Fitting an underfloor ducted air to air heat pump.
Installer has offered the choice of 7kw or 10kw.
The 7kw can go down to 1.1kw minimum, whereas the larger unit can only drop to 2.1kw.
I'm tempted to go for the smaller one, my understanding is that the lowest output is quite important as when this is too high, the system will start to cycle and efficiency will suffer.
The smaller unit is also significantly quieter, and a little cheaper too.
I know it's an almost impossible question to answer without a proper heat loss calculation. I've had a stab at it and generally 7kw seems like plenty, although the real figure will depend on how much heat we're going to lose through air leakage, which appears almost impossible to determine.
So, what wins out, higher output vs lower modulation?