Newspaper ad

[G. Lasagne]

You obviously are that tied up in your own importance that you have failed to take any informatio onbord from experts in this field.

License to trade (a manger at one of the leading suppliers of heating products) has stated that currently there is a low demand for this product excpept in new build
properties.

Me: a gas safe registered owner of a HEATING company, who is experienced and pays a invested interest in all methods of heating, currnetly fitting 10-20 condensing boilers per month and receiving zero calls from customers for heat pumps.

Stevecool: the experienced owner of air-con/refrigeration comapny: has explained on numerous occassions that the syetmes are expensive, have reliability problems and are noisy.

oldeagleeye: a financial know it all (or something like that) with zero experience in any heating related fields, believes that i should stop catering for the huge demand for condensing boilers and start fitting these heat pumps, because he has decided he wants one in his house, i also noticed that you have experience in marketing looking at your profile, i suggest you will need that experience if your going to sell this idea.

WHICH MEMBER WOULD YOU LISTEN TOO?

In summary, i totally agree that the systems discussed in this thread are the future and i would be crazy not exploit the market when the time arises, but i can assure you i will be receiving the correct training, not just telling the lads to wing it, because a guy on ukbf says its just a couple of screws and a compression fitting. On that note i assume you will be fitting your pump yourself with it being so easy and all?

I will cocentrate my efforts towards the current market, but will always keep one eye on other oppurtunities, so bearing that in mind, is there anymore tips for the ads?

Dave
I am always right but then again - I am a heating engineer

 

[Deleted member 9840]

No I don't agree that air heat pumps are for the future or are more expensive to install than the boilers the OP mentioned and in any event cheapest is seldom the best.

You are nearly right with this, they are no more expensive to install labour wise. But FACT, the equipment is more expensive. You have to compare apples to apples. A 14kw gas boiler will need to be compared to a 20kw heatpump for UK conditions.

I'll tell you what guy's - given the attitude shown by GL & Steve and I am thinking it is typical of the trade I am seriously considering setting up a company to exploit this market because I do not believe that air heat pumps are only for new builds.

And EXPLOIT your customers you will do, your BELIEFS are not FACT

I rather suspect that most homeowners think that to install an air heat pump means ripping up the floor and also installing underfloor heating too. I doubt few realise that these units can be plumbed straight into any existing radiator system.

Again you are wrong. Your current radiators have been sized to heat your house with a water delivery temperature of 65 deg C. The type of heat pump you have found on ebay will only reliably deliver water at 40 deg C under UK conditions. This means that to heat your home you will have to increase the number of radiators in your home or replace your current ones for some with a larger surface area. Or install underfloor heating. Basic science I'm afraid.
Just now are carbon dioxide based systems reaching Europe from Japan where they have been in common use for 10 years now. These will deliver that critical 65 deg C needed to retrofit onto your existing radiators. These are way out of the price league of Joe Average at the moment

Soon to be MD of Kool Dynamics

Good luck and I seriously wish you well because this industry is in it's infancy and is going to make a lot of people seriously rich. Please accept though that you have a hell of a lot to learn before you start investing your money in this idea.

Steve

 

[oldeagleeye]

Being second doesn't count. As fo my marketing expertise. You seem to be determined to slag me off. Well eat your words chaps.

At just 21 years old I set up the first general retail franchise in Britain at a time when few people had even heard of the word or knew what it meant apart from a few Wimpey Burger bar owners.

At just under 40 I took a small electronics firm repairing arcade machines with a tiny workshop at Clacton-on-Sea and turned it into the most respected and sucessful supplier of covert survelemce equipment in the world.

Every law enforcement agency - every security agancy in the western world came knocking on our door - and no I am not full of my own self importance or being flash. I used to put the CIA. The FBI. The White House Secret Service up in holiday caravans just up the road and they loved it. Nearer to home we invented the first electronic transmitter that didn't require and aerial and it was used by Special Brancj & Customs in the biggest drugs bust in British history.

Having sold that business on I concentrated on another I owned. A mortgage brokers. While every other broker and his dog were servicing the 'today' market with the tight income criterea that entailed. I looked ahead.

I went around the building societies and arrnged my own funds. The result. The first truly non-status mortgage in Britain. The first buy to let. Both were an instant success. The rest is history but would I want to be a finance broker now. No way.

