About Reading Heat Pumps

What we do

Reading Heat Pumps connects Reading-area homeowners with MCS-certified air source heat pump installers. We are a matching service: when you submit an enquiry through the form on this site, we route the details to a vetted installer who covers your area.

We do not install heat pumps ourselves. We do not service, maintain, or repair them. Every installation, service call, and repair referenced anywhere on this site is delivered by an independent installer in our network — never by us directly. The 27-guide knowledge hub on this site is research-and-writing work the operator does directly; the on-site work is not.

The reason for the matching-service model is straightforward. The Reading area has a dispersed pool of small, MCS-certified heat pump installers — some excellent, some less so. A homeowner researching a £10,000-plus installation has limited ways to compare them. We do the screening: we cross-check installer credentials against MCS, TrustMark, manufacturer authorisation lists, and Heat Geek where applicable; we confirm their Reading-area coverage; and we publish the criteria we use, so you can audit our work. When you contact us, we route your enquiry to one of those installers rather than the next-cheapest result in a Google search.

If you would rather work directly with an installer you have already shortlisted, that is also a perfectly reasonable approach — but you would still benefit from the vetting criteria on our methodology page when evaluating them.

Our installer network

The installers we route enquiries to are evaluated against five criteria. The full detail lives on our methodology page; the summary is:

MCS certification (mandatory). The Microgeneration Certification Scheme is the UK government-recognised standard for renewable heat installations. MCS certification is also a non-negotiable requirement for the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant — without it, your installation is ineligible. We verify every prospective installer against the live MCS register at mcscertified.com before they enter our routing pool.

TrustMark (preferred). TrustMark is the government-backed quality scheme that sits alongside MCS for retrofit and energy-efficiency work. It is not legally required for a heat pump installation, but it is a strong secondary signal of installer quality and dispute-resolution practice. Where available, we verify TrustMark registration through the TrustMark directory.

Manufacturer authorisations (preferred). Installers who hold direct authorisation from one of the major heat pump manufacturers — Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Vaillant, Worcester Bosch, Grant UK — have completed brand-specific training and have access to extended manufacturer warranty terms. We verify authorisations through the manufacturer find-an-installer pages.

Heat Geek tier (preferred where available). Heat Geek is an independent heat pump training body whose tier system (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Elite) is a useful indicator of an installer’s depth on heat pump design specifically — as distinct from general MCS training. Not every Reading-area installer is Heat Geek listed; where they are, the tier is a signal we track.

Reading-area presence (mandatory). The installer must actively cover Reading (RG postcodes) — see the eight Reading-area neighbourhoods we cover for the full list. Coverage that lists Reading but routes through a distant office is not equivalent to local presence. We verify by reviewing stated service area, the location of recent installations where visible, and the response footprint.

These five criteria are not all weighted equally. MCS certification and Reading-area presence are mandatory: an installer without either is not in our pool, regardless of how many of the other criteria they meet. The other three are preferences — they raise an installer’s standing in our routing but are not pass/fail.

How enquiries are handled

Submit the form on the contact page or anywhere else on the site. We receive your enquiry, log it, and respond by email within 24 hours. Our reply will tell you who in our network is best placed to help and what they will be in touch about. They — not us — handle the survey, quote, installation, and any follow-up. If you have not received a response within 24 hours, please check your spam folder before assuming the worst.

Your details go to one installer at a time, never broadcast to multiple installers, never sold on, never recycled into a marketing list. The full data-handling detail is on our privacy page.

About the operator

Reading Heat Pumps is operated by Robert Alsop, registered as an Individual Entrepreneur in Tbilisi, Georgia. Tax ID: [TAX_ID_TBD]. Registered date: [REG_DATE_TBD].

Operating a UK-facing service from outside the UK is unusual but not unique — and we think the right thing to do is to disclose it clearly here rather than bury it in small print. The site, the research behind the installer-vetting methodology, and the responses to your enquiries are all handled by the operator. The installations themselves are handled by Reading-area installers in our network, who are UK-based and regulated under the relevant UK trade schemes.

For data-protection requests, questions about how your enquiry was handled, or any other operator-related matter, contact [email protected]. We respond to all such requests within the timeframes required by UK data protection law.

Privacy and data

When you submit a form, we collect the information you provide (your name, email, and any other details you include), the page you submitted from, and basic technical metadata for fraud prevention. We share that information with one installer in our network for the purpose of responding to your enquiry. We do not sell your data, do not share it with anyone outside our installer network, and retain it only as long as needed to support the enquiry and any follow-up.

For the full data-handling policy — including data controller details, your rights under UK GDPR, retention periods, and the international transfer position — see our privacy page.