Air-air heat pump/air con for single room.

[DrFfybes]

I recall someone on here installed an ASHP for a single room, that also works as an aircon unit, but can't find the post.

We're having some works done, and more planned. One discovery was the woodburner we moved out of the way required a new flue, and the woodburner itself was 15 years old. Then we realised that had there not been one, we would never contemplate spending £3500 or so installing one for what is MrsF's office, so I've cut the old flue back and bricked up the opening. This is at the North end of the house, so does get chilly, but we've installed insulated plasterboard, the floor is insulated, and the microbore for the rads replaced with 15mm, so this should address the issue of getting heat in there and retaining it. Plus there's the calor fire, and as we use one cyl per winter the £3500 should buy enough to last a century.

At the other (South) end of the house we're removing a dividing chimney to make one room. The new space is 6m x 6m, with 3 external walls and a lot of windows, but the observant of you will notice the removal of the chimney. This means the gas fire in the middle will also go, and MrsF wants a source of instant/local heat rather than run the CH. For this we can either install a 5-7kW gas fire on the external wall, or the alternative is a ASHP heat/cool unit, which would probably be useful in the odd hot summer day.

So if any of you fine folk have gone down this route, plase can you post your experiences?

Thanks

Paul

[Tedx]

No experience Paul, but still doing research into air to air source heat pumps. The Americans call them 'mini splits'

It would seem that Daikin and Mitsubishi are the ones to buy in the UK. The Yanks fit them everywhere - from off grid properties to basement man caves to basically heating the whole house - even in the colder states (where it gets a lot colder than in the UK.

With the mini splits, they are a pretty straight forward installation for a professional installer. The refrigerant is pre packed into the pipework for example.

In Scotland, you can fit one outdoor unit under permitted developments, but only at the rear of your property. Any where else, you need permission.

Loads of videos on YouTube.

[AF62]

So if any of you fine folk have gone down this route, plase can you post your experiences?

I had a couple of split ASHP installed a couple of years ago, primarily for aircon but ironically I have probably used them more for heating.

Installation seemed pretty straightforward (although I wasn’t doing it!), a hole in the wall, a unit screwed on the wall inside, pipework to the unit outside, and connected to an electrical supply. Both units were fitted within five hours by three people, including one upstairs. However they were straightforward with the outdoor units being the other side of the wall from the indoor, so no long complicated pipe runs, or need to install condensate pumps.

The units are Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (there are two Mitsubishi companies making aircon) and they are quiet in operation, not absolutely silent, but virtually so.

Cooling works as expected. Heating is slightly odd as it isn’t the same sort of heat you get from a radiator as it is warming the air in the room. So it heats the room very fast, but equally when you turn it off it seems to cool very rapidly as well. Mainly I use it for heating spring and autumn when it seems a waste to turn on the whole house central heating because it is a bit chilly in one room, so I can’t comment on what it’s like when it’s freezing outside.

Any where else, you need permission.

Although in practice nobody seems to bother!

[Mike4]

I too am considering a small "mini split". Amazingly I still don't know anyone in real life whose had one fitted! Some I'm advised come with the refrigerant incorporated, but not all.

The bit I haven't established is whether I can fit and commission the refrigerant-incorporated type myself, or if I still need to employ someone qualified to commission it. Does anyone know please?

[AF62]

The bit I haven't established is whether I can fit and commission the refrigerant-incorporated type myself, or if I still need to employ someone qualified to commission it. Does anyone know please?

Strictly speaking they should be.

If you went back five years it was easy to buy pre-charged systems to fit yourself, but these days even if you can find anyone selling them then the reputable ones will now only supply if you can provide the F Gas registration number of the fitter.

And if you do see a DIY split system advertised then check if it the ‘proper’ R32 gas as some cheep DIY systems are getting around the rules by using R290 aka propane that doesn’t require an F Gas fitter, but is far less efficient as well as possibly going ‘bang’.

An example of that type is here where it is only mentioned in ‘weasel words’ in the description - https://www.aircondirect.co.uk/p/865335 ... s-warranty

As a last resort there are these systems - https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iq ... onditioner with these the fitting is ‘drill two damn big holes in the wall’ then plug in. Not as silent as a proper split, but an awful lot quieter and more efficient than the ‘push around’ machines with an elephant trunk out the window.

