In 2008 when we did major construction in our apartment, merging 3 small 1-bedroom into one big duplex 3-bedrooms, the heating systems had to be renewed: each apartment had its own natural gas heating system, and two out of three were more than 20 years old and really needed to be changed
That's when I looked into having an Inverter Heat Pump installed to replace all these individual systems
That was a good opportunity to change to a system that is clean and more flexible: it uses only elctricity (can be made from renewable sources like wind and solar), two thirds of the energy to heat up comes from the calories in the ambiant air, and it can heat up and cool too, and this room per room, pretty fast on top of it
I thought the best place to mount the main external unit was on the
roof, onto a
chimney stack (all chimney stacks are sealed because unused)
Discussing with a colleague who had done that, he told me that Daikin was a very good brand, with good reputation for the quality of their products
I contacted them in Paris and they gave me only two contractors in my district qualified by them to do the job; I contacted both and got two quotes, close to each other, and hired the one I liked best
They did great job in only one day and a half:
- They installed this exactly like I wanted: they used the chimney stack I told them to use, passed the cables and fluid conducts through the chimney stack and made them run in the attic, going down through the ceiling right on top of each unit, no piping is visible at all :-)
- And most important for me, nothing shows from the street, you have to look from above to see it
I had the gas supply cut off for good and was happy about it (gas prices are always going up, following petrol prices), and if natural pollutes less than coal, it's still not good for in my opinion
The external unit is securely mounted onto the chimney stack, on the most discret side (hidden from the street)
As I asked the cables and conducts are running down through & inside the chimney stack
Here is a view from the sky (taken by a plane)
We have 5 internal units, with the same capacity, one in each bedroom, and two in the dining room / family room that is much bigger than a bedroom
These units are independent from each other, meaning, I can turn on the heating in the dining room only, for example, closing the kids rooms, and use the energy to heat up only the room where I would spend the day alone if working from home during the week let's say. When the kids are back from school, we turn their room units back on. We usually stop the heating completely (all units off) when going to bed, because it would be a waste anyways; Then when we get up in the morning, I turn the heat on in the dining room only to have breakfast, and we go up from 16-17°C to 20°C in 10 or 15 minutes ! it is very quick, because the hot air is blowed everywhere and fills up the room fast
White on white, very discret, they open up to let the air in and out, their fan is very silent, and we no more have radiators taking space on the walls
Upstairs in the dining room/family room