There are leaders and there are followers and there are those that are slow to sieze oppotunities. I will choose what I want to be and am capable of - thank you guys.

Robert.

BTW. Check out the news. Russia about to cut off our gas supplies again. Only kidding guys but the next time it happens - and it will what do you think homeowners will be phoning up about. A useless boiler or an air heat pump and incidentally I noticed not one of you commented on the prices or that alternative market - the body corporate.

 

[oldeagleeye]

Appreciate the comments in your last post Steve but I have no intention of handling the techical side. I will partner with some-one that has that expertise.

Now I suggest we end this thread on a more friendly note and with a nice glass of claret in my hand I raise a toast to all our members wishing all an early best wishes for good health and prosperity in the new year.

Robert

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Let us agree that the future is just that. Time can be the only judge of who is right and who is wrong in this situation, no amount of debate today can change that. What can be drawn from this however is that there a lot of people who have contributed to this thread with the kind of passion, anger, excitment and ferocity that you only find in people that are commited to making something a success.

I'm rarely impressed, but what can I say.

 

[UKSBD]

I know a number of building companies around here who don't have a clue
about this stuff, I also know that local planners are stipulating these
types of systems as conditions of planning consent.
Someone is going to make a killing out of it.

Don't know as I would want to be involved at the infancy, I bet there
will be a lot of buck passing going on in a few years, when problems start
occuring.

The installers will blame the builders, builders blame the installers, builders
blame the architects.
I can just see it now, the builder puts 50mm insulation in, as to regs they
are reading, the spechs for the system says 75mm, and then each blame
each other.

It's exactly the same with lots of things on the building,
take manufactured joists and trusses for example, I doubt there is a house
in the country built to the exact specification in the small print of the joist
manufacturers

 

[Deleted member 9840]

BTW. Check out the news. Russia about to cut off our gas supplies again. Only kidding guys but the next time it happens - and it will what do you think homeowners will be phoning up about. A useless boiler or an air heat pump and incidentally I noticed not one of you commented on the prices or that alternative market - the body corporate.

Not a problem for me as i have heat pump heating in my house, only for supplementary heating of course.

I have also enjoyed the debate, merry Christmas and a prosperous new year to all.

Cheers

Steve.

PS If you really want to partner with somebody and put in the dosh, I know a very good company of refrigeration/air conditioning engineers who are currently researching this market.:redface: Their name escapes me at the moment....

 

[G. Lasagne]

Being second doesn't count. As fo my marketing expertise. You seem to be determined to slag me off. Well eat your words chaps.

At just 21 years old I set up the first general retail franchise in Britain at a time when few people had even heard of the word or knew what it meant apart from a few Wimpey Burger bar owners.

At just under 40 I took a small electronics firm repairing arcade machines with a tiny workshop at Clacton-on-Sea and turned it into the most respected and sucessful supplier of covert survelemce equipment in the world.

Every law enforcement agency - every security agancy in the western world came knocking on our door - and no I am not full of my own self importance or being flash. I used to put the CIA. The FBI. The White House Secret Service up in holiday caravans just up the road and they loved it. Nearer to home we invented the first electronic transmitter that didn't require and aerial and it was used by Special Brancj & Customs in the biggest drugs bust in British history.

Having sold that business on I concentrated on another I owned. A mortgage brokers. While every other broker and his dog were servicing the 'today' market with the tight income criterea that entailed. I looked ahead.

I went around the building societies and arrnged my own funds. The result. The first truly non-status mortgage in Britain. The first buy to let. Both were an instant success. The rest is history but would I want to be a finance broker now. No way.

There are leaders and there are followers and there are those that are slow to sieze oppotunities. I will choose what I want to be and am capable of - thank you guys.

Robert.

BTW. Check out the news. Russia about to cut off our gas supplies again. Only kidding guys but the next time it happens - and it will what do you think homeowners will be phoning up about. A useless boiler or an air heat pump and incidentally I noticed not one of you commented on the prices or that alternative market - the body corporate.

The question was "what heating experience do you have"? thanks for your life story but your business experience is not related to this topic, as i have pointed out, so pointless

I have read this thread and have taken onboard the expert opinions of some of the members (unfortunately that does not include you), and i would like to say thanks to steve,license to trade and uksbd for a good insight in to this market, i will research it more when i get the chance and maybe do my own market research so i too will become an expert, and i have no doubt in the future that pumps and solar panels will be services i offer in the future.