[Mike4]

The bit I haven't established is whether I can fit and commission the refrigerant-incorporated type myself, or if I still need to employ someone qualified to commission it. Does anyone know please?

Strictly speaking they should be.

If you went back five years it was easy to buy pre-charged systems to fit yourself, but these days even if you can find anyone selling them then the reputable ones will now only supply if you can provide the F Gas registration number of the fitter.

And if you do see a DIY split system advertised then check if it the ‘proper’ R32 gas as some cheep DIY systems are getting around the rules by using R290 aka propane that doesn’t require an F Gas fitter, but is far less efficient as well as possibly going ‘bang’.

An example of that type is here where it is only mentioned in ‘weasel words’ in the description - https://www.aircondirect.co.uk/p/865335 ... s-warranty

As a last resort there are these systems - https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iq ... onditioner with these the fitting is ‘drill two damn big holes in the wall’ then plug in. Not as silent as a proper split, but an awful lot quieter and more efficient than the ‘push around’ machines with an elephant trunk out the window.

Thanks!

Faintly worrying that the 'plug in' unit in your link is in the "clearance" section. Looks like no-one wants them.

And the proper pre-charged mini split I looked at on that site says MUST be installed by an F Gas bod. Curious about why it is pre-charged if an F Gas bod needs to install it anyway. Maybe it is quicker, and the F Gas is just needed to prove no leaks and/or fix them if there are. I can imagine there being some right lash-ups happening with incompetent DIYers (like I would be doing anything fridgey).

This is what I was looking at...
https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iq ... onditioner

[AF62]

This is what I was looking at...
https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iq ... onditioner

If you go through to the checkout page they will only ship it to you once you have provided an F Gas number even though it is a pre-gassed unit. Back in 2017 they just shipped them out.

Government rules are here if interested - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-f-gas-or-equipment

However by getting it installed you do save the VAT as installed aircon is now 0% VAT but buying to install yourself is 20% (it was previously 5% but HMRC deliberately worded the guidance so many installers thought it only applied to ASHP that could only heat), so saving a hundred or two on purchase offsets some of the fitting cost.

[Mike4]

This is what I was looking at...
https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/iq ... onditioner

If you go through to the checkout page they will only ship it to you once you have provided an F Gas number even though it is a pre-gassed unit. Back in 2017 they just shipped them out.

Government rules are here if interested - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-f-gas-or-equipment

However by getting it installed you do save the VAT as installed aircon is now 0% VAT but buying to install yourself is 20% (it was previously 5% but HMRC deliberately worded the guidance so many installers thought it only applied to ASHP that could only heat), so saving a hundred or two on purchase offsets some of the fitting cost.

I'm more inclined to do the f gas training and get my own number actually!

[Howard]

I recall someone on here installed an ASHP for a single room, that also works as an aircon unit, but can't find the post.

We're having some works done, and more planned. One discovery was the woodburner we moved out of the way required a new flue, and the woodburner itself was 15 years old. Then we realised that had there not been one, we would never contemplate spending £3500 or so installing one for what is MrsF's office, so I've cut the old flue back and bricked up the opening. This is at the North end of the house, so does get chilly, but we've installed insulated plasterboard, the floor is insulated, and the microbore for the rads replaced with 15mm, so this should address the issue of getting heat in there and retaining it. Plus there's the calor fire, and as we use one cyl per winter the £3500 should buy enough to last a century.

At the other (South) end of the house we're removing a dividing chimney to make one room. The new space is 6m x 6m, with 3 external walls and a lot of windows, but the observant of you will notice the removal of the chimney. This means the gas fire in the middle will also go, and MrsF wants a source of instant/local heat rather than run the CH. For this we can either install a 5-7kW gas fire on the external wall, or the alternative is a ASHP heat/cool unit, which would probably be useful in the odd hot summer day.

So if any of you fine folk have gone down this route, plase can you post your experiences?

