Paul Rivett, Managing Director Heatrae Sadia is BMBI’s Expert for Water Heating.

We are currently enjoying a glorious summer and the half year has just passed, yet it seems only five minutes ago we had snow and prolonged cold weather. The good news is that as human beings we need hot water all the year round, whatever the weather or temperature, so it does not dramatically affect sales of hot water products. Unlike other sectors such as gas boiler spares, which are very much affected by the weather.

Summer events, such as the Football World Cup did more to affect merchant trade counters which were much quieter and also contributed to a poorer performance.

Overall, Q2 water heating sales were approximately 5% less than the same quarter last year. Electric commercial water heating, boiling water dispensers for hot beverages and electric boilers did better than other areas such as domestic unvented cylinders. With construction sites delayed due to poor weather earlier in the year, we now need a period of catch up to recover the year’s position. But as mentioned in the Q1 report, there were several working days lost to the snow and cold that may be difficult to recover.

As longer-term positive news for the industry, there is encouraging government news on renewable energy initiatives with this year’s update to the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) – now due to run till at least 2021. Now, the government is considering making it compulsory to have an amount of hot water storage available in every home to connect to renewable heating technology of the future e.g. air source heat pumps. This is an essential policy that will help to drive the installation of carbon-reducing products and provide consumers with a good hot water performance.