Heat pump insurance

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1

Hello everyone,
after 2 years of “free” insurance (normal coverage for a new machine), I need to decide if spend CHF 500/y for full coverage of the heat pump.
The cost of a new heat pump is around 14k and the insurance covers pretty much everything (also if a lightning is going to blow up the heat pump and two checks/cleaning of the machine).
The contract is for 4 years, then I can decide to cancel it or continue, but they don’t cover any more broken parts.
It’s not cheap and as usual it’s a matter of probabilities and they know for sure that after 4 years can break something since they don’t give the full coverage anymore and I guess it makes sense (for them)

What would you do?

2

I don’t have an opinion on the insurance, but I’d like to ask you where I could buy a heat pump for 14K?

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3

I would rather do an annual service contract than insurance.
If an annual service is included, it is not that expensive anymore.

BTW, I would check that the settings are right. There can be a lot of optimisation done. Make sure your hot water tank is also big enough.

4

I didn’t buy it, it was in house already (new).

Sometime ago I found a pdf with the price list and that’s how I found the price.
Note: I have a geothermic system.

5

it’s an offer from the vendor of the heat pump.
The service is every two years, so essentially 2 services and I cannot decide something different.

I did all the optimization at the beginning. I can still teak a bit more, but it’s not that easy and it’s more trial and error.
By the way the can access remotely so in case of failure they can check.

Hot water tank is not covered with this contract
(It is big enough for what I know)

6

Than I would ask how much they would charge for the service alone without insurance. Better to pay for the spare parts independently.
If it is a new building, I expect the Lightning protection to be state of the art. You might want to check that.
EDIT : especially the internal one (Lightning protection which is supposed to cover the internal electrical components, not the one which is just supposed to prevent the building from burning).

I would check how often the electric heater inside is starting (Basically, if the heat pump does not manage to cover the demand, there is a electric heater inside which can fill the gap. Of course this is not efficient. One way of covering that is to increase the tank size. If you have photovoltaic, then you can try to maximise the photovoltaic use). But this goes way beyond the actual topic.

That is the price of the heatpump alone, not installed.

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7

Good point.
I just called them. The cost for the service is CHF 194/h and it can take between 1 and 2 hours.
Considering 300 per service, in 4 years all the rest of the coverage would cost: 2140-600= 1540

On the phone they mentioned that if on Sunday the heat pump is not working they will come and fix it and of course if you don’t have a coverage, it will cost extra money (compare to normal day) and I can call anytime to optimize the system and so on.

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8

We replaced our heat pump 20 years ago (Hoval air-water heat pump). Looking back these “insurances” or service contracts would have costed us a lot more than the 2 year service we booked by ourselves. This might be influenced by our heat pump only starting to act up after about 15 years of service.

If you want to sleep well go for the insurance or a regular service contract. If you are a little bit more risky like me just order a service by yourself by the interval stated in the service manual.

I want to note that in the last few years Hoval seemed to refuse to repair the heat pump and just told us to buy a new one which would cost 45k+ (total with installation etc.). We had to find a local mechanic which now does the maintenance and he buys the original parts directly from Hoval…

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9

Thanks for sharing. I can take risks, but probably just in some sectors, so maybe I don’t have to worry constantly about everything.
45k is quite a lot. Thinking about years of service, it is similar to the car. The older it gets, the higher the probability to break, and at the same there is a point in time that you don’t want full cover coverage anymore because it makes sense to replace it…and the price you mentioned is really similar to a nice car :slight_smile:

10

I would calculate with 15-20 years of lifespan for a heat pump. Ours is running for more than 20 years now.

There’s a nice picture of average lifespan of components in a house which I use for calculating renovation/maintenance costs in the future (German):

image
image988×742 81.3 KB

This was with all options and installation though. Maybe only a heat pump without warm water tank and no internet connectivity, automatic software updates and self learning of correct settings etc., this could maybe be reduced to around 30k-35k I would estimate.

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11

Of course it doesn’t apply in general, but out of curiosity, any problems in 20 years?

Thanks

12

I can give you the maintenance history:
July 2003 → Installation
November 2006 → expansion valve and nozzle replaced
November 2007 → Normal maintenance and checks
November 2010 → Recalibration of settings
December 2010 → Normal maintenance and checks
July 2013 → Recalibration of settings
January 2014 → Normal maintenance and checks
January 2017 → Emergency, loose valve stopped the machine from working → fastened valve, filled up 4kg coolant and replaced filter dryer
December 2021 → Normal maintenance and checks
2022 → several problems with the machine stopping and having pressure problems → Hoval technician told us the machine is leaking and all inner parts should be replaced. The sales people from the installation company told us it’s not worth it to fix it and just replace it and the Hoval technician played dumb and didn’t want to fix the real problem.
Winter 2022 → Contacted a local refrigeration company (A heat pump in principal has the same components as an air conditioning unit) which were able to replace all inner parts with original parts from Hoval.

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