Nesta, a research and innovation foundation, has been delivering its Visit a Heat Pump service nationally since February 2024, the organisation has said. The service connects people who are interested in getting a heat pump with local heat pump owners, and the platform was officially launched to the public in April 20241.
The work began earlier. Nesta ran a pilot in 2022 with 45 visitors, which it says allowed it to develop a viable service model and identify the needs of users and hosts1. The project itself started in February 2023 and is ongoing1. In the current phase, Nesta says it has nearly 400 hosts listed and is aiming for over 1,000 visits in the next few months, having previously said it hoped to see up to 1,000 visitors using the beta service1.
"Since February 2024 our team has been delivering the service nationally, learning from users to make continuous improvements"
Nesta states that heat pumps are relatively rare in residential properties in the UK, with only around 250,000 currently, meaning most people will never knowingly have seen a home with one1. Its stated aim is for everyone in the UK to be able to visit a heat pump near them, and it says it is starting to embed the service with more partners so that it can run sustainably in the longer term1. Anyone interested in hosting or visiting can register at www.visitaheatpump.com1.
Why it matters for households
For a household weighing up a heat pump, the practical difficulty is often not the technology itself but the absence of any nearby example to look at. Nesta's own figure of around 250,000 installed units in UK homes1 means a householder is unlikely to know a neighbour, friend or relative with one, and so has no straightforward way to judge how a system sounds, where the outdoor unit sits, how radiators feel, or what running one involves day to day.
Seeing an installed system in a real home is a different kind of evidence from a specification sheet or a showroom display. It gives a householder a reference point for their own property, and access to an owner who can describe what the change involved in practice. That speaks directly to a home's energy independence: the decision to move away from a gas boiler rests partly on confidence that the alternative works in a home like yours, and confidence is harder to build when the technology is invisible in everyday life.
Nesta also frames the service as an attempt to shift social norms, so that more people regard having a heat pump as normal1. Servicing and upkeep arrangements, which matter to any household running a system over the long term, are a separate subject covered in our guide to heat pump servicing and maintenance.
What happens next
Nesta says it will develop a way to evaluate the service for impact and build partnerships to support future delivery and growth1. It has set out an aim of over 1,000 visits in the next few months, alongside nearly 400 hosts currently listed1. No dates beyond those have been reported.
Sources1 cited
- Visit a heat pump | Nesta, nesta.org.uk