The job I won’t delegate: running a heat pump company after years on the back burner
I set up my heat pump company in 2016 and left it on the back burner until 2025. That year I gained MCS accreditation and started running it full-time, and I still carry out the surveys myself.
The route there was long. I served in the army, retrained as a plumber in 2010, then spent six years fitting ground and air source heat pumps for another installation company. I now have more than 100 heat pump installations behind me, and the lessons below come out of that work or out of the audits I carry out on other installers.
The credential came before the commitment
In my trade, MCS accreditation decides whether a customer can use the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant. The MCS installer applies for it, and it comes off the quote upfront, so the homeowner doesn’t pay it and claim it back. Without accreditation I could still fit heat pumps, but each quote I sent would have carried the full price with no grant taken off.
If your market runs through a scheme, a standard or an approved list, get inside it before you commit full-time. I went full-time once I could offer customers the route they were going to ask about.
Keep the job that decides whether the product works
A heat pump works or struggles on its design, and the design comes from the survey: a room-by-room heat loss calculation that sets the unit size, the flow temperature, and which radiators need changing. Subcontract install teams and an electrical team carry out our fitting. The survey stays with me.
In Street, Somerset, we were the fourth installer to visit an oil-heated house. One company before us had proposed a 16kW heat pump, and another had said the property was not suitable. Our survey found it suitable at a smaller size than 16kW. We replaced the radiators that needed it, kept the rest, and fitted the system in five working days. Keeping the sound radiators on the wall also kept the job smaller for the household.
I don’t know how the other companies reached their numbers. I do know the householder had three visits and conflicting advice before ours, and the job went to the company that had measured each room. Homeowners also ask me whether a heat pump will cost more to run than the boiler it replaces, so I’ve put a straight answer on whether heat pumps are worth it for UK homes on our website, which leaves the survey visit free for the house itself.
Stand on the other side of the audit
I also work as a freelance MCS assessor for NAPIT, auditing other installers’ heat pump work against the MCS standard. On an assessment, the design file is the first thing I ask for. Assessing means reading other installers’ design files against the standard, and each one reminds me what mine has to show. I keep my own files the way I would want to find them as an assessor, with the survey data, the room figures, and the commissioning readings written down on the day.
A small business owner in any trade can borrow that habit. Read your own work the way the person who checks it will read it, whether that is an auditor or the customer’s own surveyor, and fix what they would question before they arrive.
Give the week a fixed shape
Each job follows the same order. A free home assessment comes first, then the room-by-room heat loss survey and the design. Our installs start on a Monday as a rule and we commission on the Thursday or Friday, so a subcontract team can book a week and know what that week holds.
The same order gives the homeowner a timetable they can plan around. At commissioning we register the manufacturer’s warranty, and the homeowner receives a handover pack with the operating instructions, warranty information, and commissioning certificates.
The design file stays with me. An assessor can ask to see it long after the job, and I have sat on the asking side of that request.
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