Hi folks,
We renovated our house in 2018 - 2019.
We put a lot of money into internal insulation - internally insulating the walls, the floor and ceilings.
We installed ultra low-U value windows throughout.
We installed a Thermia Atec Air 2 Water Heat Pump, along with underfloor heating etc.
You get the idea - bringing the house from the Irish E1 energy rating to an A3.
So on paper, I should be able to heat the house with a couple of candles
But it is still a modest house - 1350 sq feet only.
And it is proving expensive to heat, and appears to have little resilience to changes in outdoor temperature despite the insulation.
The purple bars below are the house's energy usage in kWh (left axis), and the red line is the outdoor temperature (right axis).
The temperature between the 16th and the 19th of January 2023 dropped just below zero, and our daily energy usage spikes to 45+ kWh per day.
We see the same pattern in December of 2022, with the temperature dropping into the deep minuses between the 7th and 17th of December.
Energy usage during this period is in excess of 50 kWh per day, and spikes to greater than 70 kWh on the 9th of December.
So all this is pretty costly at the current rate of €0.40 per kWh (thanks Mr Putin), you can imagine what my energy bills are like.
Is this lack of resilience simply due to the heat pump having to work harder because of lower temperatures?
Or does it point to a heat loss problem - how can I tell?
What are other people's experiences with heat pumps during cold weather - I expected more resilience to temperature changes.
We renovated our house in 2018 - 2019.
We put a lot of money into internal insulation - internally insulating the walls, the floor and ceilings.
We installed ultra low-U value windows throughout.
We installed a Thermia Atec Air 2 Water Heat Pump, along with underfloor heating etc.
You get the idea - bringing the house from the Irish E1 energy rating to an A3.
So on paper, I should be able to heat the house with a couple of candles
But it is still a modest house - 1350 sq feet only.
And it is proving expensive to heat, and appears to have little resilience to changes in outdoor temperature despite the insulation.
The purple bars below are the house's energy usage in kWh (left axis), and the red line is the outdoor temperature (right axis).
The temperature between the 16th and the 19th of January 2023 dropped just below zero, and our daily energy usage spikes to 45+ kWh per day.
We see the same pattern in December of 2022, with the temperature dropping into the deep minuses between the 7th and 17th of December.
Energy usage during this period is in excess of 50 kWh per day, and spikes to greater than 70 kWh on the 9th of December.
So all this is pretty costly at the current rate of €0.40 per kWh (thanks Mr Putin), you can imagine what my energy bills are like.
Is this lack of resilience simply due to the heat pump having to work harder because of lower temperatures?
Or does it point to a heat loss problem - how can I tell?
What are other people's experiences with heat pumps during cold weather - I expected more resilience to temperature changes.