Manel

Hello,

I am looking into a new heating system for our place (North Balaton). Currently, the house runs with electric panels which I find horrible and expensive.

The idea I had in mind was either to change it and install deducted heat pump ( house is around 90m2 - 1floor) or vízteres kandalló spreading the heat towards a few radiators around the house.

Any ideas or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jordi

Pulaski

If you are able to install a heat pump that can also run as an air conditioner (all heat pumps are potentially capable of running as AC, it's just a matter of the electronics/ controls), the decision is a no-brainer, IMO.

Peter_in_Hungary

Manel, First a couple of questions,
Is the house a permanent dwelling or just summer / weekend?
What insulation standard is in the house (and what type of house construction)?
Is gas available?
And if you don't mind - where abouts in N. Balaton (village/town)

A wood stove is the dirtiest both within the house and environmentally. Sourcing fire wood that is ready to burn is impossible, It should be seasoned for 2 years with the 2nd year under cover. If you have to buy the firewood ready cut or as logs and pay someone to cut and chop then there is not much price difference between that and heating with gas. Running a wood stove with rads attached needs controllers and understanding the management otherwise you can muck up both the stove and the chimney. Typically the room with the stove within it gets too hot whilst the room(s) with the rads don't get enough heat because most wood stoves give insufficient heat to water with respect to air (room) making it difficult to get a desired mix of temperatures. Don't be tempted to at hot water into the mix as this will just make everything worse!
However much cheaper to install than a heat pump and about the same price as a gas fired system.

A ducted heat pump (I presume you mean air to air) is an expensive option and the ducting can be obtrusive when retrofitted. Avoid any temptation to install smaller diameter ducts because this will just give you a noisy system. If the ducts are run in the loft then at least 30cm of insulation needs to be over them. (But then you will have 30 cm of insulation in the loft already - don't you??) As well as ducted systems there are split systems where you have one outdoor unit and one or more indoor units that are fed by thin pipework from the outside. The inside units are essentially warm air blowers and sometimes these can be easier to individually control rooms as closing one off won't disrupt (unbalance) the air flow that can sometimes happen with ducted systems. Also the smaller pipework will be easier to retrofit than air ducts. Air to ait heat pumps tend to be more efficient than air to water because lower output temperatures are used.
Think about the siting of the outside unit because whilst modern ones are now much better they still have a fan and shifting large quantities of air will generate some noise.

It might be worth spending the cost of a heat pump on insulation and stay with what you have (hence the question above about insulation) because the cheapest energy is that which you don't have to use. Perhaps insulate and get a small wood burner stove (max 5 kW) for the main room.

Any of this work likely to be DIY?

Pulaski

I lived in a flat with an unducted/ split system - with fan/blower unit inside, actually in the rooms, was intrusively noisy. Maybe newer ones are quieter, but it would need to be a lot quieter IMO to make it an attractive choice.
I had a new heat pump/ AC system installed about three years ago, and the outside unit is very quiet. It makes a noise barely more than the hum that a fridge makes, and it is a pretty big unit, enough for a 200sqm house. When our windows are closed, which of course is 100% of the time whether we are using the heat or AC, you cannot hear the unit running from inside at all, nor can you hear it over the background noise of the suburbs if you are either around the corner of the house or more than 20m away from the unit.

As a hybrid of ducted and unducted system, there may also be (there is in the US) a system that has the refridgerant pipes that run from outside heat exchange into the attic, and then ducts that run from the blower in the attic to vents in rooms, typically in the ceiling. This is what I had installed, and referred to above. It has the advantage of most of the machinery being protected from the weather, so typically it will last a lot longer.

Peter_in_Hungary

New ones are much quieter. Moving air will always entail some noise but modern units shouldn't be worse than a fridge. If a unit is undersized then the air speed will need to be higher to get the output which = more noise so proper design is essential.

BEVS

Incredibly helpful, sensible , knowledable and informative post.
BE karma your way.

ecurb

We have an air source heat pump with underfloor heating. Obviously retro fitting under floor hearing is not practical in most situations. But as far as the heat pump goes, it does work fine. The only thing I have noticed is at certain times of the year, when the temp is between 0 - 5C, you get a lot of frosting on the outside unit. This makes it stop and do a defrost cycle which does reduce the efficiency some what. When it is less than 0c it seem to work better. It may be due to the humidity, we are near Balaton too.
I have not seen any centralised heat pumps with ducted warm air in Hungary so you may find it hard to get someone with experience to do the install.

Pulaski

If you are aware of that happening, go and dump a bucket of cold water into the top - the heat capacity of even cold water is enough to thaw any ice build up, and as it is an outside unit, designed to deal with the weather, is perfectly capable of handling water being poured into the top. ..... And that advice came from a heating technician.

Peter_in_Hungary

Air to water heat pumps work well with underfloor heating because UFH uses low flow temperatures (about 40 deg.) which is well suited to the operating parameters of a heat pump to get max. efficiencies. To get the same efficiencies from a radiator system you need unacceptably large radiators or you need to run the flow temp higher which can/will affect the efficiency although the newer refrigerants (e.g. R744 or R290) being used are beginning to tolerate higher flow temps whilst maintaining efficiencies.