Heat Pumps: anyone have one/thought about it?

[NoNameNoNumber]

Yes

Ah, that's simple enough then.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

I've got a question for the hive mind here.

Do you need a hot water tank with a heat pump or are there any which heat on demand like a combi boiler does?

Reason is that we don't have a tank currently and really don't have anywhere to put one as we designed the house around having a LPG combi, I did a self build 9 years ago so our house is very well insulated but like i say has a combi and normal rads up and downstairs.

Also from looking tanks look to be around the 200 litre mark, is that right? We've got a big free standing bath which i believe is around 220 litres capacity so surely i'd run out of water just filling the bath, what if we wanted a shower or 2 shortly afterwards? Or have i misunderstood and that's not how it works?

Yes, you do. For various reasons. The one the heat pump installers will definitely tell you about is to ensure that the heat pump avoids short cycling / has somewhere to cycle hot water through.

If you go bigger, you can build a huge amount of system resilience to high cost heat.

TL;DR you can't have a heat pump without a thermal store.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I've got a question for the hive mind here.

Do you need a hot water tank with a heat pump or are there any which heat on demand like a combi boiler does?

Reason is that we don't have a tank currently and really don't have anywhere to put one as we designed the house around having a LPG combi, I did a self build 9 years ago so our house is very well insulated but like i say has a combi and normal rads up and downstairs.

Also from looking tanks look to be around the 200 litre mark, is that right? We've got a big free standing bath which i believe is around 220 litres capacity so surely i'd run out of water just filling the bath, what if we wanted a shower or 2 shortly afterwards? Or have i misunderstood and that's not how it works?

You need some kind of thermal store.

You can put the cylinder in an unheated space like an attached garage, loft or if you are lucky enough to have one, basement.

If you can’t fit a normal sized cylinder, have a look at a heat geek mini store. They are not as efficient but they are a lot smaller.

On the bath front, you don’t need 200 litres of hot water to fill a 200L bath as you’ll be mixing down to get the bath to a temperature which you can actually get into without giving yourself burns.

 

[200sols]

Thermal store also provides mains pressure hot water. Not sure if other solutions will.

 

[sovietspybob]

You need some kind of thermal store.

You can put the cylinder in an unheated space like an attached garage, loft or if you are lucky enough to have one, basement.

If you can’t fit a normal sized cylinder, have a look at a heat geek mini store. They are not as efficient but they are a lot smaller.

On the bath front, you don’t need 200 litres of hot water to fill a 200L bath as you’ll be mixing down to get the bath to a temperature which you can actually get into without giving yourself burns.

Ah yeah i knew i must be missing something, that makes sense.

I guess the problem i have is i've got nowhere at all to put one, boiler is in the utility on the wall but it's full of other stuff, our house is more of a dormer bungalow so no attic space at all and a solid slab floor so no basement, garage is 20m away from the house so that's a no go too

Only option is to put it in one of the walk in wardrobes understairs but that's miles away form current boiler location and no idea how you'd run new pipes and stuff without destroying the house doing it?

Looks like i'll have to be a late adopter at this rate.