Cool new alternative to Fan coil units

[joth]

https://www.aircon.panasonic.eu/GB_en/news/new/panasonics-aquarea-loop-transforms-retrofit-heating-and-cooling-with-decentralised-water-to-air-heat-pump-technology/

 

Not strictly about ASHP as it's a (decentralised ) water sourced heat pump. Essentially a wall mounted fan coil with a mini heat pump built in. So long as the building has a circuit of water maintained at 20-30°C this can either draw heat out of it, or dump heat into it, in order to service the needs of the room it is installed in. And genius addition is an accessory to allow any condensation to be injected into the circulation pipe to be removed. 

So in a quirky property you may have heating in some places and cooling in others at the same time, and the temperatures would balance out n

More typically some external heat source/sink would be need to balance it, so far I've not found recommendations on that but 20-30° is a wide enough operating window it could be done pretty efficiently and opens innovative possibilities.

Likewise imagine hooking the DHW reheat into the circuit should be simple step too.

Probably good in apartment blocks too.

 

Will follow how this works out with interest.

 

 

[-rick-]

Interesting. Daikin does something similar for blocks of flats. Though thats a single unit installed where the boiler would be and will do hot water too.

 

https://www.daikin.co.uk/en_gb/solutions/collective-housing.html

 

Not sure I'd want the noise of the heatpump in my bedroom. Would expect it to be much noisier than a normal FCU.

Edited February 12 by -rick-
Added last sentence

[Nickfromwales]

6 minutes ago, joth said:

Will follow how this works out with interest.

+1

 

3 minutes ago, -rick- said:

Not sure I'd want the noise of the heatpump in my bedroom. Would expect it to be much noisier than a normal FCU

Is the question on everyone's lips.

 

Would be good to scrutinise this in a working test environment before I felt brave enough to spend a clients money on it.

[ProDave]

This reminds me of a cooling unit I encountered in someones conservatory a long time ago.

 

It was an air to water heat pump set up for cooling.  It drew cold mains water into an internal tank.  The cooling of the room warmed up that water.  When it reached a certain temperature, it just dumped that now warm water down the drain and refilled with more cold water.  It made it a simple to install all in one unit.  I guess water regs outlawed this "wasteful" practice?

 

But it was noisy having the heat pump in the room.

[JohnMo]

It's not quite what it seems.

 

You have an external ASHP this is the first point of heat or cool, the other units add to this heat

 

e

[joth]

1 hour ago, -rick- said:

Not sure I'd want the noise of the heatpump in my bedroom. Would expect it to be much noisier than a normal FCU.

Yes exactly what I was thinking too, what with it not having a ducted version (yet) either.

I found this ("Tentative") data sheet for it

https://cdn.aircon.panasonic.eu/uploads/DE/Catalogues/2024/Tentative Flyer Aquarea Loop.pdf

 

 

28 dB(A) minimum noise, doesn't sound much.. but one number never captures the whole story 

Edited February 12 by joth

[joth]

4 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

It's not quite what it seems.

 

You have an external ASHP this is the first point of heat or cool, the other units add to this heat

 

e

Yes I found that pdf now too, pretty much what I was imagining and alluding to. Be interesting how the whole system performs with the stacked SCOPs. Certainly the 6-7 SCOP of the indoor unit on its own is only part of the picture. It's convenient in a big apartment block it naturally distributes much of the running cost across the properties though, especially if there is a mix of heating and cooling needs occuring. (Sunny vs shaded side etc)

[JohnMo]

So basically sometime one of these, but with a feed loop being reheated by the heat pump. Instead of water going down drain

 

https://www.powrmatic.co.uk/products/air-conditioning/powrmatic-vision-h20/