Air-To-Air Heat Pumps And Home Air Conditioning: A Buying Guide For The High Peak, Stockport And Greater Manchester

Air-To-Air Or Air-To-Water: Which Does What

If you want the whole house heated and your hot water covered, an air source heat pump is the system to look at. If you want particular rooms cooled in summer and warmed in winter, air-to-air is the one.

Hot Summers And The Rooms That Trap Heat

On 19 July 2022 the UK passed 40°C for the first time, with 40.3°C recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire (Met Office, July 2022 heatwave). Summer days in the High Peak and Greater Manchester stay far below that, and the rooms that suffer are the ones that trap heat: a loft room under a slate roof, a bedroom behind a big south-facing window, a flat on the top floor of a converted mill in New Mills or Stockport.

Those rooms can stay hot long after sunset, which is when you want to sleep in them. A fan moves the warm air around; an air-to-air unit takes the heat out and puts it outside, and in winter the same unit heats the room for less per unit than an electric heater.

Which Rooms Gain Most

Four kinds of room gain most from one, and each needs a different size of unit.

Our lead engineer measures each room you name, so the unit fits the way you use the room.

Sizing: Measure The Room, Then Pick The Unit

A unit too big for the room cycles on and off and wastes energy. One too small runs at full speed for hours and still leaves the room warm. The size should come from measuring the room: its floor area, its glazing, its insulation and the way you use it.

On a survey we measure each room you want done, for cooling and for heating, or the whole floor plan of a workspace, before naming a unit. If the unit you had in mind is wrong for the room, you hear it before you spend anything, and the size we pick goes into a fixed written quote.

How Loud It Is

Two figures matter, one outside and one in. The Mitsubishi outdoor units we fit measure 46 to 52 dB, and their indoor units 19 to 21 dB on quiet mode. The outdoor unit’s position makes as much difference as the figure on its label, so siting belongs in the design, with gardens, courtyards and the neighbours’ windows taken into account. We choose the spot at the survey, before any hole goes through a wall.

Single Split Or Multi-Split

On a semi or a terrace in Marple, Stockport or Glossop that matters for planning as well as looks. Permitted development allows one outdoor unit on most houses, and two on a detached house, so a multi-split can keep a three-room job inside those rules where three single splits would not.

The trade-off is that the rooms share one outdoor unit and one set of pipe routes back to it, so the design has to plan the runs through the house. A care plan for a multi-split costs a little more each month for every extra indoor unit, so the upkeep stays known. We set out both layouts at the survey when the house could take either.

The Tax Relief On A Fixed Home Install

What It Costs To Run

Running cost turns on the unit and the hours it runs. Our air conditioning running cost guide takes a bedroom-sized Mitsubishi pair through the October to December 2026 price cap, for cooling and for heating, and you can rerun it on the unit we name for your room.

Portable Or Fixed

Siting And Planning On A High Peak House

Planning on a High Peak address sits with one of two bodies: the Peak District National Park Authority inside the Park, or High Peak Borough Council outside it, where the council looks after 32 conservation areas. In Greater Manchester it is the borough council for your address, such as Stockport or Manchester.

England’s permitted development rules for air source heat pumps (GPDO Schedule 2, Part 14, Class G) carry a condition that the unit is not used solely for cooling. A reversible system that also heats your home can come under those rules if it meets the rest: one outdoor unit on most houses, two on a detached house, no larger than 1.5 cubic metres, off pitched roofs, and a pass on the MCS 020 a) sound calculation at the neighbours’ windows. A cooling-only unit falls outside them and needs a planning application. A listed building gets no such allowance. In a conservation area the unit has to stay off any wall or roof facing the road, and elsewhere a unit can go on a wall facing the road only at ground-floor level. The survey is where we work out which of those applies to your house.

Flats And Leasehold Homes

A flat brings a second question besides planning: the lease. Fixing an outdoor unit to an outside wall is likely to need the freeholder’s consent, so check your lease before the survey, and we can plan the pipe route and the unit position to put in your request.

From Wall Core To Handover

Fitting one room takes a day, and a whole house up to a week, with the positions and the pipe route already agreed at the survey:

1. 1

   1. Wall Core And Outdoor Unit

   One hole goes through the wall for the pipes, cable and condensate drain, and the outdoor unit goes on its bracket or frame on anti-vibration mounts.

2. 2

   2. Pipes, Cable And Drain

   The refrigerant pipes and the cable run to the indoor unit, and the condensate drain gets a fall to a gully or a drain point.

3. 3

   3. Pressure Test, Vacuum And Handover

   The pipework is pressure tested and vacuumed before the refrigerant goes round, then we run the system, show you the controls and hand over the paperwork.

Refrigerant work needs an F-Gas qualified engineer by law, and Lewis holds the F-Gas Category I qualification, so the person who designs your system is qualified to commission it.

Homes And Workspaces

Shops, offices and other small commercial spaces get the same treatment as a lounge: a measured floor plan, a unit sized to it and a fixed quote. If your office overheats around the screens each summer, we size the unit to the heat those screens and windows put in.

Looking After It

A split system needs an annual service to keep the filters clean and the system running to its numbers. Our Air Conditioning Care Plans start at £35 a month including VAT for one indoor and one outdoor unit, on a 12-month minimum agreement, with an annual service and priority booking on each tier. They cover the main makes, Mitsubishi Electric and Daikin among them, so a system someone else fitted can join once we’ve accepted it onto the plan.

Before You Book Anyone

Put those four to us at the survey and the answers come back on paper, with a fixed price and a two-year workmanship guarantee on the install.

We fit air conditioning from New Mills across the High Peak, homes and workspaces both, and the air conditioning installation page has the full detail.