Thanks

Paul

I'm going right back to the start of our ASHP project. You might like to look at this thread. viewtopic.php?p=217990#p217990

Summing up the experience so far. Brilliant! The performance of the unit as a heater is excellent and it is particularly economical in the current high cost energy situation. We've cut our gas consumption significantly and the ASHP running costs are very low, even down to minus 5 degrees outside this year.

regards

Howard

[Gerry557]

Have you looked at a smart trv system that can turn rooms or groups of rooms into heat zones.

That way you can use your central heating system to switch on individual rooms as and when you want. An example would be tado.

You could also change the radiator in the big room. Often they are single panel so exchange to double panel. The boiler should be able to cope especially if you are now heating less rads. I did this in my sunroom. I had a radiator covered by a sofa which I couldn't use. I removed this but swapped the single panel to double. In my case I also increased the width slightly too. It made a big difference to the way the room heats. It works much quicker now and feels warmer. Yes it will use more energy but I don't have to plan to put the heating on 30min prior.

Cost approx £150 for the controller and £50 per smart trv depending on how many rads you want to control. Hopefully you have WiFi and a smartphone anyway

Just a thought

[DrFfybes]

Thanks for that Howard - an interesting read. As this is a small room at the North end we might simply want a single 'heat-only' unit (even last summer it only hit 26C in there) but for the extra cost we could get a split one and use the cooling function for the bedroom above.

Similarly at the South end we could do the same on a separate system. (The house is a North-south longhouse from a couple of extended worker's cottages, 4 rooms long, one room wide, kitchen in the middle, with an L bit at one end).

We're not really interested in Smart controls, I don't have a smart phone, and even with extenders several rooms struggle for wifi, in the main bedroom the strongest signal is from the farm 150m across the field. We just turn TRVs up and down as we use the rooms, I open the TRV in MrsF's office whilst the kettle boils on the days she work, she closes it when she leaves, and the bedroom ones get turned down when we get up and opened again in the evening ready for the heating coming on about 10pm.

Basically we just want something we can hit a button when it is getting a bit hot/cool if we are in the room, rather like the gas and calor fires we have now.

thanks

Paul

[9873210]

I don't have a smart phone,

You might want to reconsider. It depends on why you don't have a smartphone. Religious or philosophical arguments are irrefutable, but perhaps you just think a smartphone is not useful because you don't twit or facebook.

I don't have cell phone service, but I have a portable general purpose computer that fits in my pocket. I get them as castoffs from friends and relatives for free or scrape value. You can also buy phones from the low end pre-paid cell service providers for not very much, these should have a couple of years of useful life.

A phone without service has a lot of stand alone functionality, camera, book reader, GPS, iPod, file transfer, calculator, torch. It can also be used to control gadgets like borescopes, fire alarms, heating systems, TVs etc. They may also be able to call 999.

The reason phones are used to control gadgets is because for many devices a display, keyboard and UI would be by far the most expensive part of the device. This is why you have devices with horrible interfaces with two buttons and an LED to set hundreds of options in Morse. It's cheaper and better to stick in bluetooth and a web server and use existing equipment for the interface. (This is nothing new, in the last century we did the same thing with an RS-232 interface and had service techs use a handheld terminal and later a laptop. We had to pay $200 to equip a few dozen techs, but saved $50 on each of tens of thousands of units)

[DrFfybes]

I don't have a smart phone,

You might want to reconsider. It depends on why you don't have a smartphone. Religious or philosophical arguments are irrefutable, but perhaps you just think a smartphone is not useful because you don't twit or facebook.

Nah, it's because I rarely use one, so by the time I've looked all over the house for it, checked my coat, in the car, and finally found it out of charge on top of the microwave, I could have walked across the room and turned the aircon/TRV up/down, made a cup of tea, and been halfway through "Death in Paradise" Because we have nothing that connects to them, we don't use it to control anything. Most things described as "Smart" are basically "Lazy", I really really do not need to control my heating or TV from anywhere except the room I'm in, nor see who's at my front door from a hotel in Mallorca, and if I ever get too idle to get off my arris to turn a light on and off then it is time to take a one way trip to Switzerland.

There is a spare phone in the drawer - I used it for a few months when mum died as I'd signed up for 12 months for a SIM for her basic phone. I used it pretty much exclusively for the village comittee whatsapp group when we organised the jubilee party, then nothing. However I will admit the voice search on Google maps is useful.

