Heat Pump Cost for a Bungalow: Full 2026 Breakdown

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) publishes what installers charged for every air source heat pump paid for by the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. In 2025/26 the median across 30,590 installations was £13,021, and it rises with the size of the heat pump: £12,164 for a 6 to 8 kW unit, £12,686 for 8 to 10 kW and £13,943 for 10 to 12 kW (Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, August 2026, Table A1.3A). A two or three bedroom bungalow needs 7.5 to 9.5 kW on our model, the same class as a 3-bed semi, because it loses more heat per square metre than a two-storey house. An installation also has fixed costs that do not shrink with the house, which is why a small bungalow costs almost as much as a larger one.

The spread inside each row comes down to the house and the installer: how many radiators need to be larger, whether there is a cupboard for the cylinder, and how far the outdoor unit sits from it. Our heat pump calculator gives an estimate for your own insulation level and fuel.

Heat pump installations carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027 (HMRC VAT Notice 708/6). Installed costs from DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, Tables A1.3A and Q1.1A.

Where a bungalow lands in the range depends on the house more than on the heat pump. An existing airing cupboard, radiators that are already generous and 15 mm pipework put you towards the bottom; a combi boiler with no cupboard, several small radiators and 8 mm or 10 mm microbore pipe put you towards the top.

A bungalow loses more heat per square metre than any other house type, because its roof and its floor are each as large as the whole floor area. A 90 square metre bungalow has 90 square metres of loft and 90 of floor to lose heat through; a 90 square metre two-storey house has 45 of each. That is why a three bedroom bungalow lands next to a 3-bed detached house rather than a smaller one.

At the October to December 2026 cap a typical end-terrace with 9,270 kWh costs £821 a year on gas, £878 on a heat pump with a standard tariff and £624 on a heat pump tariff, and a typical 3-bed detached with 10,530 kWh costs £932, £997 and £708. The three bedroom bungalow's figures, including oil and LPG, are below.

On our model a typical two bedroom bungalow needs a 7.5 kW air source heat pump and a three bedroom one 9.5 kW: 6.5 to 8 kW when well insulated and 8.5 to 10.5 kW when poorly insulated. Those sizes come from the house's annual heat demand spread over the heating season, and they are a guide. The number that decides your heat pump is the heat loss calculation: your MCS installer should survey every room and work out its heat loss on the design day, the coldest conditions the system is built for. A quote without a room-by-room calculation was sized by guesswork, and an oversized heat pump costs more and switches on and off more often, which wastes efficiency. Our heat pump sizing guide explains how the size is worked out.

Loft insulation is the biggest lever in a bungalow

In a two-storey house the walls are the largest heat-losing surface. In a bungalow the roof matters more: the loft floor of a 90 square metre bungalow is 90 square metres, about the same as all its external walls put together. Many bungalows still have a thin layer of insulation from decades ago, often squashed flat by storage. The Energy Saving Trust puts a professional top-up from 120 mm to 270 mm at about £600, or about £750 from nothing (updated 8 May 2026). The measured effect is smaller than most people expect: homes that had loft insulation fitted or topped up in 2023 used a median 3.2% less gas the following year, about 324 kWh or £26 at the October 2026 gas price (DESNZ NEED impact of measures, June 2026). A bungalow has more loft for its size than a two-storey house, so it matters more here, but on its own it rarely changes the size of heat pump. Do it before the survey so the installer designs for the improved house, and raise any storage on loft legs rather than squashing the insulation. Our DIY loft insulation guide covers the job, our loft insulation guide has the costs and savings, and mineral wool lasts 40 years or more.

The 7 to 10 kW class covers the 3-bed semi as well as the bungalow, so you will be quoted from a familiar list. Grant, which also makes oil boilers, is worth including if an oil boiler engineer is quoting for you. Figures below are from each manufacturer's own pages and datasheets.

