As part of an extensive renovation the new owners of this large urban
property opted to replace their mains gas boiler with an air source heat
pump. The alterations introduced a large expanse of north facing glazing
which is compensated by upgrading insulation elsewhere.
We undertook a room-by-room heat loss analysis using the architect’s
plans and determined that the peak heating requirement could be matched
by a 16kW NIBE F2040 heat pump operating at a design flow temperature
of 45°C, equivalent to a seasonal coefficient of performance (SCOP) of
3.76. The analysis also specified pipework spacing and floor covering for
the UFH on the ground floor and the radiator outputs on first floor.
The heat pump is installed on a concrete plinth 18m from the house and
connects to a 300L hot water cylinder and twin UFH manifolds in the plant
room via a buried Microflex Duo insulated heat main. The NIBE heat pump
uses an inverter-driven compressor which allows it to modulate its output
to match heat demand, using an external sensor to calculate the required
flow temperature (weather compensation).
