Samsung Heat Pumps in the UK

Samsung sells the EHS Mono R290 to UK homes in 5, 8, 12 and 16kW sizes, and the 12kW outdoor unit AE120CXYDEK/EU costs £4,260.00 including VAT at City Plumbing, checked on 8 October 2026. The number that decides most Samsung quotes is not the price, though. It is the A-weighted sound power level, because Samsung markets the range as running "as low as 35 dB(A)" while its own spec tables give the 16kW unit 65 dB(A), and the planning standard written into English law explicitly forbids using the quiet-mode figure. At 65 dB(A) that unit needs roughly 14 metres of clear distance to a neighbour's window. The 5kW needs four and a half. Every figure below is from Samsung's own spec tables, UK merchant listings or gov.uk, read on 8 October 2026.

There is one current Samsung range, and the model code tells you whether the pump is in the box

Samsung's current air-to-water product for UK homes is the EHS Mono R290, a monobloc, sold as AE050, AE080, AE120 and AE160 for 5, 8, 12 and 16kW. Monobloc means the whole refrigerant circuit is sealed in the outdoor unit and only heating water crosses into the house, which is why these installs do not need refrigerant pipework run through your rooms.

Two details in the model code do real work on a quote:

• CXYB versus CXYD. The B codes are the integrated versions with the hydraulic pump, expansion vessel and sensors built into the outdoor unit. The D codes are the outdoor unit without them. A quote naming AE120CXYDEK/EU and a quote naming AE120CXYBEK/EU are not quoting the same scope of supply, and at merchant prices the difference is hundreds of pounds.
• EK versus GK. EK is single phase, GK is three phase. Almost every British house is single phase, so a GK code on a domestic quote is worth questioning.

Samsung's older EHS Mono HT Quiet range on R32 refrigerant is still on UK merchants' shelves, sold as AE050RXYDEG/EU and similar R-prefixed codes. It is cheaper. Wickes lists the 12kW AE120RXYDEG/EU at £3,230, against £4,260 for the R290 equivalent at City Plumbing. The R32 units are a different proposition on refrigerant: R32 has a Global Warming Potential of 675 against R290's 3, which Samsung states on its own product pages.

What Samsung heat pump kit costs at UK merchants today

These are equipment prices including VAT, read off UK merchant listings on 8 October 2026. They are not installed prices, and the gap between the two is most of the job.

One thing to understand about those prices before you compare them with a quote. A merchant selling you a boxed heat pump is making a supply-only sale, which is standard-rated, so the figures above carry 20% VAT. The same unit supplied and installed as an energy-saving material carries 0% VAT until 31 March 2027, after which HMRC's Notice 708/6 says it reverts to the reduced rate of 5%. An installer's price is therefore not the merchant price plus labour, and a like-for-like comparison has to start by stripping the VAT difference out. The same logic applies to solar, and we go through it in detail in our guide to VAT on solar panels.

For what the whole job costs rather than the box, start with our UK heat pump cost guide, which works from installed prices and the grant rather than equipment lists.

The sound power figures are what decide where a Samsung unit can stand

Samsung publishes an A-weighted sound power level of 55, 59, 60 and 65 dB(A) for the 5, 8, 12 and 16kW units, and those are the numbers a permitted development noise calculation runs on. They come straight off Samsung's own spec tables, alongside separate and much lower sound pressure figures of 41, 45, 47 and 51 dB(A). Sound power and sound pressure are different quantities and they are not interchangeable.

England's permitted development right for a domestic air source heat pump requires the calculation in MCS 020 a) Issue 1.1, dated 14 April 2025, which article 6 of SI 2025/560 wrote into Part 14 of the 2015 Order with effect from 29 May 2025. Step 8 of that standard asks whether the calculated sound pressure level at every assessment position is "equal to or lower than 37.0 dB(A)". Its definitions section puts the assessment position at "a position 1m external to the centre point of any door or window to a habitable room of a neighbouring property as measured perpendicular to the plane of the door or window", and a habitable room is any room used for sleeping or living, excluding bathrooms, toilets, corridors and laundry rooms. There is no site-boundary test in the current standard, whatever you may be told. Its step 7 formula is L_p = L_w + 10 log (Q / 4πr²) − A_B, where Q is the directivity factor, r is the distance in metres and A_B is any barrier attenuation.

