A heat pump capable of replacing conventional heating is possible in an full apartment block, not in a single apartment.
If you rent an apartment, you aren’t going to dismantle steel radiators attached to the central heating system of the building. Many people just have to deal with what the apartment block owner provides.
Installing an air conditioner just for cooling is an easier alternative.
That depends on the type of heating you’re replacing and has nothing to do with it being in an apartment or a house. I have a heatpump in an apartment.
You’re thinking about specific type of central heating that’s probably popular in your part of Europe. Europe is big, Different countries build apartments in different ways.
Fair enough. I’m thinking about radiators in central apartment block heating systems which are common in Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
Don’t include Romania in this - we already have AC. The weather currently getting everyone in north-west Europe highly exercised is a mild summer day in Romania. I assume this is also true of Bulgaria.
Fair enough. That’s roughly 350 million people. You said 50% of people in EU live in apartments so what you said applies to about 170 million people. That’s ~1/3 of EU. I would say ~2/3 of people getting AC and/or heatpumps still counts as a revolution. But that’s nitpicking and really besides the point. Some people will not be able to upgrade, sure. Some people will install AC in their apartment and use it for heating during winter as pretty much all units they sell now do both. New buildings may also adapt to the new reality and stop installing building wide heating systems, even in the countries you listed. I think it’s obvious things will change and even if half of Europe will not be affected for now it doesn’t mean some sort of revolution is not happening.
Absolutely. My point is not that nothing is going to happen. It’s that many will choose the more common and flexible air conditioners over heat pumps sold to fully replace conventional heating as well.
The naming is confusing here. In Spain the difference between AC and ‘aerotermia’ is that the second one heats water. This is the “heat pump” revolution here. Many people already use AC for heating but they have gas or electric boilers to heat water. Heatpumps are way more efficient here. When you say ‘heatpump’ you mean something that replaces a furnace? Something you plug into central heating system that heats the water and distributes it to the radiators?
Thats what consumers call a heatpump here. It has enough capacity to fully replace gas heating. A normal gas furnace does around 28 kW so you can imagine the heatpump to be quite beefy.
It has several times the price as a simple air conditioner (I know that is technically also a heatpump) you use to cool down or heat up a room and also does hot water.
A heat pump capable of replacing conventional heating is possible in an full apartment block, not in a single apartment. If you rent an apartment, you aren’t going to dismantle steel radiators attached to the central heating system of the building. Many people just have to deal with what the apartment block owner provides. Installing an air conditioner just for cooling is an easier alternative.
That depends on the type of heating you’re replacing and has nothing to do with it being in an apartment or a house. I have a heatpump in an apartment.
You’re thinking about specific type of central heating that’s probably popular in your part of Europe. Europe is big, Different countries build apartments in different ways.
Fair enough. I’m thinking about radiators in central apartment block heating systems which are common in Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
Don’t include Romania in this - we already have AC. The weather currently getting everyone in north-west Europe highly exercised is a mild summer day in Romania. I assume this is also true of Bulgaria.
Fair enough. That’s roughly 350 million people. You said 50% of people in EU live in apartments so what you said applies to about 170 million people. That’s ~1/3 of EU. I would say ~2/3 of people getting AC and/or heatpumps still counts as a revolution. But that’s nitpicking and really besides the point. Some people will not be able to upgrade, sure. Some people will install AC in their apartment and use it for heating during winter as pretty much all units they sell now do both. New buildings may also adapt to the new reality and stop installing building wide heating systems, even in the countries you listed. I think it’s obvious things will change and even if half of Europe will not be affected for now it doesn’t mean some sort of revolution is not happening.
Absolutely. My point is not that nothing is going to happen. It’s that many will choose the more common and flexible air conditioners over heat pumps sold to fully replace conventional heating as well.
The naming is confusing here. In Spain the difference between AC and ‘aerotermia’ is that the second one heats water. This is the “heat pump” revolution here. Many people already use AC for heating but they have gas or electric boilers to heat water. Heatpumps are way more efficient here. When you say ‘heatpump’ you mean something that replaces a furnace? Something you plug into central heating system that heats the water and distributes it to the radiators?