Paul

OK - irony time - whilst I was typing this the garage phoned my mobile to tell me the car had been MOTd. Looking in the log that's 4 calls I've had already this month, although one was from MrsF. Most of the texts have been "your order is ready to collect" from Screwfix

[funduffer]

I recall someone on here installed an ASHP for a single room, that also works as an aircon unit, but can't find the post.

We're having some works done, and more planned. One discovery was the woodburner we moved out of the way required a new flue, and the woodburner itself was 15 years old. Then we realised that had there not been one, we would never contemplate spending £3500 or so installing one for what is MrsF's office, so I've cut the old flue back and bricked up the opening. This is at the North end of the house, so does get chilly, but we've installed insulated plasterboard, the floor is insulated, and the microbore for the rads replaced with 15mm, so this should address the issue of getting heat in there and retaining it. Plus there's the calor fire, and as we use one cyl per winter the £3500 should buy enough to last a century.

At the other (South) end of the house we're removing a dividing chimney to make one room. The new space is 6m x 6m, with 3 external walls and a lot of windows, but the observant of you will notice the removal of the chimney. This means the gas fire in the middle will also go, and MrsF wants a source of instant/local heat rather than run the CH. For this we can either install a 5-7kW gas fire on the external wall, or the alternative is a ASHP heat/cool unit, which would probably be useful in the odd hot summer day.

So if any of you fine folk have gone down this route, plase can you post your experiences?

Thanks

Paul

I'm going right back to the start of our ASHP project. You might like to look at this thread. viewtopic.php?p=217990#p217990

Summing up the experience so far. Brilliant! The performance of the unit as a heater is excellent and it is particularly economical in the current high cost energy situation. We've cut our gas consumption significantly and the ASHP running costs are very low, even down to minus 5 degrees outside this year.

regards

Howard

I would endorse everything Howard has written on this. I fitted a single room Daikin air con unit last month, driven by an external air-to-air heat pump. Took half a day to install. Operates via a remote and via a phone app. Cost £1800 all in.

I use it to save gas by using it during the day when I would otherwise have heated the whole house with gas central heating. So far my gas usage in the month I have had it is 20% down on last February. As I have solar, it mostly runs for nothing, at least when it is vaguely sunny or bright outside. It is highly efficient anyway.

In the summer I will use it in cooling mode if we have any really hot days like last summer. Again using mainly solar.

I love it.

FD

[DrFfybes]

Thanks all,

I contacted a couple of installers and hd prices back.

All the units these days are apparently Air source heat pump operation, both quotes were a split unit with heating and cooling, 3.5kW units.

The firm supplying Mitsubishi Heavy INdustries unit was £1150, the one supplying a Daikin was £1196, so very little difference. Both required me to provide a power supply although one said he was happy to use a plug socket inside the house.

Both installers said pretty much exactly the same about location of units, options for a bigger one to run a second room, pipe runs, etc, so the only difference is which we think looks the nicest.

Paul

[Dicky99]

Basically we just want something we can hit a button when it is getting a bit hot/cool if we are in the room, rather like the gas and calor fires we have now.

Have you considered and ruled out IR radiant panels?

[DrFfybes]

Basically we just want something we can hit a button when it is getting a bit hot/cool if we are in the room, rather like the gas and calor fires we have now.

Have you considered and ruled out IR radiant panels?

Yes. Mainly as we'd got the room reboarded, first fitted, and were 2 days away frm the plasterers coming when we thought about it, but also because wall space is at a real premium in this house as being a long house each room has at least 2 windows (there are over 50 openers) and fer places for furniture and pictures.

[Itsallaguess]

At the other (South) end of the house we're removing a dividing chimney to make one room. The new space is 6m x 6m, with 3 external walls and a lot of windows, but the observant of you will notice the removal of the chimney.

This means the gas fire in the middle will also go, and MrsF wants a source of instant/local heat rather than run the CH.

For this we can either install a 5-7kW gas fire on the external wall, or the alternative is a ASHP heat/cool unit, which would probably be useful in the odd hot summer day.

So if any of you fine folk have gone down this route, please can you post your experiences?