At this size the brands are close and the design decides the result. Ask for a design flow temperature of 50°C or lower, the seasonal performance the installer expects at that temperature in writing, and an MCS 020(a) sound calculation for the unit position. The whole system median measured across 428 homes in the Electrification of Heat trial was 2.78 units of heat per unit of electricity, a useful check on any promise. R290 units such as the aroTHERM plus, the Aerona 290 and the Cosy range can run hotter, which can save a radiator or two in a bungalow with small panels. Our heat pump noise guide explains the decibel figures.

A heat pump heats water to 40 to 50°C instead of the 65 to 75°C a boiler usually runs at, so radiators have to be larger to give out the same heat. In a two or three bedroom bungalow typically a few need upsizing, usually the living room, the hall and the main bedroom, and that work is part of the installed price rather than an extra. Bungalows have long, low walls under wide windows, so a double-panel radiator in the same slot solves most rooms. Our radiator sizing guide explains how installers decide which ones change.

Where the cylinder goes when everything is on the ground floor

You need a hot water cylinder sized to how much hot water the household uses, and the Energy Saving Trust says it will usually fit a cupboard of at least 80 cm by 80 cm (air source heat pumps, updated 16 July 2026). A two-storey house puts it in the landing airing cupboard; a bungalow has no landing, so the cylinder competes for living space. The usual answers are the hall airing cupboard many older bungalows have, the space the old boiler occupied, an integral garage or store, or a purpose-built cupboard. Slimline cylinders, narrower and taller than standard ones, suit a shallow cupboard. The loft is a last resort: 200 litres of water alone weighs 200 kg, ceiling joists were not sized for it, and the pipework needs heavy frost insulation. An oil bungalow usually has a cylinder and cupboard already; the cylinder still needs replacing with one made for a heat pump, with a larger coil, but the space problem is solved.

Short pipe runs make the job quicker

On one floor every pipe run is short and horizontal. The installer takes the flow and return through the wall, along the loft or under a suspended floor and into the cylinder cupboard without a single drop through a ceiling, which usually makes the job quicker and the pipework simpler than in a two-storey house. The exception is microbore, the 8 mm or 10 mm pipe fitted in many homes from the 1970s onwards, which restricts flow. Some systems can work with it: Octopus says its Cosy heat pumps work with microbore of 10 mm or larger. Ask for pipe sizes to be checked at the survey. Any pipe in the loft must be insulated as well as the loft floor is, or the first hard frost will find it.

These figures use the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026: electricity 26.32p per kWh and gas 7.97p. Electricity carries no VAT from October 2026 to March 2027 while gas includes 5%, so if 5% VAT returns to electricity in April 2027 at the same underlying price, the heat pump figures rise by 5%, which would cut the heat pump tariff saving against gas to £186 a year. Oil is priced at 11.3p per kWh, the BoilerJuice UK average of 116.20p a litre on 25 September 2026, and LPG at 9.5p, the rates our calculator uses. Heating oil prices move from week to week, so treat the oil figures as a snapshot of that day rather than a fixed bill. The worked example is a typical three bedroom bungalow (EPC band D) with 10,350 kWh of heat demand.

A heat pump on a standard tariff costs £63 a year more to run than a gas boiler here. At an efficiency of 2.78, each kWh of heat costs 9.5p in electricity, against 8.9p for gas burned in a 90% boiler. Against gas the heat pump only saves money on a heat pump tariff, where each kWh of heat costs about 6.7p and it is £221 a year ahead. For the oil bungalow it wins on either tariff: £396 a year cheaper than oil on standard electricity and £680 cheaper on a heat pump tariff. Against LPG the tariff saving is £461. A poorly insulated bungalow (EPC band E) needs more heat, 11,489 kWh against 10,350, and our model assumes its heat pump runs at a lower seasonal efficiency, 2.55, because it needs hotter water. That gives £843 a year on a heat pump tariff against £1,527 on oil, a saving of £684, within a few pounds of the typical bungalow's £680, so against oil the case for a heat pump barely depends on insulating first. The trial behind these efficiency figures found no significant difference in performance by the age of the house where an installer had judged it suitable, so treat the lower figure as a cautious case. If the bungalow has storage heaters, see our storage heaters versus heat pump guide. Our running costs guide has the full comparison and our tariff guide shows how Cosy Octopus works out at about 18.7p per kWh with most heating in the cheap hours.

