Thinking of getting a heat pump

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Air to water pump cover.

RL2023

I am looking for people's experience with air to water heat pumps as we are thinking of installing one.

If you have time, could you/anyone answer

1) is the heat pump noisy?

2) is the house/builidng warm enough?

3) is there enough hot water ?

4) what are the monhtly electricity bills like ? (residential home only)

TIA

Yellow_Fern

The question is why do you want to install one? What problem are you trying to solve with one? You prob should need to be specific, new house or retrofit, rads or UFH? BER etc

RL2023

Our current gas boiler is not longer working properly, have tried a number of fixes and none have worked. It is 13 years old so we are investigating heat pumps as a more sustainable alternative. Also our hourse is quite well insulated so hoping not too much upgrades will be required to meet the requierements for a HP grant.

Wearb

Answer from @Lenar3556

(MOD NOTE: This is the only way I could find to put this answer in the correct place.

1. Can be a little noisy, definitely less than so than an oil boiler, but operates for longer.
2. Like any heating system it can be sized to make it as warm as you want. It will however be most efficient when operating at a relatively low flow temperature - so your existing radiators (if that is what you have) may be undersized. The system generally works best with underfloor heating.
3. If sized correctly, there shouldn’t be any issue with hot water. Again, it will be more efficient to store hot water at a lower temperature that you are doing so at present (with a periodic higher temperature purification cycle). This could mean that you would benefit from a larger cylinder.
4. Running costs will vary greatly from house to house as there are so many very significant variables. In that regard, there is also wide variation in the ‘real world’ average COP vs the peak quoted value. Some who have installed these systems do well to achieve an average COP of 2.3 over a calendar year. At that rate it would be significantly more expensive than kerosene to run.

All in all, I would tread very carefully if planning to retrofit an air to water heat pump into an existing house. There are two many variables, and in most cases it doesn’t make economic sense.

Sleeper12

Unless you have BER of A or B, I would look at getting another gas boiler. Insulation has to be excellent for Heat Pump to be efficient.

Sized correctly and installed correctly they work very well in a well insulated home. There are thousands of posts online in Ireland and the UK about Heat Pumps not able to heat the home correctly. This is always as a result of not enough insulation or a bad installation