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Air Source Heat Pumps - Are they noisy?

aa44
edited August 2009 in Members only
This is a question for anybody who has or who lives next door to an air source heat pump.

How noisy are they?

I live in a fairly quiet rural area and I am thinking about installing an ASHP. I am wondering whether I need to go for an indoor mounted unit because an outdoor unit would be too noisy.

Anybody got any experience of this?

Comments

  • Nick Parsons
    edited August 2009
    .
  • tony
    Go and listen to one -- there are lots of them about.

    basically just a fan, not noisy but you can hear them.
  • CWatters
    edited August 2009
    ASHP were omitted from the changes to the Permitted Development rules because no standards exist for measuring the noise they produce - at least that was the excuse given. Apparently this means that PP is required to install ASHP.

    However I'm not sure why being omitted from PDR means PP is required. Is it only required for outside units? Oil boilers aren't covered by permitted development either so does that mean an external oil boiler would also need PP?
  • marktime
    As with everything, it depends. There are two units to a split. As tony says, the outside unit encloses a large fan and a small compressor. If they are well fixed on meaty, robust brackets and fiited with resilient mounts you can hear them but you wouldn't consider them noisy: more like a domestic fan on max. you might have in your home or office. However, in the dead of night and cycling they are noticeable. So it depends where you are and how close your neighbours are if the latter is a consideration.

    Now, there is the indoor unit to think about and that's a measure of how much you want to spend e.g. Fujitsu whisper quiet units are very, very quiet but cost much more than a bog standard 1/3 kW unit at 300 euros.
  • Nick Parsons
    Marktime, are you talking about air-to-air HPs?
  • marktime
    Ooops! Yes. My bad or what? I picked up on the "indoor mount" and jumped to the thousands of A-AHPs fitted here, but of course, splits. Apologies if I have confused the issue.

    Writing with outdoor temp 38.5 deg RH 16%: indooor 31.9 deg RH 29%, getting cooler, thank goodness. :bigsmile:
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