Air Conditioning as Heating?

Noiz

Hi all,

Me and the missus moved into our first home in February and currently, other than a few rubbish storage heaters and an immersion heater, there's no heating in the house what-so-ever. It also has no gas supply, although there is a gas main running down the street.

Our original plan was to wait out the Winter and then get central heating installed when the weather's warmer and hopefully the heating companies will have sales on. It was going so well until the sudden drop in temperatures in the last few days.

Then, on a forward planning stint, I was looking at air conditioning when I found this link: http://www.yourwelcome.co.uk/acatalog/AirConditioning.html

It reckons that their air conditioners also make fantastic heaters, and boasts that a 1.3kW unit will output 3.5kW of heat. This got me to thinking that maybe the whole house could be heated with these things.

Now I know very little about heating, central or otherwise, nor do I have any idea of the cost of running a bunch of these vs the cost of gas central heating. Also there's the issue of heating water if we were to go this route. Surely that's possible though? Surely fully electric heating isn't still stuck in the land of storage heaters and immersion tanks while gas heating is so advanced?

I could think of nowhere to research such things, and knowing you're all a knowledgable lot I hoped some of you might be able to shed some light on this subject.

Anyone?

ormus

forget it.
gas CH (with water) is far more efficient than electric. summat like approx 3 times!

Avoriaz

ormus wrote: »

forget it.
gas CH (with water) is far more efficient than electric. summat like approx 3 times!

You have misunderstood.

Noiz is referring to heat pumps not heaters.

A heat pump is basically the reverse of an air conditioning unit or fridge. It extracts heat from the OUTSIDE air and supplies it to the INSIDE rooms of a building.

Instead of an Air Con unit inside the room pumping heat out, the unit is outside the room pumping heat in.

You get far more heat for the same amount of electricity than if you used an electric heater.

Check the back of your fridge. It is warm as the fridge is extracting heat from inside the fridge. Now imagine the inside of the fridge is the outside air and the back of the fridge is your living room. Nice and warm.

Noiz

Avoriaz wrote: »

You have misunderstood.

Noiz is referring to heat pumps not heaters.

A heat pump is basically the reverse of an air conditioning unit or fridge. It extracts heat from the OUTSIDE air and supplies it to the INSIDE rooms of a building.

Instead of an Air Con unit inside the room pumping heat out, the unit is outside the room pumping heat in.

You get far more heat for the same amount of electricity than if you used an electric heater.

Hmm, how does that work if the outside is freezing cold?

ormus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

Avoriaz

Noiz wrote: »

Hmm, how does that work if the outside is freezing cold?

It works OK even in very cold weather, though the unit has to work harder and is therefore less efficient. But it will still produce more heat than the energy value of the electricity it consumes.

A domestic freezer can freeze its contents to below –18C and commercial and scientific freezers can chill to almost absolute zero. If an ordinary freezer can extract heat from air and stored items at –18C and below, a heat pump can extract heat from air at –18C.

Heat pumps really are just freezers set up to work the opposite way round. Instead of chilling the contents and moving the heat outside the freezer, they chill the outside air and move the heat inside the building.

Heat pumps can easily be designed to work even in very low temperatures. I won’t bore you with the details but it basically involves using a compressed refrigerant gas that is evaporated and absorbs heat from the outside air and is then condensed and releases heat into the building.

thescouselander

Air source heat pumps are efficient but they cost a lot of money and are not particularly powerful compared to a conventional boiler.

richardc1983

ive put a post up in i want to buy forum