Storage/panel heaters but why aren't people installing heat pump Aircon units?

Mstty

Quick update on the performance and pros and cons

To summarise

We bought the above pictured unit for the garage, only one wall out of four insulated and single brick. False ceiling in but no insulation on top.

The use we wanted was to heat to 17oC for a nice workout temp in the winter, use the Aircon in summer to bring it down to 20oC and dehumidify.

Heating results

Bit of a mixed bag here as it is not clear that when the room is under 7oC the unit struggles. The manual and online documentation does suggest cooling can only occur over 7oC but did not explicitly say this for heating as well. The result is a day like today when the garage was 7oC matching the outside temperature within 40 mins and at a cost of 17.5p the garage was at 18oC and when turning the unit down to the lowest fan unit speed and selecting 17oC as the temperature to sustain it uses approx 14p an hour. (Considering the lack of insulation which will be rectified this year that's not a bad result) on its 3rd hour of running keeping a consistent 17oC the usage dipped to 250w so on our current fixed tariff of 29.24p kWh that's 7.3p an hour.

The not so good result came yesterday when we tried to heat the room from 4oC. This unit struggles to produce enough heat from what it was taking in and drawing in from outside and was running full pelt 715w and got up to about 15oC. (Bear in mind the poor to non existent insulation) and the unit then decided enough was enough after one hour running. Not a fault just needed a rest.

So we still have our 2kwh fan heaters in the garage and on colder days we are going to boost the room temp to 8-10oC with those and then the unit has hotter ambient to draw upon to do it's heat pump thing. That's the plan and I will update if that works and the costs of that process for colder days.

I am well aware that getting the insulation in the garage sorted is the best thing we can do so that's definitely on the Todo list.

Cooling won't be tested til some warm weather appears

Dehumidifier in the manual it states on this model it requires a room temp of 24oC so we may still have to purchase another unit for the colder months.

Not the complete all round unit expected but overall we can make this work and improve on its capabilities with insulating the garage

On that note I was thinking of pumping those polystyrene balls into the roof of the garage above the plaster board ceiling? Anyone got some experience of this and if it's good and costs (5.5mx3.25m)

khanny09

Mstty said:

Quick update on the performance and pros and cons

To summarise

We bought the above pictured unit for the garage, only one wall out of four insulated and single brick. False ceiling in but no insulation on top.

The use we wanted was to heat to 17oC for a nice workout temp in the winter, use the Aircon in summer to bring it down to 20oC and dehumidify.

Heating results

Bit of a mixed bag here as it is not clear that when the room is under 7oC the unit struggles. The manual and online documentation does suggest cooling can only occur over 7oC but did not explicitly say this for heating as well. The result is a day like today when the garage was 7oC matching the outside temperature within 40 mins and at a cost of 17.5p the garage was at 18oC and when turning the unit down to the lowest fan unit speed and selecting 17oC as the temperature to sustain it uses approx 14p an hour. (Considering the lack of insulation which will be rectified this year that's not a bad result) on its 3rd hour of running keeping a consistent 17oC the usage dipped to 250w so on our current fixed tariff of 29.24p kWh that's 7.3p an hour.

The not so good result came yesterday when we tried to heat the room from 4oC. This unit struggles to produce enough heat from what it was taking in and drawing in from outside and was running full pelt 715w and got up to about 15oC. (Bear in mind the poor to non existent insulation) and the unit then decided enough was enough after one hour running. Not a fault just needed a rest.

So we still have our 2kwh fan heaters in the garage and on colder days we are going to boost the room temp to 8-10oC with those and then the unit has hotter ambient to draw upon to do it's heat pump thing. That's the plan and I will update if that works and the costs of that process for colder days.

I am well aware that getting the insulation in the garage sorted is the best thing we can do so that's definitely on the Todo list.

Cooling won't be tested til some warm weather appears

Dehumidifier in the manual it states on this model it requires a room temp of 24oC so we may still have to purchase another unit for the colder months.

Not the complete all round unit expected but overall we can make this work and improve on its capabilities with insulating the garage

On that note I was thinking of pumping those polystyrene balls into the roof of the garage above the plaster board ceiling? Anyone got some experience of this and if it's good and costs (5.5mx3.25m)

Thank you Mstty, this is very helpful information as I'm considering purchasing the same unit for a somewhat similar use case (sporadically heating a currently unheated room).