How much can a heat-pump engineer earn?
Build a business, not just a day rate.
Revenue depends on your job mix, area, utilisation and costs. Salary, turnover and take-home income are different measures.
Before pricing work, account for travel, training, tools, insurance, diagnostics, administration and callbacks.
A worked example: one £14,000 installation
Take a £14,000 air source installation — a little above the £12,908 median reported for grant-funded installations in England and Wales in April–June 2026. Roughly £8,000 goes on the heat pump and system materials, and a margin of around 10% — about £1,000 — covers purchasing, handling and warranty risk. That leaves about £5,000 for labour and running the business.
A typical installation might take around 15 person-days: two engineers and an assistant for about five main days, plus commissioning and finishing. £5,000 over 15 person-days is about £333 per person, per day — and that’s business revenue, not a wage.
Revenue isn’t wages
Nobody bills 260 days a year. Holidays, sickness, training, certification, quoting, surveys, cancelled jobs, supplier problems, paperwork, callbacks and gaps between installations all take time. At around 216 productive days, £333 a day is roughly £72,000 of annual revenue per installer. Then the business has to run.
| Cost | Per year |
|---|---|
| Tools and equipment | ~£3,000 |
| Van: insurance, servicing, repairs, tyres, tax, security | ~£5,000 |
| Fuel, working a 30-mile radius | ~£3,000 |
| Insurance, MCS and competent person schemes, training, accounts, software, phones, website, advertising, workwear, office, payment processing | £7,000–£12,000 |
| Part-time admin support | ~£10,000 |
That apparent £70,000-plus can quickly become something closer to a normal professional income — before properly charging for the hours spent designing systems, managing stock and visiting prospective jobs.
Where the margin really is
The biggest opportunity isn’t squeezing another few hundred pounds from a day rate. It’s reducing unnecessary work: better surveys, better design, reusing radiators and pipework that are already adequate, and less time on site.
Your own MCS certification, or an umbrella scheme
MCS certification opens up grant-funded work, at the cost of administration. For a company with a handful of engineers, paying an umbrella scheme can make more financial sense than running the compliance in-house; as volume grows, bringing it in-house can become worthwhile.
A useful next step.
Count your own productive days and annual overheads, then check what your quotes leave per person-day.
Keep reading · the full guideHow much does it really cost to install a heat pump? →Sources
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