Hi all, I’m pondering cooling with my air-to-water heat pump system (10 wet radiators, 2 bedrooms, 2 storey house, designed for a flow temp of 48C).
As I understand it, the air source heat pump unit itself has enough capability to do a useful amount of cooling, but it won’t be able to put that cooling power through the radiators for two reasons.
-
You cannot have a low flow temperature running through the system as water will condense on the pipes, causing mould and damp. Options here include switching to underfloor heating so that a certain flow temperature has a more powerful cooling effect, getting a dehumidifier (but this has a heating effect), or getting MVHR to get rid of water as much as possible. None of these are really attractive to me.
-
The other problem is that my radiators are connected at the bottom on each side, so cold water would just flow across the bottom of each radiator. As it just flows along the bottom it won’t mix with the hotter water above, reducing the heat transfer and preventing the cooling power. So my thought is this: if I add a baffle / upwards flow diverter inside each radiator, would that improve the cooling power of the radiator by forcing the cold water to flow upwards and mix with the hotter water in the radiator? Would that provide better cooling? Would that have a detrimental effect on the pump that has to move water around the system? Would that have an effect on the ability of the radiator to heat normally during winter? Has anyone tried this?
I understand that this won’t provide all the cooling power you could want, but I’m just wondering if adding flow diverters would make it better.