Im glad this thread went off topic, and i will probably start a new one just to get back on topic, as i have a new idea for the ad and would like some more feedback.

Feedabck from anyone no matter hat there background is always well recieved, but i suggest in future you laccept that your technical knowledge is not up to scratch to lock horns with other members on certian topics.

I would not start preaching what the future of retail is, i may give an uneducated opinion, but at no point will i claim people are wrong when i no very little about the industry.

keep you eyes peeled for my next "ad" thread i would appreciate any marketing tips you may have.

 

[CKG]

I've fitted dozens and dozens of ground source heat pumps. I even had the rigs to drill the bore holes.

I'll show you a pic of a small 9kw + 300L hotwater system we installed a little while back....

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As you see they take a bit of space....and cost punter over £20K with the bore hole drilling...

It does work fantastically well though.

 

[G. Lasagne]

I've fitted dozens and dozens of ground source heat pumps. I even had the rigs to drill the bore holes.

I'll show you a pic of a small 9kw + 300L hotwater system we installed a little while back....

[/URL][/IMG]

As you see they take a bit of space....and cost punter over £20K with the bore hole drilling...

It does work fantastically well though.

A few questions if i may mate

20k, what percentage of that was profit?
what size property was it?
how long did it take?

Cheers

Looks like a good job

 

[ThePublisher]

I have a gas service engineer advertising with my magazines. He's been advertising that he can supply and install solar panels (in his advert alongside his 'normal' services) for the past 18 months. In that time he's had one enquiry about solar and that didn't turn into a job. He also advertised Air Source heat pumps for 3 months, got no interest in that either. These may be the products of the future, but in the main the general public isn't interested enough in them at the moment to choose them over a conventional boiler. He's now abandoned advertising solar due to the lack of interest.

Going back to your original question, I'd probably respond to the Baxi ad as I've not heard of the others, and TBH Band A means nothing to me. We've got a Valliant, but I only know this because I've just been and looked at the controller (husband wanted this on the recommendation from a work colleague) - I may have recognised the Valliant name if I'd seen it in your advert.

We thought briefly about air source when we had our extension done, but TBH the cost (although we never got as far as a quote) and the fact that the garden would have been completely wrecked to get the pipework in put us off. We also thought about solar, but decided we didn't want panels visible from the front of the house, and there wasn't really enough clear roof at the back to put them in.

 

[CKG]

A few questions if i may mate

20k, what percentage of that was profit?
what size property was it?
how long did it take?

Cheers

Looks like a good job

No idea on the profit % as it was part of a big ground up re-fit of a 3 bed stone cottage we did.

As ever the meat of the profit is just made on the labour element of the job. I think made about £500 on the heat pump & tank supply. Not bad for doing nothing.

Time wise it is more intensive than a traditional boiler as the pipework is much more complex and it takes a good day to fire the thing up and test it out as it heats up so slowly.

Plus you have to commission the ground loops with the glycol/water mixture and test it with a refractometer to get the freezing point correct and air out of it.

That job had nearly 500m of 40mm collector pipe to purge out - it takes hours to do it properly.

I used to quite enjoy fitting heat pumps. There was a lot of travel and hence cost involved in pricing up and selling the systems though. That's the bit of the job that nearly sent me under as the lead time from punter showing interest to handing over the mula was so long - you need truck loads of working capital to do installation and sales on a big scale off your own bat.

I'd like to get back into it but only in a sales & commissioning role as the installation side it where the technical problems creep in and suck up your time and profit.

 

[LicensedToTrade]

TBH Band A means nothing to me. We've got a Valliant, but I only know this because I've just been and looked at the controller

Band A is simply the SEDBUK rating of the boiler. This is an overall measure of efficiency similar to the ABCDE etc rating you get on some white goods like fridges. It is calculated in a pretty complicated way but all the consumer needs to know is that in a like for like trial, a Band A rating is the most efficient.

Most new gas combi boilers are a Band A or B.

 

[Deleted member 9840]

In fact on Monday I am going to sort out a system that the plumber who sold the system has not got a clue how to get it running and his supplier (a very respected name in combustion boilers) has also not got a clue about the specifics of rudimentary refrigeration. Their top "commissioning engineer" has passed it on.
I will have it sorted within the hour.

