Heat pumps – otherwise known as air conditioners – are very efficient in comparison to standard electric and gas heaters or wood fires.
Heat pumps are great to heat air, but like all heaters they have problems heating moisture. If your home has any moisture, dampness or humidity - in your carpets, your lounge suite, your curtains or your bed - you are taking longer to heat those rooms and wasting energy, of any sort, and making your family less healthy, than if these rooms (your home) are dryer in the first place. A heat pump becomes more inefficient in any of its modes - heating and cooling - if it firstly needs to heat up the water in your room, and when it condenses it causes condensation.
Have you ever walked past a heat pump that is pumping out 23ºC air and you feel like there is a cold draft hitting you.
The standard wall mounted heat pump will heat up the room it is installed in, if it has been over sized the heat pump may be able to pass some heat to the next room, will it go down the passage to your bedrooms? Does your existing heater do that? Do you have damp beds? If so read here.
Should I use a heat pump or a home ventilation system?
Well I personally am a strong believer that you should use both, I’ll explain;
Dry out your home continuously, (a family of 4 puts at least 30 Litres of moisture into your home each day, lets remove it as you make it) keep it dry and then you will heat it less often than you have in the past.
Learn more about the problems of having too much moisture in your home.
Use mother nature (free solar energy you already have) to dry and warm your home naturally with a home ventilation system, use this free energy to remove the moisture from your carpets, your beds, your fabrics, in fact your entire home, you will be surprised how different your home feels. Use solar energy (yes mother nature) to kill off mould and keep your home fresh, clean and dry – with your windows closed.
You will use less ‘paid for’ energy to ultimately heat your home as you will have less moisture to heat.
Imagine the feeling when you arrive home from work each day and find your home is pleasant, fresh, warm, odour free and dry, a totally different feeling to what most people feel in their own homes.
Doing this will also keep your home secure (as you do not need to leave a window when you are away)
And odour free dry and free while you are on holiday or at work. Remember the heat pump will only operate while you have it turned on, do you do this while you travel? The Home Ventilation system will opperate automatically working for you 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
A heat pump works best with your windows closed, in fact often the 1st paragraph in the operating manual states. “Close all windows and doors to get the best efficient heating or cooling from this appliance”.
Here is the next concern, one of the main reasons we buy a heat pump is that we want to save money and be both cost efficient and environmentally correct, which a heat pump can be.
But as your home is closed up it tends to keep the moisture enclosed in the house, yes 30 L a day can be left in your home. Now I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it again, if you do not install a ventilation system in your home you will allow your home to become damper and colder - especially if it is well Insulated and Double Glazed - therefore making it harder to heat each year. In other words you will waste more energy and money each year to make your home as comfortable as you or your family would like it to be.
Learn how a well designed home ventilation system can benefit you and your family.