Heat pump topics
Plain-English guides to how heat pumps work and the water side of fitting one, written in our own words from the lessons of the heat pump course.
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6 of 6 topics
How Heat Pumps Work
How a heat pump moves heat instead of making it, the sources it draws on, what COP and SCOP mean, and where the refrigerant side starts.
Heat Loss and Design
How much heat each room loses on a cold day, why that sets the size of the heat pump, and how radiators and underfloor heating work at lower temperatures.
- Heat loss: how big a heat pump does a house need?Why a heat pump is sized from a room-by-room heat loss calculation, how fabric and ventilation losses work, and why oversizing causes short cycling.
- Do radiators work with a heat pump?Why heat pumps run at lower flow temperatures, how to size a radiator by its mean water temperature, and what underfloor heating and weather compensation do.
Hydraulics and Hot Water
Flow rates, buffers and frost protection on the heating side, then hot water: cylinder coils, legionella and the unvented safeguards to recognise.
Installation and Commissioning
Siting the outdoor unit, controls that avoid short cycling, then cleaning, filling and the records that make a system traceable.
Servicing and Faults
Water-side faults and the specialist ones to hand over, then grants by nation, what MCS is and isn't, and how people get into the work.