Heat pump installation Topsham: your home’s heat loss decides the design
Some Topsham houses are built from Dutch brick that arrived as ship ballast; others are postwar cavity-wall builds. Heat pump installation Topsham starts with knowing which one is yours.
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.
James Stalker, owner
NAPIT MCS assessor
Illustration
What your Topsham installation includes
A heat pump that disappoints its owner is nearly always one specified in a hurry. Most of the cost here goes on deciding what the building needs before a single component is ordered. This is what the work covers.
- The heat loss survey and the design it produces. Wall construction, glazing, floor build-up and how each room actually gets used, recorded one room at a time. Out of that comes a kilowatt figure belonging to your address and no other.
- The heat pump and a matched cylinder. The outdoor unit James judges right for the house, often an Ideal, and a heat-pump-specific hot water cylinder inside, sized against the number of bathrooms the household really runs rather than a spec sheet default.
- Radiator changes where the numbers ask for them. On a solid ballast-brick frontage that can mean two or three emitters. Up near the Avocet Line, frequently none at all. The schedule reaches you in writing before anything is bought.
- Pipework, electrics and the outdoor base. Getting flow and return from the outdoor unit to a cylinder inside a house with 18th century panelling and no cavity to hide anything in is half the job, so the route is settled on the survey visit. The electrics normally take a day, and the unit lands on a prepared base in a position fixed by the MCS sound calculation.
- Commissioning and optimisation. Flow temperature set against the design figure, weather compensation configured, hot water timing agreed with you instead of left on whatever the factory shipped.
- The grant application. Filing the Boiler Upgrade Scheme claim is our job rather than yours, and the award is netted off well before an invoice is raised.
- Handover and aftercare. A run through the controls in plain English, then the same number to ring when the first service comes round.
Underfloor heating sits inside the same scope, whether it is already down or going in with the rest. It is happy at the low flow temperatures these systems run at, which is more than most radiators can say.
Air source heat pump installation Topsham: solid walls at one end, cavities at the other
Topsham sits four miles down the Exe from Exeter, a working port long before it was a commuter town.
- Merchants trading cloth with the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries faced their houses on the Strand and Fore Street with brick that crossed the Channel as ballast, some of it under Dutch gables. Those walls are solid the whole way through.
- Nothing to fill: the cavity had not been invented.
Ten minutes inland, around the station on the Avocet Line and out along Exeter Road, the stock jumps era: cavity construction, insulation you can measure and improve.
- Two houses inside one EX3 postcode can want systems that share little, sometimes not even the badge on the outdoor unit.
- We are not tied to one maker, so the air source heat pump Topsham homeowners get from us is the one their house calls for, often an Ideal on a pre-plumbed cylinder, and over the Clyst bridge toward Ebford the lanes run on oil and LPG, a different grant bracket again. Four miles back upriver we cover heat pump installations in Exeter.
So we do not price from an address.
- We are the MCS-certified air-to-water specialist on Exeter Road in Exmouth, and James Stalker, the owner, runs every assessment himself: on heat pumps since 2010, past 100 installations.
- Sizing comes off a room-by-room heat loss survey, never a floor-area rule of thumb.
Why Topsham homeowners choose us
A heat pump installer Topsham owners can still reach two winters later beats the lowest number on a quote. We are a heat pump company Topsham homeowners deal with directly.
The owner runs your job.
- James is with you from the first visit and design to handover, watching over the fitting and commissioning the system himself. After that the aftercare is his, so you reach the person who knows your system rather than a sales desk.
- Read his story on our about page.
★★★★★
“James Stalker is the most reliable man I know.”
Stephen M. · Google review · five stars
Your designer inspects everybody else.
Your designer inspects everybody else.
- NAPIT contracts James as a freelance MCS assessor, so part of his month goes on judging other companies’ heat pump installations against the standard.
- Oversizing is not a theory to him.
Sizing comes from measurement.
- Every room, wall type and window recorded before a kilowatt is specified.
- Guessing is how short-cycling systems end up in houses.
We design for the house we find, not the town we are in.
- A ballast-brick frontage on the Strand and a 1970s cavity semi near the station are separate engineering problems, quoted as separate jobs.
- Neither design tells you anything useful about the other.
The grant handled, about a week on site.
- We lodge the Boiler Upgrade Scheme application for you and strip it out of the invoice, so the money never leaves your account.
- Work usually starts Monday and is commissioned by Thursday or Friday, and Exmouth to Topsham is a short drive when a service falls due, as it is for heat pumps in Lympstone.