Run Samsung's own sound power figures through it for the most common siting in a British garden, which is a unit on the ground against one house wall with clear line of sight to the neighbour's window, and you get this:

If you want to check that arithmetic rather than take it on trust, the standard's own worked example does it for a 60 dB(A) unit on a house in Chester. At 8 metres with a 5 dB partial-view barrier it gives 31.96 dB(A), and at 5 metres with a 10 dB full barrier it gives 31.04 dB(A). Both pass. Take the barrier away and that first case becomes 36.97 dB(A), which step 8 rounds to the nearest 0.1 and so reads as exactly 37.0, bang on the limit and still a pass. That is how fine the margin gets, and it is why the barrier line on your assessment is worth reading.

Two things about that table matter more than the numbers themselves.

First, the directivity factor punishes tight siting. The standard sets Q2 for a unit with one reflecting surface, Q4 for two and Q8 for three, where a reflecting surface is any surface within 1 metre of the unit, including the ground but explicitly not vegetation, and it has to extend at least 1 metre beyond the edge of the unit in two or more directions. A unit standing on the ground against one house wall is therefore Q4, which is what the table above assumes. Tuck the same 16kW into a corner between two walls and it becomes Q8, which pushes the required distance past 20 metres. A heat pump with more than three reflective surfaces, the lightwell case, cannot meet MCS 020 a) at all.

Second, a wall helps enormously and a hedge does not. The standard's barrier matrix allows a 10 dB reduction for a solid brick or masonry wall, or a solid fence at least 18mm thick, that completely obscures the view of the assessment position from the top edge of the unit. A thinner solid fence gets 5 dB. Partial line of sight halves the allowance. Open fences, fences with gaps, walls in poor repair and vegetation all count as zero. That 10 dB is what takes the 16kW from 14.2 metres down to 4.5.

Permitted development rules differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so none of the above transfers across the border unchanged.

Samsung's "as low as 35 dB(A)" is the one figure the standard forbids

Samsung's UK launch material for the EHS Mono R290 advertises noise "as low as 35 d(BA)" using a 4-step Quiet Mode, and MCS 020 a) step 3 states that "the sound power level in 'low noise mode' shall not be used". The same step tells the installer to use the sound power level rather than the sound pressure level, and that where a datasheet says only "noise level" without saying which of the two it means, the installer has to go back to the manufacturer before starting the assessment.

So the 35 dB(A) in the brochure cannot appear anywhere in your planning paperwork. Neither can the 41 to 51 dB(A) sound pressure figures, because step 3 asks for sound power. If an installer shows you a noise assessment built on either, the assessment is wrong, and a wrong assessment is the kind of thing a neighbour's complaint surfaces two years later. The permitted figures for the four sizes are 55, 59, 60 and 65 dB(A) and nothing else.

This is not a Samsung quirk. We found the same pattern of four published noise figures on Daikin's UK range, where the brochure describes 62 dB(A) as "a low sound level", and on Vaillant's aroTHERM plus. Every manufacturer advertises its best-case number. The standard bars the quiet-mode figure and asks for sound power instead. Mitsubishi's R290 Ecodan range is the interesting exception on the sound power figures themselves: its six units sit in a 4 dB band from 54 to 58 dB(A), and its 8.5kW is quieter than its 5kW.

The efficiency figures Samsung publishes, and the one it mostly does not

Samsung gives a nominal heating COP of 5.10, 4.91, 4.80 and 4.51 W/W for the 5, 8, 12 and 16kW units, and publishes a SCOP of 5.10 for the 5kW alone. COP is a single operating point. SCOP is the seasonal figure that actually predicts a winter's electricity bill, and on Samsung's spec tables it is missing for three of the four sizes.

That absence is worth noticing rather than working around. The useful question for an installer is not "what is the SCOP" but "what SCOP at what flow temperature", because the same unit's seasonal efficiency falls sharply between a 35°C design flow and a 55°C one. City Plumbing's listing for the 5kW gives the energy label as "A+++ (35C), A++ (55C)", which shows the shape of the drop without giving you the number. Ask for the SCOP at the design flow temperature on your own heat loss survey, in writing.

