Swap pricey electric heat — or that one room the boiler never warms — for a quiet wall unit that heats for a fraction of the cost and cools on sticky summer nights. Qualifying homes can claim £2,500 off through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.
A few details and we’ll be in touch to book a visit. You’ll get a written price, plus a clear answer on whether the government grant can be used.
Think of it as a fridge working backwards. Outside, a box about the size of a small suitcase on its side extracts warmth from the air — and there is useful warmth in the air even on a frosty February morning at Ashton Court. Inside, a slim unit mounted near the ceiling breathes that warmth into the room. Come July, a button on the remote reverses the process and the same unit pulls heat out instead.
Because the system is moving heat that already exists rather than burning fuel or running an element to create it, the electricity it draws is only a fraction of the heat it hands over. That single fact explains why households on panel heaters, storage heaters or plug-in oil radiators see such a difference in their bills, and why people with a gas boiler often add one to heat the rooms they use most.
Air to Air Heat Pumps Bristol plans, installs and looks after these systems in houses, flats and workplaces across the city and its edges — from Kingswood and Keynsham to Portishead and Patchway. There are no radiators to change, no hot water cylinder to find space for and no floorboards to lift. If you would rather replace a boiler and keep radiators, we fit air-to-water heat pumps as well.
Grant: £2,500 off. Where an air-to-air heat pump replaces fossil-fuel or direct electric heating in a property you own, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme can contribute £2,500. We confirm eligibility on the survey and submit the application. Read the rules.
Air-to-air heat pumps shine in some situations and are the wrong tool in others. Here’s an honest guide.
You heat with storage heaters, electric panels or plug-in heaters. You live in a flat with no space for a cylinder. You have a loft room, extension, garden office or conservatory the main heating can’t keep comfortable. You want summer cooling as well as winter warmth.
You have gas central heating that works, but want cheaper heat in the rooms you actually use and something for heatwaves. Many Bristol families keep the boiler for hot water and lean on the heat pump for day-to-day warmth.
You need a new system that also produces hot water, the house is large with lots of small rooms, and you want rid of the boiler completely. An air-to-water heat pump or a combination is usually better.
If the loft has a token layer of insulation or the windows rattle, a few hundred pounds on draught-proofing and loft wool can mean a smaller, cheaper unit. We’ll point it out rather than oversize the kit.
Bristol’s housing changes every few streets, and so does the best place for a heat pump. A few patterns we see over and over:
Bedminster, Southville, Easton, Totterdown, Bishopston and Horfield are lined with them. Rooms are modest, back yards are small and the gas boiler often struggles to heat a cold rear bedroom or loft conversion. One or two indoor units on a single outdoor unit tucked into the yard is a common answer.
Clifton, Hotwells and Kingsdown have tall ceilings, big sash windows and plenty of listed buildings. Here we look for rear or side positions that won’t affect the street scene, and talk to you early if listed building consent might be needed.
Henleaze, Westbury-on-Trym, Knowle, Filton and Brislington are full of 1930s–1950s houses with radiators throughout. Some owners use air-to-air to heat the rooms they live in most; others prefer a full air-to-water swap of the boiler.
Newer blocks around the Harbourside, Temple Quarter and Wapping Wharf are often electrically heated and can overheat badly in summer. Balcony-mounted outdoor units, with the management company’s approval, tend to work well.
Wherever you are, the outdoor unit needs free airflow, a solid wall or base, a run for its condensate water and a position that keeps noise away from bedroom windows — yours and your neighbours’. Those details are what the survey is for. See the full list of districts we cover.
A boiler is idle from May to September. A reversible heat pump keeps earning its keep.
Set each room to its own temperature and timer. Warm air arrives within minutes of switching on, so there’s no waiting for storage bricks to charge or radiators to come up to heat. Run steadily and the system sips electricity, typically returning two and a half to four times as much heat as it consumes.
Pair it with a time-of-use tariff and you can warm the house through cheaper hours as well.
Top-floor flats in Cotham, dormer bedrooms in Bishopston and glass-walled apartments on the Harbourside can sit above 28°C on still summer evenings. In cooling mode the indoor unit removes heat and humidity together, so the room feels fresher and you can actually sleep.
Dry mode is useful in muggy spells too, taking moisture out of the air without over-chilling.
Fitted prices for typical Bristol jobs, before any grant is taken off.
| Installation | Price range (fitted) | What’s involved |
|---|---|---|
| One room, air-to-air | £1,500 – £3,500 | A single wall-mounted indoor unit paired with its own outdoor unit. |
| Two rooms on one outdoor unit | £3,000 – £6,000 | A multi-split serving, say, the front room and the main bedroom. |
| Four or more rooms | £5,000 – £12,000+ | Most of a flat or house, with more pipework and several indoor heads. |
| Air-to-water heat pump (boiler swap) | £8,000 – £14,000 | Runs radiators and a hot water cylinder. Shown before grant; big houses can exceed this. |
Ranges reflect typical Bristol installs in 2026. We confirm an exact figure in writing after visiting the property. Where the property qualifies, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme knocks £2,500 off air-to-air or £7,500 off air-to-water. The installer claims it, so it comes straight off your bill.
