A new initiative from Visit a Heat Pump aims to inspire households across the UK to swap out their gas boilers for heat pumps. According to the MCS Foundation, this low-carbon alternative can be found in at least 200,000 homes nationwide with numbers growing.

Through their website, Visit a Heat Pump provides users with the chance to look for properties near them with a heat pump setup before requesting a visit. There are currently hundreds of homes with heat pumps available to visit through this service. These cover both air-source and ground-source heat pumps.

The UK’s innovation agency for social good and registered charity Nesta runs this initiative. The organization aims to hasten the nation’s domestic decarbonisation. This includes a specific goal that UK households will see their 2019 carbon emission levels reduced by 28% by 2030.

With hundreds of properties to visit, there exists a range of options suitable for many households and situations. This includes those ranging from terraced properties to semi-detached households and a mix of air-source and ground-source heat pumps.

Nesta also allows households to become a hosts via a relatively simple process. This is a process similar to those looking to sign up to visit a property with a heat pump.

The modest 220,000 or so heat pump instalments is a respectable number but is still less than one per cent of households in the UK. On the contrary, nations like Norway, Sweden and Estonia have a per capita ratio of heat pumps per household dozens of times greater.

In an effort to turn the tide, the UK government is eyeing 600,000 installations per year by 2028. This would represent a drastic improvement in both current installation numbers and the rate of growth for heat pumps.