Exactly 2 minutes it took.$$$ KERCHING $$$. Give me more, easiest money i have earned for years.

Steve

 

I dont like the ad at all......it says what it is , not what it does.

even warmer house = much lower bills

is what it does

say how boiler efficiency has gone into orbit over the last few years
and there no comparison with these new boilers

how which says this one is the best of the best...(you need credibility from somewhere)

there are also a couple of variables you should consider too....

POSITION ON PAGE IS VITAL... you want top right hand corner of page.
difference is dramatic...if they say they cant

ALSO use an irregular feature , eg a handwritten message like "this is the one" With an arrow or "cheaper and hotter!" to draw attention to the ad.

FINALLY give a reason for the ad.......preferably truthful...
about how you made a mistake with the order, and ended up with too many,
so you have to let them go to make room....

DONT JUST GIVE A DEAL, give a reason why it is a good deal,

Dont just say 5 year guarantee either - say "and to prove how reliable these thingss arer, i can give you a 5 year guarantee!! - which if you dont have a lot of room
an imitation scrawll "wow thats reliable" pointing at the guarante...

etc

 

Reply got cut off - I meant to say...

Demand top RHS of page, and if they tell you they can't do it, say that it is a pity, and tell them that you cannot place it left hand side (waste your money) , but if they would like to call you, if ever they have an issue when you can get top corner - and chances are they will call back to agree....

When they tell you it is £400 - tell them you cant do that - but if they have late space at £250 - to give you a call. Chances are they will put it in at £250 - advertising is a buyers market, and very few advertisers know how damaging left hand placement really is, so you will be competiting with few for the best place.

Difference of mid left to top right corner can be even 10 to 1 or MORE!!

 

[oldeagleeye]

Nice one Steve. Working on the assumption that this job came about as some sort of time warp where you were suddenly transported 10 years into the future this huge amount of easy money will be a bonus then that you don't really need.

I know a certain charity looking for donations if you don't know what to do with the dosh.

 

[VeitSchenk]

unfortunately the top RHS position thing is one of those urban myths. There are plenty of studies (so called copy-tests where they ask readers which ads they remember after a given period of time) and the difference between LHS, RHS, top-bottom is neglibigle. (on the order of 4%, definitely not factor 10 you mention in your post).

just to qualify my statement, this is a copy-test done in Germany, and I know, Germans are weird, but I doubt that they're so weird that their reading (and remembering ads) habits are that different from the rest of the world.

the theory WHY the RHS isn't so super-strong is that plenty of people read the paper back-to-front and they tend to see the other page (LHS) first.

BUT: most sales-reps don't actually know this (and they're very surprised when we show them the graphs/stats in our seminars), so please use the negotiation strategy below.

Veit

Reply got cut off - I meant to say...

Demand top RHS of page, and if they tell you they can't do it, say that it is a pity, and tell them that you cannot place it left hand side (waste your money) , but if they would like to call you, if ever they have an issue when you can get top corner - and chances are they will call back to agree....

When they tell you it is £400 - tell them you cant do that - but if they have late space at £250 - to give you a call. Chances are they will put it in at £250 - advertising is a buyers market, and very few advertisers know how damaging left hand placement really is, so you will be competiting with few for the best place.

Difference of mid left to top right corner can be even 10 to 1 or MORE!!

 

[VeitSchenk]

oh, and the other points in admagic's post are excellent (and much more important that position on page)

 

[oldeagleeye]

Now chaps lets not get into all this positioning stuff. It will drive you mad. What about Russian & Hebrew read from left to right. Chinese read up and down. Not sure about Arabic. Who knows. Who cares - just make sure that you get a bloody good discount.

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Now chaps lets not get into all this positioning stuff. It will drive you mad. What about Russian & Hebrew read from left to right. Chinese read up and down. Not sure about Arabic. Who knows. Who cares - just make sure that you get a bloody good discount.

Don't forget Australians, they read upside down don't they?

 

[oldeagleeye]

Met an Aussie Secret Service man once. Had what looked like a bloody big shoulder holster under the sweaty armpits of his jacket. No .44 Smith & Western magnum there however. Just a 4 pack of Fosters.

 

[LicensedToTrade]

I'll remember that if I ever find myself in Australia thirsty for a frosty one, just tickle the nearest Australian government official and you will be rewarded with a 4 pack.