Martin Hendricks, 48, has dedicated approximately 127 hours to explaining how his air source heat pump works since its installation in November, compared to the 34 hours the system has successfully brought his Berkshire semi-detached home to a comfortable temperature.
The marketing consultant, who remortgaged to afford the £14,000 unit after a £7,500 government grant, now finds himself unable to attend social gatherings without delivering an unsolicited lecture on the coefficient of performance, a concept he only dimly grasped six months ago and continues to misunderstand now.
His wife, Sarah Hendricks, confirmed that dinner at her sister’s house last Wednesday had stretched to four hours, three of which involved Martin explaining why their heating system technically uses less energy despite their electricity bills having doubled and the landing radiator being what she described as “tepid at best, actually just room temperature at worst”.
“He’s drawn a diagram,” she said. “He laminated it. He keeps it in the car in case someone asks, which they won’t, because they’ve learned not to.”
The Hendricks household now maintains an ambient temperature of 16 degrees Celsius, which Martin insists is “actually quite comfortable once you acclimatise and understand the principles of low-temperature radiant heating”. His teenage children have taken to doing their homework at friends’ houses, citing better wifi, though their browsing history suggests they have been researching “normal boilers” and “why is dad like this”.
Martin’s brother-in-law, James Fletcher, 52, a quantity surveyor from Maidenhead, described a recent Sunday roast during which he made the error of mentioning that he felt cold.
“I lost two hours of my life,” Fletcher said. “He had slides. On his phone, admittedly, but he’d prepared slides. There were graphs showing projected savings by 2041. I just wanted to know if there was a jumper I could borrow.”
The phenomenon has reportedly spread across middle-class suburbs nationwide, with an estimated 40,000 heat pump owners now boring friends, relatives, and tradespeople with explanations of how their heating systems would work superbly if only Britain had been built in Scandinavia and their Victorian terraced houses had been constructed yesterday from foam and hope.
Martin remains undeterred by his 16-degree sitting room or his diminishing social circle. He has recently started a blog titled “Heat Pump Truths” and has been asked to stop attending his local Neighbourhood Watch meetings after using them primarily as a platform to discuss thermal efficiency.
“People just don’t understand yet,” he said, while wearing two fleeces indoors. “Once I explain about the thermodynamic cycle and the Carnot efficiency limit, they’ll see why I’m vindicated, even if I can see my breath when I exhale in the bathroom.”
His wife has begun telling people they have Covid to avoid hosting gatherings.