What homeowners say on Google
Grants and costs for Topsham homes
Which of those two figures your own property qualifies for is something the free home assessment settles, on the building in front of us rather than on a postcode.
Check if your home qualifiesOn running costs you get it straight.
We will not put a percentage or an annual figure in front of you, because the honest answer turns on your tariff, your fabric and what is being replaced.
- For a household on oil out toward Ebford, what changes is the machinery around the bill: no tank to watch, no deliveries to chase.
- More on getting off oil in a Devon property.
Grant figures correct as of August 2026. Eligibility criteria apply and are confirmed at your free home assessment.
-
Under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme an eligible owner-occupier in England or Wales, swapping out a fossil fuel system, can claim £7,500 towards an air-to-water heat pump.
- Where a home has no mains gas connection and burns oil or LPG, the figure it can qualify for becomes the £9,000 heat pump grant, on any application lodged on or before 31 March 2027.
- Not every property qualifies, and the rules turn on your circumstances as much as the building. Our MCS certification lets us file that application and knock the grant off your invoice at the outset, rather than leaving you to fund it and chase it back.
- VAT on qualifying work sits at 0% through to 31 March 2027.
The kit we fit in Topsham, and why
Four to ten kilowatts covers the overwhelming majority of what stands between the Clyst bridge and Fore Street, and because the cylinder arrangement barely shifts between jobs, the install team meets a familiar build on nearly every one.
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.
Ideal is the outdoor unit we fit most often here, and the cylinder usually turns up already plumbed.
Ideal builds its units in the UK, so spares move quickly on the day something needs replacing, and the cylinder arrives with the filter, diverter valve, cylinder stat and overheat cut-out already mounted and wired.
In a Topsham house where the airing cupboard was carved out of a box room a couple of centuries back, lifting in a finished cylinder saves the best part of a day and removes a fistful of chances to make a poor joint. None of that is loyalty to a badge. Where a Topsham property genuinely calls for something else, the heat loss survey shows it, and the design follows the building.
Heat pump installation Topsham, 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.
“After comparing several quotes and gathering details I decided to go with Eco Pro after speaking with James and couldn’t be happier. Their design was really detailed, explained clearly and the heat pump works perfectly.”
DJ G. · Google review · five stars
Your guarantees
-
✓
IWA workmanship warranty and deposit insurance.
-
✓
We register the manufacturer’s warranty on every unit at commissioning. Ideal units carry seven years of manufacturer parts and labour, while other makes come with their own maker’s cover.
-
✓
MCS certified, RECC and APHC member, NAPIT assessor, Ideal Heating partner.
-
✓
The grant paperwork handled for you, start to finish.
-
✓
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 Exeter and East Devon, including Topsham, Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton, Sidmouth, Ottery St Mary, Woodbury, Lympstone, Newton Poppleford, West Hill and Honiton. Directly across the Exe, our Exminster heat pump installation page covers the far bank.
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 Topsham: common questions
Look at the brickwork. A solid wall usually shows alternating short and long brick ends; a cavity wall reads as almost all long ones. Thickness at a window reveal is the other giveaway. Solid is the norm along the Strand and Fore Street; later Topsham streets are generally cavity-built. We confirm it at the free home assessment.
Book my free home assessmentOften, in some rooms. Solid walls lose more heat per square metre, so a few emitters must be larger to hold the room at the lower flow temperature a heat pump runs at, around 45 to 50°C. In a cavity-built Topsham property more of what you have tends to stay. You get the schedule in writing first.
Book my free home assessmentIt follows the system size the heat loss survey calls for, the cylinder, and how many radiators change. Rather than a misleading “from” price, every Topsham enquiry gets a free home assessment with a fixed estimate on the visit, and the grant comes 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, or for £9,000 where the home sits off the gas grid and burns oil or LPG, on any application lodged on or before 31 March 2027. Whether a given Topsham address clears the criteria comes down to the building and to you, which is what the free visit resolves.
Book my free home assessmentRoughly a week on a typical Topsham property. We tend to begin on a Monday and commission Thursday or Friday. Your water goes off in short spells rather than whole days.
Book my free home assessmentNo, and no obligation attaches to it anywhere in Topsham. Only the room-by-room heat loss survey is chargeable, at £250 plus VAT, and going ahead with the install wipes that fee entirely.
Book my free home assessmentBook your free home assessment in Topsham
Send us the details of your Topsham property and James will phone to fix a time. The owner is who you deal with, start to finish.
★★★★★
“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 over? Ring 01395 202030 and James picks up, not a call centre. Our contact page works too.
