Heat pump installation Starcross: right across the water from Exmouth
Starcross faces Exmouth across the Exe, close enough to watch the ferry cross from windows on The Strand. Heat pump installation in Starcross starts with a free home assessment before anything gets quoted.
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.
James Stalker, owner
NAPIT MCS assessor
Illustration
What your Starcross installation includes
On a job like this, the bulk of the cost sits in working out what the building needs, not in the equipment itself. A rendered cob cottage near the water and a bungalow further back from it get the same process, because the numbers decide the kit rather than the address. Every Starcross installation we quote covers:
- The heat loss survey and the design it produces. Wall construction, glazing, floor build-up and how each room is actually used, recorded one at a time, producing a kilowatt figure that belongs to your address alone.
- The heat pump and a matched cylinder. A heat pump outside suited to the property’s heat loss and a heat-pump-specific cylinder inside, sized against the bathrooms the household actually runs rather than a catalogue default.
- Radiator changes where the numbers call for them. A solid-walled cottage might need two or three emitters upsized; a newer bungalow off the water sometimes needs none. The schedule reaches you in writing before anything is bought.
- Pipework, electrics and the outdoor base. Routing flow and return through an older Starcross cottage with no cavity to hide anything in gets settled on the survey visit. Electrics normally take a day, and the outdoor unit lands on a base positioned by the MCS sound calculation.
- Commissioning and optimisation. Flow temperature set against the design figure, weather compensation configured, and hot water timing agreed with you rather than left on factory defaults.
- The grant application. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme claim is filed by us, not you, and the award is off the total before an invoice exists.
- Handover and aftercare. A plain-English run through the controls, then the same number to ring when the first service falls due.
Underfloor heating sits inside the same scope, already down in a Starcross property or going in fresh alongside the rest. It runs happily at the low flow temperatures these systems produce, which is more than most radiators can claim.
Air source heat pump installation Starcross: mains gas on the water, oil on the outskirts
Starcross runs along a single stretch of the Exe estuary, with the A379 and the Exeter to Plymouth railway line squeezed onto the same narrow shelf of land as the houses.
- Before around 1820 it was little more than a hamlet known for its cockles and oysters.
- The waterfront filled in from there: Strand House on The Strand dates from the early 1800s, and once the railway reached Starcross in 1846 the village grew quickly into a Victorian bathing resort, with villas going up behind the older cottages and further back from the water. A scattering of cob and stone cottages from centuries earlier still stand among them, some said to have been built for Powderham estate workers under the Courtenay family, whose castle sits a short way north on the same road.
The village itself sits mostly on the mains gas network, so for most Starcross homes the comparison is against an ageing gas boiler rather than an oil tank in the garden.
- We are the MCS-certified air-to-water specialist on Exeter Road in Exmouth, and James Stalker has fitted heat pumps since 2010, past 100 installations, so pricing off a postcode is not how a Starcross quote gets written. A cob wall two feet thick behaves nothing like a Victorian villa built in brick, and neither behaves like a bungalow finished within the last fifty years. If you are weighing up a heat pump installer for an older property like these, the question that matters is whether they will measure it properly before quoting.
- We do: every room measured, cob wall or brick. Sizing off a floor-area formula misses that difference every time. A room-by-room heat loss survey is what actually tells the design what it is working with, and it is how we plan an air source heat pump installation for any of the three.
You can see Exmouth from the front of most houses on The Strand, under two miles away across the water when the passenger ferry is running.
- A service call by road is a different matter: round through Exeter it is the best part of eighteen miles, whatever the water suggests.
- What that means for a Starcross homeowner is a specialist working from the far bank rather than a national installer dispatched from a depot two counties off, and our heat pump installation in Exmouth page covers the same firm on the near side.
A handful of properties on the outskirts, back from the gas main that follows the A379, sit off grid on oil or LPG instead, which changes the grant bracket, covered below.
Why Starcross homeowners choose us
Picking on price alone is how a heat pump ends up short-cycling in February. Five reasons homeowners around the estuary tend to weigh us in.
The owner runs your job.
- He assesses the house and designs the system, stays on site for the fitting, and commissions and hands over at the end, then does the aftercare, so the person you reach later understands your system.
- You can read about James on our about page.
★★★★★
“James Stalker is the most reliable man I know.”
Stephen M. · Google review · five stars
He audits other installers for a living.
- NAPIT contracts James as a freelance MCS assessor, so part of his month goes on judging whether somebody else’s heat pump installation meets the standard.
- Oversizing is not a theory to him.
Sizing comes from measurement, not a formula.
- Every room, wall type and window recorded before a kilowatt is specified, whichever of Starcross’s three building eras your house belongs to.
Cottages and villas are both welcome.
- Cob, solid stone, Victorian brick, modern block.
- Being told a property is unsuitable is usually a company avoiding the design work rather than a fact about the house.
The grant handled and deducted upfront, about a week on site.
The grant handled and deducted upfront, about a week on site.
- Where a property qualifies, we lodge the Boiler Upgrade Scheme application ourselves and subtract it before you are invoiced, never yours to pay out and claim back.
