Thermal Earth

Great place, great people.

Training Academy for accredited HETAS courses.

Give them a call or drop in to find out more about heat pumps, underfloor heating, wood burners and much more. They have demo units in their new building for you to go and see. Call them if you are interested in renewable energy.

I'll start with a summary, the equipment Thermal Earth supply seems to be of good quality, but the service I have received was atrocious to the point of despair. I was left feeling as though their main aim was to get the £25k out of me, with little subsequent interest in whether or not the system worked.

It's taken them a year to get the system working properly and has wasted many days of my time. Initially, it kept tripping ever less sensitive and higher current RCDs, with the attitude that it was our electrical supply that was the problem. Emails and phone calls from myself and the other contractors were answered sporadically. If I managed to get a site visit, it was hit or miss as to whether their engineers would turn up at all. Twice I cancelled meetings and drove the 560 mile return trip from Hampshire to North Wales to be called at the end of the day to say they wouldn't be coming. The builder reported similar troubles. Eventally, it turned out that the brine pump was faulty, and when this was replaced at least the system didn't trip the electric. Then it went into fault mode and didn't work. In desperation after trying to get an engineer on site, I eventually went fault finding myself with a meter on the live heat pump and a Thermal Earth engineer on the phone. I managed to identify a blown low voltage supply. They subsequently replaced this, but still the system didn't work. Eventually, I had to rewire the ethernet connections, and when this was done I managed to find out the problem; an external temperature sensor was not working. When this was replaced, at last the system worked properly. However, to add insult to injury, after a year without heat in my house, two weeks later I received a call to say I was due for a £350 service! In the interests fairness and balance, I would say that they have agreed to waive this year's service costs.

I guess one must expect a new system to have some teething faults, but with a complex system such as a heat pump one relies on the company installing it to respond rapidly and fix them, and we feel completely failed in this respect.

I gather the installation manager has been replaced, and I should add that as other members of the company have recently become involved it has been significantly more responsive to communications. I would not, however, recommend the company which I regard as by far the worst contractor I have used recently.

Rang up for technical advice. Was subsequently mis-advised therefore mis-sold equipment. Rang to complain and get a refund only to be verbally abused by their "customer care". The only way to get my equipment to work properly to to outlay more money on extra parts. I could,therefore, have purchased everything I needed cheaper elsewhere. Probably with a less angry man at the end of the phone,too!