Can you cool your home with a heat pump?

Now that our climate is getting warmer each year, cooling is becoming more of a need for UK homes than it has in the past. New buildings are extremely efficient at retaining the heat in the Winter, but this is also true for the remainder of the year. Older buildings with poor loft and cavity wall insulation also suffer, despite much needed upgrades to the insulation within.

Traditionally, the only way to cool a building is through Air Conditioning (AC), but this will require one (or more) additional units to be sited outside your home, which can reduce outdoor living space. Traditional AC is capable of both heating and cooling as they are classed as Air-to-Air heat pumps, but they are unable to provide hot water through the same system, and do not qualify for the BUS grant of £7500.

We have invested in research to find better ways to utilise the capabilities of your new heat pump, are re-use existing infrastructure within your home to keep an all year round comfortable climate from the minimal amount of installation equipment and impact on your living spaces.

How do we do it? We use one of three methods:

1. Underfloor heating (UFH): In Summer, a room usually gains heat from the sun shining through windows and heating up items within the room, mostly, this will be flooring that is exposed to sunlight during the course of the day, thus heating the room. We use UFH to circulate chilled water around the underfloor loops and keep the floor at a set temperature, reducing the impact of the sun on the room.
2. Direct cooling: we use special radiators called Fan Convectors which replace your standard radiators to run both heating and cooling operations throughout the year. In Summer, chilled water is run through Fan Convectors which automatically adapt to the required temperature, and maintain a regulated indoor climate. This method works well in older houses where it is seldom possible to install UFH or MVHR.
3. Cooling through Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR). On new build and full retrofit projects, we can install a system which uses extract air to heat or cool the incoming air. This is very popular in Europe and can recover up to 85% of ventilated energy losses.
   By installing heating/cooling onto the MVHR system, we can use the heat pump to introduce chilled air into living spaces to help maintain a comfortable indoor climate.

Cooling from a Peat Pump could be seen as a luxury that contradicts the nature of a sustainable energy source, but most installations these days are partnered with Solar PV, reducing the need to run cooling by power imported from the grid, and giving almost “free” air conditioning.
As buildings are having cooling considered or required a necessity by planners and architects, this is not becoming an essential service to consider in any new build property, and most retrofit properties too.

Get in touch to find out more.