Why are we pushing wet systems so much?
So, there's not just one solution that fits all for all homes and all personal lifestyles.
You type in heatpumps and all the major companies and energy companies are quick to quote you a £7000+ wet system.
My neighbour looked into it and was saying things like I don't want all my radiators changed and a massive hot water tank. I had to explain other systems were available and cheaper to install.
Air to air is often considerable cheaper even without a grant, it's also very fast to install and generally has slightly better efficiencies. You can get away with 1-3 wall units downstairs and a single ducted system serving all rooms upstairs. The complexity of air to air is much less to a wet system too decreasing the amount of space required.
The other benefits of air circulation, dehumidification and cooling brings it into play for air quality in our increasingly air tight insulated homes.
If you exclude heating, many homes don't need hundreds of litres of hot water either.
Obviously, big families or larger homes will need a larger supply of hot water.
I'm just wondering if we are pushing wet systems as the go to solution when it's not required in all settings.
In my situation, I'm served by a single wall mounted air to air unit downstairs and a ducted system upstairs. We only need approx 60 litres of hot water a day time is mixed down to 45c, that's 30 mins of showering and 10 mins of further hot water for washing up etc. it would be madness to heat a 200-300 litre tank just to have a 15 min shower.
After experiencing both systems, air to air is substantially faster to respond and you don't need to keep it on all day to store heat in your home.
Other people have instant hot water taps, electric showers etc so they have little to no hot water requirement from a heat pump.
I just don't get why wet systems are pushed so much when alternatives can actually work better for certain homes and lifestyles.
There are alternatives for low hot water usage like electric boilers ( under the sink, immersion hot water tanks, continuous flow electric boilers, solar water heaters etc).
In all, with a bit of self DIY to fit the ducting myself, my home heat pump setup was less than £4000. £1300 for the single wall mounted unit downstairs and £2000 for the attic with extra copper runs and trunking from the attic to the patio.