I'm going right back to the start of our ASHP project.

You might like to look at this thread - https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=217990#p217990

Summing up the experience so far. Brilliant!

The performance of the unit as a heater is excellent and it is particularly economical in the current high cost energy situation. We've cut our gas consumption significantly and the ASHP running costs are very low, even down to minus 5 degrees outside this year

Hi Howard,

You'll know I've followed your air-to-air heat-pump journey with huge interest, and it's great to hear that you've seen such good results from your installation, but I've kept meaning to come back to you after reading a number of recent 'heat pump' related articles, where they almost universally seem to be panning the suitability of 'whole house' air-to-water heat-pump systems, and where the clear benefits that you've seen from your own type of multi-room air-to-air heat-pump installation is rarely, if ever, mentioned in them.

A recent example -

Britain’s heat pump rollout branded an ‘embarrassment’ - Flagship net zero scheme flops as installations fall far short of target -

Britain's flagship heat pump scheme has been branded an “embarrassment” after badly missing its target of 30,000 annual installations and spending just 40pc of its budget.

Fewer than 10,000 heat pumps were installed in the first year of the grant programme, which gives households money to pay for them as part of net zero efforts to wean Britain off gas.

...

However, critics of heat pumps say the devices remain far too expensive for most households and that installing them will require costly adaptations in many homes.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) estimates that a typical household will end up paying between £7,000 and £13,000 for an air source heat pump, before any voucher discount is applied.

https://archive.ph/8LdIw#selection-5475.0-5475.179


The above is a typical example of mainstream heat-pump related features that seem to solely concentrate on the well-known downsides of 'whole house' air-to-water heat-pump installations, and I'm yet to encounter a single related article that properly highlights the clear benefits of the type of multi-room air-to-air heat-pump installation that you're clearly over the moon with.

As an owner of this type of technology, and as someone who's experienced the clear benefits of it over this past winter, are you equally surprised to see this 'heat pump' technology get lumped together and criticised like this, when they should clearly be getting discussed as completely separate installation-types, with the benefits and downsides much more clearly defined between them?

Is it any wonder that the type of relatively cheap heat-pump installation that you've installed and are happy with are not more widely known about and considered, when it seems clear that there would be huge benefits in doing so?

This seems such a crazy situation to me that I'm struggling to see how the industry are actually allowing it to happen...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[scotview]

Hi Howard,
You'll know I've followed your air-to-air heat-pump journey with huge interest,

Itsallaguess

Could I bring up a query re heat pumps (probably more pertinent to air to air) and storage batteries.

We are looking into installing storage batteries to take advantage of off peak electricity rates. Looking at a longer horizon and the 2030 key gas boiler transition date I am finding it difficult to calculate future size of required battery. The following is a rough estimation.

Typical March usage
Daily electricity 12 kWh
Daily gas 66 kWh

Now, most folk are typically installing say an 8kWh battery system and think they are meeting their current electricity consumption. We could install say a 20 kWh battery to cover our daily winter electricity needs and backup supply.

Come 2030 we would need to install a storage battery system of say 45/55 kWh (real world Scottish winter heat pump COP of say 2) excluding water heating.

So, will all current battery installations have to be replaced/uprated, can batteries of this size be recharged overnight and will the grid cope ?

Is there a miss-selling thing going on here, or are my numbers daft.

Please don't introduce the complication of solar, we get the dark, tundra Northern winter.

[DrFfybes]

Well, the system has been in a couple of weeks and all is well. The posher one has more features, but the room is warm in about 5 min and on eco mode uses (I think) just under 1kW. Also it stays warm for about 30 min after it is switched off, so in reality uses less.

The unexpected downside - the lowest temp it can be set to on 'heat' is 18C, and the rest of the house never gets that warm in winter so it feels too warm!

Oddly enough I have also been looking at Solar/battery, like a friend had in Hertford. At the moment their 10kWh battery is fully charged by the 8kW solar by mid morning, and flat again by midnight, so they think they need a bigger battery, probably twice as much. We'll get panels when the house is reroofed later this year, and I was looking at 30kWh+ storage and putting air to air at the other end of the house as we'll lose the gas fire, but in the Midlands we get a lot more sun

Paul