Caveat: In Europe, heat pumps usually provide either no or less effective cooling though, because our heatings usually use water as the medium rather than air like in the US. And heat pumps are usually connected with a buffer tank, in many cases that’s a combination hot drinkable water + heating water tank.
Water as the medium means cooling is usually less effective. And if you fuck up that buffer tank, cooling doesn’t work at all.
My opinion is that it isn’t. If it can remove heat then it will cool the same as air AC.
However it comes with the problem of condensation everywhere. So those room radiators that give off heat in the winter will be dripping with condensation in the summer. As will all the system pipework that isn’t fully insulated and protected.
So that’s probably a lot of water running different places in the home.
You’re a bit confused about buffer tanks. They are thermal stores and just store primary heating circuit water.
The water from the buffer tank isn’t the hot water from the tap. The water in the buffer tank will be used to indirectly heat mains water. Either through a plate heat exchanger or an unvented cylinder.
I am not confused, although maybe my wording was confusing.
My point is, that generally speaking, you can’t use water from the same tank to heat your drinking water and to cool your home (because it mixes and the resulting temperature will fill neither requirement). There are of course tons of variants of buffer tanks, and in some cases there are bypasses or there’s a physical separation between heating water and (water used to heat) drinking water
A heat pump uses electricity to provide both heating and cooling to a building
Caveat: In Europe, heat pumps usually provide either no or less effective cooling though, because our heatings usually use water as the medium rather than air like in the US. And heat pumps are usually connected with a buffer tank, in many cases that’s a combination hot drinkable water + heating water tank.
Water as the medium means cooling is usually less effective. And if you fuck up that buffer tank, cooling doesn’t work at all.
Many of the highest efficiency heat pumps in the world are operating in Europe. How does water lower efficiency?
I was talking about cooling only.
How is water less efficient for cooling?
My opinion is that it isn’t. If it can remove heat then it will cool the same as air AC.
However it comes with the problem of condensation everywhere. So those room radiators that give off heat in the winter will be dripping with condensation in the summer. As will all the system pipework that isn’t fully insulated and protected.
So that’s probably a lot of water running different places in the home.
You’re a bit confused about buffer tanks. They are thermal stores and just store primary heating circuit water.
The water from the buffer tank isn’t the hot water from the tap. The water in the buffer tank will be used to indirectly heat mains water. Either through a plate heat exchanger or an unvented cylinder.
I am not confused, although maybe my wording was confusing.
My point is, that generally speaking, you can’t use water from the same tank to heat your drinking water and to cool your home (because it mixes and the resulting temperature will fill neither requirement). There are of course tons of variants of buffer tanks, and in some cases there are bypasses or there’s a physical separation between heating water and (water used to heat) drinking water