More Q&A Spotlight
There’s nothing better than heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, right? But the HVAC mechanical equipment and its ductwork need space, and in a small home space can be hard to find. Member “Emel” is trying to get ahead of this problem. He has a new one-story, 1400-sq.-ft. house in the works, which he describes in this Q&A thread. There is a main section and a bonus space. Because the location has a high-water table, the house will be slab on grade.
Three options
Because of the slab-on-grade construction Emel is wrangling with where to put the mechanical equipment and the best type of system to use. He writes that the original plan was to have one minisplit serving the main living area, with ceiling fans in each room, but he’s worried that the bedrooms would be left out of the loop, so to speak. (The bonus space will have its own minisplit.) His contractor gave him three options:
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3 Comments
Another option is an air-to-water heat pump. That allows doing something approaching a mini-split head in each room, but without the minimum capacity issues. And it reduces the climate impact on average because the refrigerant loop is factor sealed and contains less refrigerant than a split system does.
A caution with anything that is atypical for your region, like a residential air-to-water heat pump would be in a lot of places, is issues with long-term support. My dad has had an absolutely terrible time with his Daikin Altherma due to unavailable/inconsistent support for a very fancy and expensive piece of equipment.
I'll always lean towards a solution that uses standard equipment in a smart way, unless a client is really excited about being on the cutting edge and understands the risks!
That said, if this kind of setup has good long term support in your area, it seems like it has a lot of virtues!
Yes, that's a challenge. I feel that it's good to do things that push the envelope partly to educate contractors about it. But it's a balancing act.
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