCS installer and deduct the grant from your invoice upfront, so you never pay it and reclaim it. Eligibility criteria apply and not every property qualifies, which is why the sensible first step is the free assessment.
Check if your home qualifiesA word on running costs, because we would rather lose a sale than overpromise.
Against oil on a standard electricity tariff, savings are usually modest.
- The real wins are protection from oil price swings, access to dedicated heat pump electricity tariffs, and the end of deliveries, tank checks and running dry in midwinter.
Grant figures correct as of August 2026. Eligibility criteria apply and are confirmed at your free home assessment.
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The Boiler Upgrade Scheme currently gives eligible owner-occupiers in England and Wales £7,500 towards replacing a fossil-fuel boiler with an air source heat pump.
- For homes inside Honiton on mains gas, £7,500 is the figure.
- The grant rises to £9,000 for off-gas-grid properties heated by oil or LPG, on applications made up to 31 March 2027. The villages around the town are exactly the properties the £9,000 uplift was designed for, and we get the paperwork in well ahead of that deadline.
- Two further points worth knowing. Since April 2026 a valid EPC is no longer strictly required to apply, which unblocks many older rural properties. Heat pump installation also carries 0% VAT until 31 March 2027.
The kit we fit, and why
Each Honiton design starts with the measured heat loss.
For most off-grid homes that figure fixes the output, and the room-by-room breakdown shows where radiators need attention.
We choose the cylinder for your home, as we do the heat pump, and it usually arrives pre-plumbed with its valves and stats fitted.
We fit weather-compensating controls where they add value, and set them up at commissioning.
Big firms tend to stay with one or two makes, while we pick the heat pump and cylinder for each property on its merits.
We fit Ideal often, partly because Ideal builds its units in the UK, but the final pick follows your heat loss, cylinder space and hot water needs.
The 4 to 10 kW outputs cover most Devon homes, and the pre-plumbed cylinder on a typical Honiton job arrives with filter, diverter valve, cylinder stat and overheat stat fitted. That gives you a faster, cleaner install with fewer weak points later. It has gone in many times over, and the results repeat.
Our process, from free visit to handover
Four steps, and the first one is free.
Free home visit
We come out, look at your property, answer your questions, and tell you honestly whether a heat pump is right for your home.
Book my free home assessmentYour heat loss survey and design
A full room-by-room heat loss survey and a designed system, with a fixed written scope and price. The survey is £250 plus VAT, and that fee is wiped from the final bill when you go ahead with the install.
Installation and commissioning
A clean MCS install, usually about a week start to finish, one or two jobs at a time, with the system properly commissioned and dialled in.
Handover and aftercare
We show you how it runs, and we are here afterwards, with servicing when it is due.
“Their design was really detailed, explained clearly and the heat pump works perfectly. Would definitely recommend and already booked in for a few of our other properties.”
DJ G. · Google review · five stars
Your guarantees
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IWA workmanship warranty and deposit insurance.
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Ideal heat pumps get seven years of manufacturer cover for parts and labour, and anything else we fit gets its own warranty from its maker. On commissioning day we handle the registration for both.
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MCS certified, RECC and APHC member, NAPIT assessor, Ideal Heating partner.
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The grant paperwork handled for you, start to finish.
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Ongoing servicing when you need it, including years down the line. Heat pump servicing →
More recent projects
Exmouth
A 1930s six-bedroom home with 34 windows
The owners doubted a heat pump could heat an older, larger property. A detailed design running at a low 47 degrees, with seven radiators upgraded and the rest kept, proved it could, comfortably.
West Hill · Ottery St Mary
The job three installers said could not be done
The owners wanted their hot water cylinder relocated to the garage. Three previous companies refused. We redesigned the pipework and did it, on a 311m² home with uninsulated floors.
Newton Abbot
A period home others had written off
We redesigned and re-piped the entire heating system for low-temperature running, and added radiators to rooms that never had them. “Too old” is usually a design problem, not a dead end.
We install across East Devon, including Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton, Sidmouth, Ottery St Mary, Woodbury, Lympstone, Newton Poppleford, West Hill and Honiton. Along the A35, heat pump installation in Axminster is covered too. Up on the plateau, heat pump installation in Dunkeswell is covered from the same base. Head south on the A375 into the Sid valley, where heat pump installation in Sidbury often means storage heaters and no wet system to reuse.
Street, Somerset: three installers, three different answers. We designed it correctly.
Before calling us, this homeowner had already had two national installers and another company out, and been handed completely conflicting advice, one proposing an oversized 16kW system, another saying the property was not suitable for a heat pump at all. Our room-by-room heat loss survey showed the home was suitable, but nowhere near the 16kW that had been quoted. We sized it correctly, upgraded only the radiators that genuinely needed it, and fitted an Ideal Logic Air matched to the actual heat loss rather than the quote sheet.
Common questions
Yes, and that is most of our work in this area. Dunkeswell, Awliscombe, Combe Raleigh, Gittisham and the farms and hamlets between them are almost entirely off the gas grid, and oil boiler replacement is precisely what the £9,000 grant uplift exists for. We cover Honiton and the wider EX14 area from our base in Exmouth. Payhembury and Kentisbeare lie further out towards Cullompton, and we cover both.
Book my free home assessmentUsually, yes, and the honest answer comes from measurement rather than assumption. The room-by-room survey tells us how much heat each room actually loses, so the system is designed for the building you own, not a modern equivalent of it. Some older properties around Honiton need a radiator or two upsized. Very few are genuinely unsuitable.
Book my free home assessmentIt depends on the property, which is why every Honiton quote starts with a heat loss survey rather than a number plucked from a price list. What we can say for certain: the £7,500 grant, rising to £9,000 for eligible off-grid oil and LPG homes on applications made up to 31 March 2027, comes off your invoice upfront, VAT is 0% until March 2027, and the free home assessment gives you a written estimate before you commit to anything.
Book my free home assessmentHeat pumps run at lower flow temperatures than oil boilers, typically 45 to 50°C, so some radiators may need upsizing to deliver the same warmth. The survey tells you exactly which ones, and what that costs, before you commit. In practice, many properties around Honiton keep most of their existing radiators.
Book my free home assessmentAbout a week. We typically start on a Monday and commission on the Thursday or Friday, with a dedicated electrical team completing the wiring in a day. Because we run one or two installations at a time, a Honiton job gets the same attention on day five as on day one.
Book my free home assessmentEligible owner-occupiers get £7,500 through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme now. For off-gas-grid oil and LPG properties, the higher rate is available now, and applications made up to 31 March 2027 can qualify for £9,000. Many homes on oil around Honiton fall squarely into that category. We apply on your behalf and deduct it upfront. Not every property qualifies, so we check eligibility at the free assessment.
Book my free home assessmentYes. The home visit is free with no obligation. The detailed heat loss survey is £250 plus VAT, and that cost is written off the bill if you go ahead with the install. The fee applies only where you choose not to proceed.
Book my free home assessmentBook your free home assessment in Honiton
We will look at your Honiton property, give you straight answers, and you will deal with James from first visit to handover.
★★★★★
“We had an excellent 10/10 experience with James and would highly recommend him. … Communication was outstanding throughout, he responded quickly and always provided clear explanations whenever we had questions.”
Georgie S. · Google review · five stars
Prefer to talk it through first? Call 01395 202030 and you will get James, the owner, not a call centre.
