St Olaves, Suffolk

SA Tooley recently worked on a bespoke oak timber framed house at St Olaves on the Suffolk/Norfolk border.

The property consists of three floors: the basement, including plant room, garage, utility, wc cloaks, storage area: the ground floor consisting of main entrance, study, lounge/kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and the first floor consisting of the master bedroom with en suite and dressing room, and bedroom 3 with en suites.

Our client was keen to install a sustainable energy heat source and after consultation decided to install a Daikin High Temperature Air Source heat pump. The system consists of an outdoor unit which extracts heat from the outside air and transfers it to the indoor unit via refrigerant piping. The indoor unit increases the temperatures up to 80ºC for use with radiators/ underfloor heating and for hot water production.

The outdoor unit was sited on a purpose built base directly outside the heating plant room.
The indoor unit was installed in the basement plant room area with hot water cylinder stacked directly on top of the indoor unit in order to save space.
The basement and first floor area was heated via steel panel convector radiators controlled independently via individual room temperature and time controls.
The ground floor floor area was heated via underfloor heating which again was independently time and temperature controlled.
All wet areas had an additional towel warmer circuit with independent time and temperature control allowing for airing of towels etc all year round.

The advantages over a traditional boiler are:

- 3 to 5 times more efficient
- Advanced energy saving features weather compensation built in as standard
- Inverter technology
- 30 - 50 % reduction in CO2 emissions
- Low running and maintenance costs
- Low noise levels
- Easy to install/ no ground work i.e. trenches or bove hotes
- Ideal for off gas grid properties
- Single phase power supply with low start current
- Flexible, can be connected to underfloor heating, radiatiors or fan coils
- As a package of energy saving measures, helps towards higher ratings for Sustainable Homes
- Can be connected with Solar Thermal System which can provide 60% of your hot water needs

On completion of installation, the system was commissioned by one of SA Tooley's fully trained heat pump engineers to ensure that the system functions to maximum efficiency.
The client was then given a full demonstration of all controls etc. together with a hand over pack containing all MCS necessary documentation.

It is anticipated that air source heat pumps will become eligible for Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) from October 2012 with announcement expected in early 2012.