Hot water system

 I would suggest an air to water heat pump. We are in the campo, no gas, house entirely electric. Would not now go back to any form of gas.

Heat pump in external cabinet, 80 lt capacity, permanent hot water, extremely efficient system. Connected to power supply, heat pumps produce approx four times output to input, so very efficient. Obviously only runs as such when tank needs topping up. Ours is an Ariston, widely used here.

Do you mean heating and hot water or just hot water ?

Is the home a holiday home or a permanent residence ?

What is the format of your home ... bungalow, semi, terraced, number of storeys ?

What is your potencia (the rating of your electrical supply in kw) ?

Do you have other heavy power consumers (e.g a pool pump) ?

Do you have space for one or more gas cylinders ?

Answers to these questions will inform a recommendation.

Hi 

The 3 bed 3 bathrooms detached villa we are buying is going to be a a reform... 

We are looking for a hot water system, but don't know if central heating is required. 

I don't yet know what the electricity rating is, but it does already have a pool. 

We were not contemplating gas... No one has mentioned solar... 

Any help would be appreciated 

If you are just looking at hot water ...

If it is a holiday home, keep it simple. The cost of anything more than a simple electric water heater (with a time-clock to maximise off-peak usage, and to avoid clashing with the pool pump) won't be recovered in energy savings. If you intend to live in the house full time, something more complex/expensive/cheaper to run might be worth a look. Gas water heaters (and 2 gas bottles) are really cheap, and will cost 10-40 Eu/month  to run, depending on time of year/incoming water temperature etc (the incoming water temperature is tepid in summer), number of people showering, etc. You can also use a gas hob, freeing up electrical potencia.

Are you in the Orba Valley ?  Can you site a solar heater such that it always has sun ?   If not, don't go that way. They need back-up electric elements.

I don't have any experience of heat pump water heaters ... a trade-off of running cost savings against capital cost.

We looked at houses in the Orba Valley. A fair degree of shadow in winter and it can get cold there. It can drop to 5 degrees. Where we live, it drops to 4 degrees overnight for about 2 weeks/year (when it is around 10 degrees during the day). We definitely need central heating.

Kelvin is quite right and use of the property is a factor, based on no evidence I simply assumed it was a permanent home.

However, given that we have an all electric house, cooking, laundry, dishwasher, computers etc etc etc pool pump and anything else we would all expect to have these days, our bill with Iberdrola for the last month was under 60 euros,: two bed, two bath, huge open plan sitting area and enormous kitchen, underbuild and pumped water supply. I don’t think that’s too bad?

Hi

60 euros is very acceptable. 

Your description of your property is almost a copy of ours. 

What water heating and room heating do you have exactly 

Regards 

The water heating is, as I said in my first reply, an air to water heat pump, made by Ariston. It looks like a large water tank and sits outside in a dedicated enclosed ‘cupboard’.. Constant hot water. 

Heating is a log burner, which we will change this year for pellet, as Kelvin said, the attraction of he logs wears off! 

However, we do have embedded piped under floor heating, downstairs through the entire ground floor, run by a separate enormous heat exchanger. This is magical heating, I love it, but we only use it when it gets very cold, for a couple of weeks, or some days now and then, it takes 24 hours to heat up the floor initially, so it can’t t be switched on and off easily. That is admittedly more expensive to run, but a newer  one would be more efficient, this one is at least 15 years old.You wouldn’t fit it retrospectively, but if you’re having major work, with new pipework and the floors up, then yes. If you have the more sophisticated installation, it can be switched to cooling in hot weather. 

We also have those wall mounted internal ac units, which are in fact small heat pumps which either heat or chill depending on the season. We never use them, they were here when we bought the house, and they all need replacing and we can’t be bothered. We find a fan in the sitting room is perfectly adequate in the summer, and in the bedroom at night in the heat, we have windows open and a ceiling fan running.

I also have electric underfloor heating in the upstairs bathroom, which I use as and when, and one of those efficient Norwegian panel heaters in the bedroom.

This house is extremely cold, but I am now past the age where I can accept shivering in the winter, so it costs what it costs! I don’t want those free standing gas heaters,I hate them and one needs ventilation anyway and it’s too messy and complex to start installing rads or piping the hot air from the log/ pellet burner. In the summer I do tend to use the traditional method of cooling the house used by most native residents of hot countries, I shut up the bedroom windows during the day with the shutters closed and the downstairs if we are going to be out. This keeps the sun and the heat out of the house, thus cooling it, and we open it up again in the evening.

Hope this helps, do ask for any further info.

Kr, Stephanie

I can do no better than recommend an instant gas water heating system. It does not cost a fortune like a heat pump that costs 1000s and needs a lot of electricity that is more expensive than gas.  The supply to your property may not be adequate and that will also cost a packet to upgrade.

Gas bottles are cheap and easily changed at garages. Ensure you heave an automatic changeover valve so the shower does not go cold on you, this also indicates when you have an empty bottle.

Unlike a tank system there is no finite limit on hot water available except the supply of gas and you can connect a number  of bottles together if you want.

They are very popular in Spain and reasonably priced. Do buy a good make though. One of 12-14 lit/min is adequate for most houses. They are easily serviced and have a good life.

OH yes!! If you get one, be sure to ask others in the house not to run hot water while you are in the shower!!!!!!!

Finally an operational tip.  NEVER run the hot water in excess on 50C as this causes the lime to precipitate and will cause fur inside the heat eachanger and also block shower nozzles and tap filters.

I understand your reasoning, but the heat pump doesn’t actually use huge amounts of electricity, they are known for being extremely efficient, and in uk gas boilers are to be phased out, I understand, to encourage use of one of the two or three kinds of heat pump. They are much more common in the USA and much of Europe.

We had to have ours replaced last year as it had reached the end of its life ad the cost was very similar to replacing a gas boiler in uk.