The headline specifications are genuinely strong on paper. Samsung's own tables give the whole range a maximum heating leaving water temperature of 75°C and a heating operating range down to -25°C, with domestic hot water available from -25°C to 43°C ambient. A 75°C flow temperature is what makes a radiator retrofit plausible without replacing every radiator in the house, though running at 75°C is also what destroys the efficiency, so treat it as a cold-snap capability rather than a design condition.

On physical size, the 5 and 8kW units are 998 x 850 x 500 mm and 86 to 98 kg. The 12 and 16kW units are 1270 x 1018 x 530 mm and 140 kg. Refrigerant charge runs 0.63 kg on the 5kW to 1.25 kg on the 12 and 16kW, all R290 at a GWP of 3. R290 is propane, classed A3 flammable, which is why Samsung and every other R290 manufacturer specifies an exclusion zone around the unit with no ignition sources in it. Ask where that zone falls on your wall before the installer picks the spot.

The warranty is two years, unless your installer has done Samsung's training

UK retailer listings for the Samsung EHS monobloc range state "Standard warranty: 2 years, extended warranty: up to 7 years for Samsung approved installer", with the longer term tied to the installer completing Samsung's EHS installer training. Wickes publishes that wording across the 5, 8, 12 and 16kW units and separately lists "Years Guaranteed: 2".

Worth being straight about the evidence here: we could not find Samsung's own UK terms for that extended warranty. Samsung's UK climate pages at samsung.com redirect to samsung-climatesolutions.com, and its en-GB homeowner section names the EHS Mono R290 and links a brochure but publishes no warranty terms, no capacities and no MCS statement on the page. So the 7 years is a retailer's description of a Samsung programme rather than Samsung's own published contract, and that is exactly the gap to close before you sign. Ask your installer for the Samsung warranty document, which tier of Samsung training they hold, whether the registration is theirs to do or yours, and whether annual servicing is a condition. With other manufacturers each of those has turned out to be a real condition rather than a formality.

Boiler Upgrade Scheme eligibility, and why the model code matters for it

A Samsung air-to-water heat pump qualifies for the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant in England and Wales, provided both the installer and the specific product are MCS certified. Gov.uk's current figures are £7,500 towards an air source heat pump, £7,500 towards a ground source heat pump, £5,000 towards a biomass boiler and £2,500 towards an air-to-air heat pump, with an extra £1,500 available until March 2027 where the property is heated by oil or LPG and has no mains gas connection at the property.

The grant runs off the MCS register, not off the brand, which is why the model code matters. Checking your exact code on the MCS product directory before you sign is the single most useful ten minutes in this process. A caution on doing that check: the directory's own data interface returns only four Samsung rows, all of them older R32 models with certification periods that ended in 2021, and it returns nothing at all for current codes that plainly exist and are plainly being installed. Treat a blank result as the directory's limitation rather than as evidence a product is not certified, and ask the installer for the MCS certificate reference for your exact pairing instead.

Gov.uk publishes no closing date for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, so be wary of a quote that implies the scheme is about to end. The only published deadline is the 31 March 2027 expiry of the extra £1,500 off-gas-grid uplift. Scotland runs its own Home Energy Scotland grant and loan instead, and Northern Ireland has no equivalent scheme at present.

What to ask for on a Samsung quote

Five things, and all of them are things a good installer will hand over without being chased.

• The full model code, including the B or D and the EK or GK, so you know whether the hydraulic pump is in the price and whether you are being quoted a three-phase unit.
• The A-weighted sound power level for that code, and the MCS 020 a) calculation showing the distance to the nearest neighbouring habitable window, the Q value used, and any barrier allowance shown separately.
• The SCOP at your design flow temperature, taken from your own room-by-room heat loss survey rather than a brochure.
• The warranty term with its condition attached, and the Samsung document that states it.
• The MCS certificate reference for the exact product, plus the installer's own MCS number, because the Boiler Upgrade Scheme application needs both.

On the money side, the thing that catches people out is not the heat pump. It is the cylinder, the controls, the pipework upgrades and the radiator changes, which is where the difference between a £9,000 job and a £15,000 job usually lives. Our heat pump cost guide breaks that down line by line.

Frequently asked questions