Air conditioning can heat your home too: what it costs in Brighton & Hove

Air conditioning units that run in reverse can heat a room as well as cool it, and against electric heaters they are far cheaper to run. That is the result of the sums in a heating-with-air-conditioning guide from airconguide.co.uk, a directory of air conditioning installers in Brighton & Hove.

The Shingle and airconguide.co.uk have the same owner, and the directory lists installers free with no paid placement, as its About page says. It checks each installer’s F-gas certification against the public registers and copies any prices an installer publishes from its own site.

What it costs to run

Ofgem’s^9,10 price cap from 1 October to 31 December 2026 is 26.32p per kWh for electricity and 7.97p for gas. The guide divides each by its efficiency to get the price of heat. A unit with a seasonal efficiency (SCOP) of 4.0 delivers heat at 6.58p per kWh. A gas boiler that is 90% efficient delivers it at 8.86p, and a plug-in electric heater at 26.32p.

The break-even is a SCOP of about 3.0. Below that, gas is cheaper on fuel alone.

For 3,000 kWh of heat a year, a figure the guide picked for illustration, panel heaters cost £789.60 and a unit at SCOP 4.0 costs £197.40, a difference of about £592. Against a working gas boiler the gap shrinks to about £68 a year. The guide found no measured study of how these units perform in British homes, so the efficiency figures come from laboratory certificates.

What it costs to install

Only seven of the 39 installers on the directory publish any price. Eaglereach Mechanical, based in Hove, lists a wall-mounted split for one room at £1,350 to £2,500 fully fitted, with 0% VAT on qualifying domestic installs. Its site gives a higher figure on another page, so the directory advises getting the price in writing.

Ernest Air Cooling, in Shoreham-by-Sea, lists £1,899 to £2,500 for one room and £3,500 to £8,000 for a multi-split. Its page says every system it fits is a reverse-cycle heat pump. The directory’s installation cost guide sets these beside national price guides. Prices were read from the installers’ own sites on 10 October.

Grant and VAT

Ofgem’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme page lists £2,500 off an air-to-air heat pump, claimed through an MCS-certified installer. But MCS’s¹¹ air-to-air page, read on 31 October, says it is still working on bringing these units into the scheme. MCS also says the scheme requires the installation to replace a fossil fuel heating appliance. The directory’s grant guide advises against paying a deposit on the strength of the grant.

Installation is zero-rated for VAT until 31 March 2027. HMRC¹² says most air conditioning units are air source heat pumps but that doubtful cases depend on the facts, and the directory found installers quoting both 0% and 5%.

Checking the installer

GOV.UK^13,14 says each engineer needs their own F-gas qualification, and a company installing air conditioning for others must be certified by REFCOM, the F-Gas Register (Quidos) or Bureau Veritas, renewing every three years. The directory’s F-gas register guide explains how to search. A missing entry does not prove a firm is uncertified, it says, so ask for the certificate number.