- The drive round through Exeter is routine rather than a special trip, and work usually starts Monday and is commissioned by Thursday or Friday. The rest of our patch is on the areas we cover page.
What homeowners say on Google
Grants and costs for Starcross homes
Not every property qualifies for either figure, and eligibility turns on your circumstances as much as the building itself.
Check if your home qualifiesOn running costs we are straight with you.
We will not put a percentage or an annual pound figure in front of you, because the honest number depends on your tariff, your fabric and what is coming out.
- For a Starcross household coming off oil, more on replacing an oil boiler with a heat pump in Devon.
- Which figure your own property actually qualifies for is something the free home assessment settles, not a postcode lookup.
Grant figures correct as of August 2026. Eligibility criteria apply and are confirmed at your free home assessment.
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Under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, an eligible owner-occupier in England or Wales replacing a fossil fuel heating system can qualify for £7,500 towards an air-to-water heat pump.
- That is the figure that applies to most Starcross homes, since the village sits mostly on mains gas rather than oil.
- Where a property sits off the gas grid and burns oil or LPG instead, it can qualify for the £9,000 heat pump grant on off-gas-grid oil or LPG homes, on any application lodged on or before 31 March 2027.
- Installation work also carries 0% VAT through to 31 March 2027.
The kit we fit in Starcross, and why
For the typical off-grid home the measured heat loss gives the size of unit, and the room figures show which radiators can stay as they are.
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.
Each property we quote gets a heat pump in the 4 to 10 kilowatt range a room-by-room survey typically returns on properties of this type, from whichever make suits it rather than the one or two a bigger firm is fixed on, and a cylinder that arrives already plumbed.
We are an Ideal Heating partner installer and James fits their UK-made units often, and the cylinder we usually fit turns up with its filter, diverter valve, cylinder stat and overheat cut-out already fitted at the factory. That matters in a village with three different ages of airing cupboard.
In a cob cottage where the old cupboard barely fits a coat, and in a modern bungalow with a proper walk-in, the same factory-plumbed cylinder goes in either way, saving a comparable amount of site time. That describes what usually fits, not a rule we bend a house to meet. Where a Starcross property genuinely calls for something outside that range, the heat loss survey shows it and the design follows the building.
Heat pump installation Starcross, from first 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.
“The heat pump is almost silent, which was something we were worried about, and the results have been fantastic. We’re lovely and warm and always have plenty of hot water.”
Grace M. · Google review · five stars
Your guarantees
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IWA workmanship warranty and deposit insurance.
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Whatever James fits, we register the manufacturer’s cover at commissioning. When he fits an Ideal, it carries seven years of Ideal parts and labour; a different make keeps its maker’s cover.
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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 and Teignbridge, including Starcross, Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton, Sidmouth, Ottery St Mary, Woodbury, Lympstone, Newton Poppleford, West Hill, Honiton and neighbouring Kenton. On the far side of the estuary system, heat pump installation in Kingsteignton works the same way. Along the coast, heat pump installation in Teignmouth is part of the same patch.
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.
Heat pump installation Starcross: common questions
Usually, once it is designed for the wall rather than around it. Cob and solid stone give heat back on a different rhythm from a modern cavity wall, so the room-by-room heat loss survey carries more weight in Starcross’s older cottages, not less. We confirm construction type at the free home assessment before anything is priced.
Book my free home assessmentThat depends on the system size the heat loss survey calls for, the cylinder and how many radiators change, so we will not put a misleading “from” price in front of you. Every Starcross enquiry starts with a free home assessment and a fixed estimate on the visit, with any grant taken off the invoice.
Book my free home assessmentThe Boiler Upgrade Scheme. An eligible owner-occupier in England or Wales can qualify for £7,500 once a fossil fuel system comes out, which covers most Starcross homes on mains gas, or for £9,000 where the property sits off the gas grid and burns oil or LPG, on any application lodged on or before 31 March 2027. Whether your own Starcross address clears the criteria is what the free home assessment establishes.
Book my free home assessmentThe village is largely on mains gas, so the £7,500 rate is the one that applies to most Starcross properties. A handful of homes on the outskirts, off the main gas run, are on oil or LPG instead, and a property in that position can qualify for the £9,000 grant for off-gas-grid oil or LPG homes, on any application lodged on or before 31 March 2027. We check which figure applies to your address at the free home assessment rather than assuming it from the postcode.
Book my free home assessmentRoughly a week on a typical Starcross property. We tend to start on a Monday and commission on Thursday or Friday. Hot water and heating go off in short spells during the work rather than for whole days at a stretch.
Book my free home assessmentNo, and nothing is owed anywhere in the process until you decide to go ahead. Only the room-by-room heat loss survey is chargeable, at £250 plus VAT, and it is wiped entirely if a Starcross enquiry proceeds to install.
Book my free home assessmentBook your free home assessment in Starcross
Send us the details of your Starcross property and James will call to fix a time, and he stays your point of contact from that first conversation through 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
Would rather talk it through first? Ring 01395 202030 and James picks up, not a call centre. Our contact page has the other ways to reach us.
