Split Air con

DarkBahamut said:
And the usual BUS rules apply, so you only get the £2500 grant for A2A if you also remove your gas boiler at the same time.

It's realistically not going to apply to the vast majority of households getting AC installed.
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I suppose you could also heat the house using them but it doesn’t tend to work as well as a gas system, nothing does. I'd rather do that than get a normal heatpump though.

I wonder if you moved in to a house which needs the boiler replacing anyway, you get the grant and install AC. Then replace the gas boiler :D
 
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DarkBahamut said:
And the usual BUS rules apply, so you only get the £2500 grant for A2A if you also remove your gas boiler at the same time.

It's realistically not going to apply to the vast majority of households getting AC installed.
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Yea replacing the boiler with AC will be the hard part for most people. Likely means changes to your hob and water heating.
 
LiE said:
Yea replacing the boiler with AC will be the hard part for most people. Likely means changes to your hob and water heating.
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Hob isn't that much of an issue, just swap with an electric one.

You can get instant water heaters now to remove the need for a tank etc.
 
Nasher said:
I suppose you could also heat the house using them but it doesn’t tend to work as well as a gas system, nothing does. I'd rather do that than get a normal heatpump though.

I wonder if you moved in to a house which needs the boiler replacing anyway, you get the grant and install AC. Then replace the gas boiler :D
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You get hybrid systems as well.

Underfloor heating with a heat pump is different gravy, no cold spots and is much cheaper to run than a boiler.
 
Nasher said:
Hob isn't that much of an issue, just swap with an electric one.

You can get instant water heaters now to remove the need for a tank etc.
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Depends, for us it would need a fair bit of tricky routing to get a big boy wire from the consumer unit to the position of our gas hob.

Hot water cylinders aren't difficult to switch to electric/immersion heaters, I had one installed at my wife's business as they don't have gas. Our current hot water cylinder does have an immersion heater as a back up option and we could always upgrade it to be fed from our solar if needed.
 
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At the moment I just see the heating element of the system as a bonus. I don’t intend on getting rid of the gas boiler currently.

I note however that there are systems that heat water as well via a water tank. Dependent on how well this system heats, I can look at this in the future.
 
Bazzards said:
At the moment I just see the heating element of the system as a bonus. I don’t intend on getting rid of the gas boiler currently.

I note however that there are systems that heat water as well via a water tank. Dependent on how well this system heats, I can look at this in the future.
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Gas isn’t getting cheaper either so you have options in future if the price goes wild.
 
£270 free installation and 0% finance :p
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Trifid said:
is that a split unit? Why do we get ripped off so much?
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Because the suppliers have convinced the UK that A/C is some mega luxury, not an absolute necessity as it is other countries.

UK/EU electrical, refrigerant gas and environmental requirements are likely higher that SE Asian countries and increase the price of units made to the higher spec. EU/UK A/C sales are also way lower volumes than in Asia.
 
Rotty said:
Will make a difference when the installers are earning about 2 quid an hour
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it is cheap for the hardware. Mitsubishi isn't low end either...

Actually, maybe it doesn't include the condenser and it is the cost to connect a indoor unit to a existing outdoor one? In which case it looks OK for Thailand prices.
 
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I think now is the time to get proper AC installed.

It got to around 32c in the kids bedrooms during this last heatwave, and I want to do something about. I'd looked into it before, but then never got on with it.

Got two bedrooms that are approx 2.5 x 3.5m. It's an old house so 2.8m ceilings, calculated the cooling BTU for those rooms to be around 4250 BTU
One bedroom is 3.5 x 4.5, around 8000 BTU for that.

I was also thinking of adding one downstairs, in the hallway - it would help take the edge off the heat, and could just open doors to let cold air to where we want. It's not realistic to put AC units in all the downstairs rooms.

When I last looked into this, I settled on Daikin parts based on what systems friends had had installed. Since looking again now, they have cloud control and restrict local access. I don't like that as I want to control them fully from Home Assistant. Thankfully I found https://codeberg.org/RevK/ESP32-Faikout which looks like it'll allow that control.

For the hallway, one small bedroom and the large bedroom the internal units can go on the same external wall the outdoor unit will go on to. The 2nd small bedroom will need the unit fitted to the party wall, and pipes run upwards. This pipe run would be 11m.

Do all internal units support pipework coming in from the top? I would prefer that the upstairs units have the pipes going up into the loft. This means that the external unit can just have trunking up to the loft level, enclosing all the pipes and that they can then run to where they need through the loft, rather than outside the the house. Doing it like this will be much tidier.

Are there pros and cons to multisplit systems. How do you size and match them. Could one outdoor unit realistically do this, or should I split between one for downstairs and one for upstairs?

and finally, does anyone have experience with local installers that cover Manchester?
 
The contractor has applied 0% VAT to the entire quote. This is because the UK government treats the installation of energy-efficient heat pumps (which air conditioning units technically are when they can heat a home) as zero-rated for VAT. This saves you a massive 20% right off the top, which a less-transparent installer might try to pocket or miscalculate.
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I'm not criticising you for getting the discount.

I just don't understand the policy. Even if heat pumps are more efficient than other heating methods, they still increase electricity demand on the grid. If millions more homes install them basically purely for cooling in summer, that's a lot more electricity that has to be generated.

Good for you getting the VAT saving, but I don't see how subsidising more electricity demand helps achieve net zero.


I guess they work in reverse also though so they can heat too? which is the effcient part? but if thats not the primary reason people are installing them it just seems dumb..

no doubt some companies and mps made an absolute fortune from this push though. GG lobbying.
 
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Anyone done ducted? Seems like a no brainer to me to plan for whole home A2A if/when my boiler dies. A2W seems pointless to me.

Could have one unit in the loft ducted to 3 beds & hallway, then one normal indoor unit downstairs on the external wall to do living/diner. Heating and cooling, bosh.

It all looks incredibly simple and DIYable, really hope they do something about this f gas thing as it's just making labour costs crazy atm.
 
That never going to be DIYable.

The FGas cert isn’t even that difficult to get, it’s 5 days IIRC. That doesn’t mean you have the skills to actually install one.

The full qualification assumes you also want to work on commercial refrigeration, there isn’t actually a domestic installation qualification.
 
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