Air-to-Air heat pumps in Ireland

Thanks - that's an astonishingly good price.
 
Friend got a quote from those guys for an open-plan 31m2 kitchen/dining/sunroom in a regular 1990's 3-bed semi - €4.5k. Admittedly it was for the nice Toshiba Haori unit. They haven't been the easiest to get hold of since paying deposit either, probably prioritising larger-scale commercial work.
 
That's not bad - I paid 2.7k for a wood burning stove for a 26m2 90s open plan living room so its comparable. Replacing all 3 (broken) storage heaters with even basic equivalents would cost me 3k. I presume once you have the piping and power in for the basic setup, its easier to upgrade to cover the entire house at a later stage?
 
That’s possible with the multi-split version of the outdoor unit.
 
conor_mc said:
That’s possible with the multi-split version of the outdoor unit.
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I know the Daikin Emura can do either 5 indoor units OR 3 plus hot water, which I assume is for apartments or small homes, but the Toshiba can do up to 10 I think - which is impressive. I'm surprised these solutions are not getting more support and traction from SEAI? Its like they've entirely forgotten all about apartments, flats and small houses that don't have "wet" systems in place.
The rough cost I've seen for installing a wet system from scratch air to water for ONLY the heating system for a house my size, not even counting the additional insulation & windows/door upgrades, is around €13.5k with a grant of 6.5k I think. In comparison the air-to-air alternative is only offering a 3.5k grant, but I can imagine in my case, for a house, drilling external pipes for the multi split is far less messy than tearing up the fabric of the interior to install plumbing for radiators etc, not to mention the fact that I don't have a boiler room (neighbours who have put in gas boilers had to put theirs in the attic space).
It seems bizarre that there is almost zero attention to this on SEAI and other websites. Literally all the suppliers and SEAI only seem to talk about wet systems.
 
lff12 said:
I'm surprised these solutions are not getting more support and traction from SEAI? Its like they've entirely forgotten all about apartments, flats and small houses that don't have "wet" systems in place.
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The push is happening via standards for new builds. Most of those considering retro-fitting have wet systems in place so air-to-water is an easier sell particularly where they are used to the heating system providing hot water too. I suspect it's not that they're forgotten about apartments, it's just that those works are not permitted in the vast majority of developments.
 
On a different angle there is a thermacoustic heat pump coming soon only been trialled last year they say you can take out your old boiler install this system and that's it no need to change radiators and can heat them up the same as oil. ( Wouldn't something like this be the solution to most houses not sure about apartments)
 
Whazzuupp said:
On a different angle there is a thermacoustic heat pump coming soon only been trialled last year they say you can take out your old boiler install this system and that's it no need to change radiators and can heat them up the same as oil.
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There are already high temperature air-to-water heat pumps on the market that remove the need to replace rads. Interesting to see if these will be more efficient.
 
Leo said:
There are already high temperature air-to-water heat pumps on the market that remove the need to replace rads. Interesting to see if these will be more efficient.
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Having watched countless Heat Geek youtube vids and done some of the calculations myself for my own house, the SEAI fabric-first target for a Heat-Loss Indicator of 2.0 is the major problem with heat pump adoption in Ireland. I calculated that I could halve my CO2 emissions from home heating with no changes to existing structure and heating system with a flow temp on the higher side (like 47 degrees or so) which wouldn't be a world-beating SCOP (some are getting 4.5 or so) but easily around the 3.5 mark. In terms of building fabric, I'm talking a 1989-build detached 4-bed with a 2010 internal drylining upgrade (before we purchased), a 2012 uPVC window upgrade and attic insulation raised by 175mm by yours truly. I just can't justify the incredibly expensive external wall insulation that would reduce our side passage width to barely shoulder width and would be of dubious incremental benefit anyway. But the CO2 savings are there to be had, but the fabric-first grant system is killing the economics of it for me.
 
conor_mc said:
But the CO2 savings are there to be had, but the fabric-first grant system is killing the economics of it for me.
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I assume that's calculated n a one-off basis using current grid-supply mix data? If significant numbers switched, wouldn't the CO2 component of electrical supply would increase. Have you factored air-tightness into your calculations?

If there was an endless pot of money I'm grants could be opened further, but for now it's probably best to target grants at the most suitable properties. There are already countless stories out there of people with similar properties who ended up with massive bills, they don't need the naysayers latching on to more.
 
Yes, calculated using grid CO2 vs natural gas CO2 stats from SEAI webpage. Didn't even include a significant investment in solar on my part (mostly offset from winter to summer, I guess). The thing is that the grid is getting cleaner all the time, and probably has higher renewable density through wind when it's needed for heat-pumping, i.e. in the winter.

On the second point, I agree with the outcome (avoiding naysayers) but not necessarily with the reasoning of targeting most suitable properties. Properties don't complain to Joe Duffy, property owners do! If you could measure customer readiness, like how many heat geek youtube videos have you watched, that'd work!
 
conor_mc said:
The thing is that the grid is getting cleaner all the time, and probably has higher renewable density through wind when it's needed for heat-pumping, i.e. in the winter.
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Yeah, see page 144. I think the rate new renewables growth is slow, a significant shift to heat pumps might exacorbate the already strained supply.

conor_mc said:
If you could measure customer readiness, like how many heat geek youtube videos have you watched, that'd work!
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Imagine the complaints to Joe from all those failing the test?
 
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I hear you. I think there was exceptions though for properties that had already done all possible measures but still fell short? I could be wrong though if they still insist you do the expensive and as you correctly say intrusive outer wrap.
As others have said though, its not unreasonable to want to tackle the easier to upgrade properties first, but I think we eventually (especially if there is ever a sustained effort to actually increase housing output which would lead to a larger proportion of properties being recent A-rated builds, which is not currently the case), that we could as a country end up with a load of recent A rated builds, a large proportion of upgraded older builds, and then a huge backlog of expensive to retrofit older and difficult to upgrade properties - just at the time the grants run out?

As I've said many times, there's a particular issue with unmodified period homes, many apartments, and pre-63 conversions. Leaving this behind is going to end up with a severe two tier system where a significant group of people, many of them either renters paying a higher housing cost or lower income, being stuck in unupgradeable properties with poor and expensive heating.
 
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