Having house renovated and extended; need advice on heating

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gdn888

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We'll be soon having our 1931 house renovated and extended. This renovation will include EWI, underfloor heating, solar panels and heat pump. The idea will be to bring the BER up to an A-rating. We currently have a gas-powered combi boiler; so we get our hot water on demand. With this we've got a pump that engages any time a hot water tap is turned on.

With the addition of the heat pump I'm assuming we'll get rid of the combi boiler. I don't know what our best options are for hot water. I really like the on-demand nature of the combi-boiler, although I'm not a fan of the loud pump. In terms of our usage patterns, I have a 5 min shower in the morning and my partner has a significantly longer shower - this could be 20 mins. We then use the on-demand water for washing dishes. We'd also use the hot water for hand-washing but it takes too long that we just use cold water.

So in summary, when i've got a heat pump, what options are available for hot water supply to sinks/showers?
 
You’ll have a hot water tank installed which the heatpump will heat on a schedule or it can be configured to heat it up any time it drops in temperature a bit, your showers etc will draw from this. You’ll want it pumped but there are very quiet pumps out there, just make sure to ask for that at the planning phase.

For reference our heatpump runs for about 2 hours at 1am to heat hot water at the moment, using 1.2kW so about €0.20 a day. We have a 300L tank although the temperature sensor is over half way up so the whole tank is not being heated. It heats to 50 degrees and we get two 10-12 minute adult showers in the morning then two baths for the kids around 7pm and there is still hot water left at that stage. Modern factory insulated tanks are pretty incredible, you have nothing to worry about once the tank is sized correctly.
 
Similar system to yourself (and Zenith63). Recently had solar fitted with an Eddi. Have had a heatpump for over a year.
Our heatpump is scheduled to heat the 250ltr tank to 50degrees at 5am (night rate). That gives us enough hot water for the day, including two showers. Now with the Eddie, I have that set to heat the water with excess solar. So the water is getting up to 70 degrees at the moment.
There will be a bit of an adjustment to what you're used to . Initially, the water only coming out of the hot tap at not-scalding (when we only had the heatpump) was a bit of a learning curve. Now it's coming out much hotter due to the Eddie and great sun we've been having.

I highly recommend underfloor, a heatpump,and solar. It really makes the home so much cheaper and more comfortable.
 
Is it an air-to-water heat pump or air-to-air. The former would be able to heat a hot water cylinder, the latter would not (I believe there is only one specific recently released model capable of doing so). But do you have space for a cylinder, has it been designed into your renovation project?
 
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