Many bungalows sit in villages and on the edges of towns where the gas main never arrived, so the off-gas rules are the ones most owners need. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme pays £7,500 towards an air source or ground source heat pump in England and Wales. Until March 2027 it pays £9,000 where the home is heated by oil or LPG and has no mains gas connection (GOV.UK), which brings a typical three bedroom bungalow from £13,000 to £4,000, or £2,000 to £6,500 across the middle half of jobs. Your MCS-certified installer applies, and since April 2026 the installer must take the grant off the price quoted to you. The scheme runs to 2030 and installations carry 0% VAT until March 2027. You qualify if you own the bungalow and the heat pump replaces fossil fuel or electric heating; since April 2026 you no longer need a valid EPC. A hybrid that keeps the oil boiler as backup does not qualify. What happens to the oil tank is your decision: most owners have it drained and removed by an OFTEC-registered technician. Read our BUS grant guide and the GOV.UK Boiler Upgrade Scheme page for the rules.

The Warm Homes: Local Grant for low income households

If you live in England, the bungalow has an EPC of D to G and household income is usually £36,000 a year or less, or you live in a qualifying postcode or someone in the household gets certain benefits, the Warm Homes: Local Grant can pay for insulation, a heat pump, smart controls and solar panels through your local council, with nothing for you to pay. It replaced the Home Upgrade Grant, which has closed, and it is open to homes on and off the gas grid. Ask the council before accepting an installer quote, because the council arranges the work. Households on Pension Credit and other qualifying means-tested benefits can also get the £150 Warm Home Discount off the electricity bill a heat pump runs on. Our grant checker covers everything else.

On gas the case rests on the tariff. On standard electricity the heat pump costs £63 a year more to run than the gas boiler it replaces, so there is nothing to pay the installation back with. On a heat pump tariff it saves £221 a year. At the medians a three bedroom bungalow pays £5,500 after the grant against about £3,500 for a new gas boiler (the DESNZ average for a three bedroom home, including VAT), so the heat pump costs about £2,000 more, which £221 a year pays back in about 9 years, or about 11 if 5% VAT returns to electricity in April 2027. Capping the gas supply saves the £108 a year standing charge as well. The government assumes a heat pump lasts 20 years and a gas boiler 15 (Boiler Upgrade Scheme impact assessment, 2022). It is worth doing on gas when the radiators need little work, the boiler is due anyway, or you want to be off gas, and it is hard to justify on running cost alone.

On oil the picture is different and much better. With the £9,000 grant a typical three bedroom bungalow pays £4,000, and the heat pump saves £680 a year against oil on a heat pump tariff and £396 on standard electricity, at the oil price on 25 September 2026. Even if a new oil boiler would have cost nothing, £4,000 at £680 a year pays back in about six years, and every pound a new oil boiler would have cost shortens that. Oil prices move, so the saving moves with them. Run your own numbers for oil or LPG with our heat pump calculator; for gas, use our boiler vs heat pump comparison, and read heat pump vs new boiler for the 15-year view. Ground source only makes sense on a large plot: the median ground source installation under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme in 2025/26 cost £21,298 at 8 to 10 kW, against £12,686 for air source at the same size. The bungalow's big single roof is often a better use of the money, because solar panels pair well with a heat pump.

On a detached bungalow, placement is the easy part: the outdoor unit goes on the side or rear wall nearest the cylinder cupboard, with nobody's window in the way. On a semi-detached bungalow the neighbour's windows decide where it goes. In England the one metre boundary rule was removed in May 2025. Permitted development now needs the MCS 020(a) sound calculation to show 37 dB or less at one metre from each neighbour's nearest habitable room window or door, a unit of no more than 1.5 cubic metres, no more than one heat pump on a house that is not detached, and a bungalow that is not listed (GPDO Schedule 2, Part 14, Class G; MCS). Wales moved to the same MCS 020(a) test on 1 June 2026 (MCS). Bungalow windows sit at the same height as the unit, with no upstairs to lift them clear, so installers site it on the far side from the party wall, facing the garden, on anti-vibration feet. At one metre the Ecodan Ultra Quiet 8.5 kW is 45 dB(A) and the Grant Aerona 290 9 kW is 46 dB(A), and distance and walls bring that down quickly; a unit forced onto the party-wall side may need a quieter model or an acoustic enclosure. Outside a conservation area the rules only stop a unit going above ground floor level on a wall facing a road, which rarely matters on a bungalow; in a conservation area it cannot go on a wall or roof facing a road at all. Our planning permission guide covers the exceptions.

