An engineering firm is planning to disrupt the world of home heating with a new heat pump which is designed to be cheaper, faster and easier to install than current models. 

Revolutionary Concepts, in Kendal, was founded by Will Spain two years ago.  

Will grew up in Newby Bridge and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Sheffield before working for BAE Systems Maritime, in Barrow, and then leaving to start his own venture.  

He was soon joined by co-director Simon Bainbridge, who also studied at Sheffield. 

"The basic principle is to invent things, prove they work and license them to manufacturers,” he says. 

In practice, this usually involves creating demonstration prototypes and setting up start-up businesses around them in order to attract investment for further development.  

Revolutionary Concepts is working on designs related to compressors, turbines and heat pumps. It is in the process of developing the second prototype of a new design for a heat pump, backed by funding from investment facilitator Oxford Technology Management as well as a £43,000 Innovating for Success grant from Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. 

With legislation meaning no new gas boilers will be fitted in homes built after 2025, alternative systems such as heat pumps are set to fill the gap. 

Current air source heat pump designs use an external unit which transfers heat from the air outside to a refrigerant liquid which is compressed to increase its temperature and warm people’s homes.  

Will and Simon have designed a heat pump which can heat air through compression without the need for an external unit or refrigeration, making it easier and cheaper to install and removing the environmental concerns around disposing of refrigerants. 

"It will end up cheaper on installation, which is a big hang up for a lot of people, and be faster to install,” says Will. 

Will and Simon are in discussions with a commercial manufacturer who is interested in licensing the design. "We want to be working on things that there's a proper market for and there's a growing market,” says Will. "With heat pumps you can see the market is going in the right direction but no one's quite got it right yet.” 

Although the heat pumps which are currently on the market function well, Will says they are still too expensive for many - even with government subsidies - meaning it is very hard to compete with gas heating systems on price.  

"If you look at the cost of installation and the whole total cost of a system, more than half of it is installation cost more often than not," he says.  

"A lot of that is driven by the fact that you've got an internal unit and an external unit and then you've got to connect the two together and you need someone who's qualified in dealing with refrigerants and you need different trades. 

“Just the number of people who are qualified in the trades you need doesn't match up with the expectations of what needs to be installed.” 

Simon and Will have been working with a local supply chain within Cumbria to develop the design, made up of Bennett Engineering and Northern Power Tools, in Kendal; Lakeland Laser, in Kirkby Stephen, and Thomas Graham, headquartered in Carlisle. 

The heat pump is far from the only product they are working on, with other projects including efficient compressors for commercial use, hybrid energy systems combining heat pumps and solar thermal sources and district heating systems. 

"Being able to make decisions on the move and redesign things quickly is absolutely necessary for this type of work," says Will. 

"Being able to do R&D and really quickly iterate and try things and see if it works, all that works really well in a small company.”