Installing a heat pump instead of gas

[akist]

Due to costs I may be forced to install a heat pump instead of a gas boiler. As I am learning about heat pumps, could anyone please tell me, do they make one that can switch the gas flow and cool the radiators instead of heating, if you want it? I have this system installed on another house but these are A/Cs, not heat pumps, but I believe the principle is the same?

 

[stem]

As I am learning about heat pumps, could anyone please tell me, do they make one that can switch the gas flow and cool the radiators instead of heating,

Heating and cooling units are available, but only with systems that supply warmed / cooled air. It doesn't work with 'wet' systems.

Heat pumps are not able to provide cooling using radiators due to the restrictions of the heat emitters. i.e. the radiators wouldn't get cold enough to cool a property effectively and even if you could manage it, there would need to be a way of collecting and removing the condensation that would drip off the radiators.

Even when heat pumps are used for 'wet' heating, they cannot reach the high temperatures achieved by a boiler. Therefore, if a heat pump is connected to an existing wet radiator system the radiators will only get warm and not hot, so new larger radiators need to be installed to heat most properties satisfactorily.

I have this system installed on another house but these are A/Cs, not heat pumps, but I believe the principle is the same?

These days the terms Air Conditioning and Heat Pump tend to be used interchangeably.

Air Conditioning, the shortened version of 'Air Conditioning System' originally described a complete system that dehumidifies, heats, cools and filters the air inside a building, as the term suggests it 'conditions' the air to maintain a pleasant environment.

A heat pump is part of an air-conditioning system it's the device that transfers the heat collected from a cool area to warm another area. Some heat pumps, as used in a fridge will only work in one direction, others (such as the system you have in another house, which I suspect is an air heating / cooling unit) can work in reverse, so in a domestic setting, in the winter the outdoor unit gets cold and the indoor unit gets warm, then in the summer it can be reversed so that the outdoor unit gets warm and the outdoor unit cold.