Biggest influences on the final figure: how many rooms, how much heat each one loses and how far apart the indoor and outdoor units end up. Tall Clifton terraces with a long run up the back wall cost more than a ground-floor flat with the outdoor unit directly outside. The Bristol prices page walks through several real-world examples.
Room heating and cooling, whole-house boiler replacement and the maintenance that keeps it all running.
Our core work. Slim wall units that warm a room in minutes and cool it on hot days, planned around how you actually use the house.
Read moreRetiring a gas or oil boiler altogether? Air-to-water does the boiler’s job — radiators and taps — and can attract up to £7,500.
Read moreBedrooms under slate roofs, glass-fronted harbourside flats, busy offices — cooling that also heats for nine months of the year.
Read moreBristol has thousands of electrically heated flats. Swapping night storage heaters for a heat pump can cut bills sharply.
Read moreWho qualifies for £2,500 or £7,500, how the voucher works and what we need from you to apply.
Read moreRanges for one room, several rooms and full boiler replacement, with real Bristol examples and the extras to watch for.
Read moreAnnual servicing, deep cleans and fault-finding for split systems, multi-splits and air-to-water units, ours or anyone else’s.
Read moreSame outdoor principle, very different indoor result.
Flats, electrically heated homes, extra rooms and anyone wanting cooling usually lean air-to-air. Families with radiators who want gas gone completely usually lean air-to-water. Some homes end up with both. We fit each and will say plainly which suits — more on the boiler replacement page.
Nothing is booked until you’ve read the proposal and said yes.
Use the form or phone. Tell us the rooms you have in mind, how they’re heated now and whether you own the property.
We measure up, work out heat loss room by room, look at your consumer unit and find sensible spots for every unit.
Equipment, positions, price before and after grant, and the date we can start — all in writing, no pressure.
Dust sheets down, units mounted, pipes and cable run tidily, system pressure-tested and switched on.
We programme timers with you, register the warranty and diarise the first annual service.
Every BS postcode inside the ring road and beyond it: Clifton, Redland, Cotham, Bishopston, Horfield, Henleaze, Westbury-on-Trym, Southmead, Fishponds, Easton, St George, Kingswood, Brislington, Knowle, Totterdown, Bedminster, Southville and Bishopsworth, plus Filton, Bradley Stoke, Keynsham and Portishead.
Parking permits, narrow lanes and steep hills are part of working in Bristol. We plan access before the day so fitting goes smoothly, and we use clean, colour-matched trunking so pipe runs don’t spoil the outside of the house.
A fan in the outdoor unit pulls outside air across a coil filled with refrigerant. The refrigerant soaks up warmth from that air, a compressor concentrates it, and copper pipes carry it through the wall to the indoor unit, where a second fan blows it into the room as warm air. Reverse the flow and the same kit takes warmth out of the room and dumps it outside, which is how it cools.
The hardware is close cousins. Most modern split air conditioners can run in reverse and therefore are air-to-air heat pumps. What differs is the brief. We pick and position equipment for efficient heating through a Bristol winter first, and treat summer cooling as a very welcome extra. A unit chosen only for cooling on a few hot days may be the wrong size for January.
Very possibly. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme widened in 2026 to take in air-to-air units: £2,500 if you own the property, it’s in England or Wales, and the new system takes over from gas, oil, LPG or direct electric heating. An MCS-certified installer makes the claim and deducts it from your invoice. The full rules are on our Boiler Upgrade Scheme page.
For a fitted system, budget around £1,500–£3,500 for one room, £3,000–£6,000 for two rooms on a shared outdoor unit and £5,000–£12,000 or more for four rooms upwards. Where the grant applies, £2,500 comes off. The prices page explains what moves a job up or down that range.
Yes, provided it has been sized for cold days rather than average ones. Modern units keep producing heat well below zero, though their efficiency falls as the temperature drops. Bristol sits in one of the milder parts of the country, so a correctly sized system spends most of the heating season working comfortably.
Whether it’s a panel heater, an oil-filled radiator, a fan heater or a storage heater, you get back exactly the energy you pay for — a 1:1 swap. A well-fitted air-to-air heat pump usually delivers somewhere between two and a half and four. Put simply, the same warmth tends to cost a third to a half as much.
Plenty of installs on houses count as permitted development, so no application is needed. Listed buildings, street-facing walls in conservation areas such as Clifton, Kingsdown and Montpelier, and blocks of flats bring extra rules. We check before quoting, and the installation page goes into more detail.
Less than most people expect. There’s one neat hole through the wall per indoor unit, no floorboards up and no radiators to change. A single room is usually done in a day; three or four rooms might take two or three.
We’ll come and measure up, look at where the units could go and work out whether the grant applies. You get a fixed price in writing and there’s no obligation.
Questions first? Phone 0117 463 7044 or write to hello@airtoairheatpumpsbristol.co.uk.
Short form — we’ll phone to agree a day and time.