Quiet mode and one zone

Many bungalow owners want a system that is quiet and needs no attention. Most units have a quiet mode that lowers the fan speed at night: Samsung's goes down to 35 dB(A), and Octopus calls its version Hush Mode. Ask for quiet mode from 11pm to 7am if the unit is near a bedroom window. Inside, ask for a single-zone setup: one floor at one temperature needs one thermostat, weather compensation set by the installer and no zone valves or timers to fail or fiddle with. Set it to 20°C and leave it on; a heat pump runs cheapest at a steady low flow temperature. If an installer offers an electric boiler as the simpler box, our electric boiler versus heat pump guide shows why it costs almost three times as much to run: £2,724 a year for this bungalow against £980 for a heat pump on standard electricity.

Get three quotes from MCS-certified installers and compare them on the design rather than the price. In a bungalow the loft and the cylinder are where quotes diverge. Each should include:

• A room-by-room heat loss calculation with the design outdoor temperature and the loft depth it assumes; if you are topping up, make sure it uses 270 mm.
• The design flow temperature, ideally 50°C or lower, and the seasonal performance expected at it.
• A radiator schedule for every emitter, which ones change and their new sizes.
• The cylinder size, whether it is slimline, and exactly where it goes.
• An MCS 020(a) sound calculation with each neighbour's nearest window or door marked.
• For oil and LPG bungalows, the £9,000 grant rate and whether tank decommissioning is included.
• Quiet mode, a single-zone control setup, the warranties on the unit and the installation, and confirmation that the grant is already taken off the quoted price, as the scheme now requires.

Most bungalow installations take a few days, longer when several radiators are swapped or a cupboard has to be built. Find installers through the MCS installer search; oil boiler specialists who have added heat pumps know the local tanks and plots and are worth a quote alongside a heat pump specialist. Read our old house guide if the bungalow has solid walls or single glazing, and our draught-proofing guide for the cheap fixes that let a heat pump run cooler.

Ask for anti-vibration pads under the unit, whether it sits on a wall bracket or a plinth.

Installed prices from DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics, August 2026 release (Table A1.3A, median cost by capacity, 2025/26; Table Q1.1A, quartiles for April to June 2026). Heat pump efficiency from the Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project performance report (Energy Systems Catapult for DESNZ, December 2024, Table 1.2). Heat demand from our heating model, built on the DESNZ National Energy Efficiency Data-Framework and described in our methodology. Measured loft insulation savings from NEED impact of measures (June 2026). Energy prices from the Ofgem price cap for October to December 2026. Heating oil at the BoilerJuice UK average of 116.20p a litre on 25 September 2026, converted at 10.294 kWh a litre from the DESNZ 2026 conversion factors. Heat pump tariff from Cosy Octopus at October 2026 rates, as costed in our tariff guide. New gas boiler cost from the DESNZ Boiler Upgrade Scheme summary business case. Grant rules from GOV.UK and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2026. Permitted development rules from legislation.gov.uk and the Planning Portal. Loft and cylinder guidance from the Energy Saving Trust (loft insulation, air source heat pumps). Heat pump and boiler lifetimes from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme impact assessment. Model outputs, refrigerants and flow temperatures from the manufacturers: Vaillant aroTHERM plus, Mitsubishi Ecodan R290 and Ecodan R32 Ultra Quiet 8.5 kW data sheet, Daikin Altherma 3 R catalogue, Octopus Cosy, Samsung EHS Mono HT Quiet and the Grant Aerona 290 data sheet.