ENVIRONMENT
Is a hybrid heating system better than a standard heat pump?
When a family’s terraced home was rejected for an air source heat pump, they went hybrid instead and slashed their carbon use — and their gas bill
Amy and Michael Brown with their son, Nate
KATIE LEE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
The Sunday Times
The Brown family have gone green. They have a heat pump. Not just any heat pump — a heat pump as part of a hybrid system.
Like 90 per cent of families in Britain, the Browns — Michael and Amy, and their son, Nate, six — had a gas boiler that burnt fossil fuel. “We wanted to decarbonise our heating,” Michael, a website manager, says. Two years ago they applied to take part in the government’s “electrification of heat” trial to test heat pumps.
There was a problem. Experts deemed the Browns’ three-bedroom house, built in 1902 in an Edwardian terrace in Gateshead, unsuitable for a standard air source heat pump. Their tiny garden did not have room for the bulky outdoor unit. Although they
