Heat pump / inverter DIY

richardc1983

Yeh quite possibly your correct on that one.

Can u not hire them from anywhere?

rothers8080

Does it really matter where you put the heat exchanger? I've got one at the front of the house and I'd like to add another at the back, but the back yard seems to be a lot colder in the mornings (north facing) and frost and snow will stay in it for a lot longer than at the front of the house (often a day or two longer in the case of snow), so I'm wondering if it will make any major difference?

richardc1983

craig... No difference at all. The air temp will be the same even if north facing your talkin 1c difference. What your feeling is warmth from the sun which is radiant heat. Heat pumps extract heat from surrounding air.

punamulta

I have had a pump for a couple of years, the unit is facing south and does seem to benefit from the sun, I think maybe the metal casing warms up and so warms the air a bit, it helps with frosting too.

Pold

Hi all, in my previous post I wasnt meaning to sound like a "how to do it", just how it should be done, as I doubt most people have access to a Torr gauage and a vac pump or a manifol for that fact
Proving to be interesting reading this forum as I spend my days commissioning Daikin Altherma Air to Water Heat Pumps which whilst not quite as efficient a ASHP's do give you hot water and radiators to hang your clothes on.

TTFN

Cardew

Pold wrote: »

Proving to be interesting reading this forum as I spend my days commissioning Daikin Altherma Air to Water Heat Pumps which whilst not quite as efficient a ASHP's do give you hot water and radiators to hang your clothes on.

TTFN

Pold,

Can you say what sort of water temperature these achieve? and a typical range of COP?

rothers8080

Am I right in thinking the water based air source ones are easier to install? Do you just connected up two water pipes in a loop and it just pumps it round and round?

If so I'm tempted for the bathroom and bedrooms as I could do under floor due to the cellar being under them, easy install

Cardew

craigix wrote: »

Am I right in thinking the water based air source ones are easier to install? Do you just connected up two water pipes in a loop and it just pumps it round and round?

If so I'm tempted for the bathroom and bedrooms as I could do under floor due to the cellar being under them, easy install

As I understand it the big problem with retro-fitting any heat pump to a conventional CH system is that the water simply doesn't get hot enough- around 55C??

You need to have much bigger radiators and/or underfloor heating. This is why it is easier in a new build.

Even the Domestic Hot water storage presents problems as the water isn't warm enough to prevent the danger of Legionnaires disease. The normal solution being to boost it above 60C with an immersion heater.

mikedain

Cardew wrote: »

There are threads currently running in the Air Source Heat Pump(ASHP) system in the 'Fuel and Other heating' section.

An ASHP can provide heating very economically during the winter - you get the equivalent of 3 to 5 times the heat from 1 unit(kWh) of electricity. It is essentially a fridge working in reverse.

I have been reading this forum with interest and am looking at saving money while heating our room at night. We have the following air con unit in the bedroom and I am considering using this for night heating instead of gas central heating the whole house unnecessarily. Could anyone tell me if this air con unit is capable of producing the equivalent of 3x or 5x the heat from 1 unit of electricity (we have the slightly more powerful KFR32-GW/NJ1F unit):

http://www.mgr-ac.co.uk/productView.asp?productID=5&categoryID=2

Thank you!

richardc1983

Looking at the specs under COP for your unit, you have a COP of 2.76 in heating. THis means that for every 1kw the unit consumes you are getting 2.76kw back out of it. Your machine appears to be at the budget end of heat pump units. Its not the most efficient out there but either way u look at it your getting free heat cos anything over the initial 1kw it uses is a saving and bonus! For budget machines I would expect about 3kw COP.