Posted by: @william1066

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Yes [for hot water / not sure if it was hot water & heat pump], 

for weekend entertainment.... there's a great post by brendon uys (heacol) on linkedin about one of his customers who built a shed around their heat pump (i.e. almost fully enclosed). funnily enough it didn't work very well.

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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Posted by: @william1066

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Yes [for hot water / not sure if it was hot water & heat pump], 

for weekend entertainment.... there's a great post by brendon uys (heacol) on linkedin about one of his customers who built a shed around their heat pump (i.e. almost fully enclosed). funnily enough it didn't work very well. 

Here’s the shed in question 😂

Classic!

This is Heacol’s post: “This person has been accusing me of [not] understanding there unit, as it was not heating their house. when the installation was done, they asked if it could be enclosed, to which I said under no circumstances can you put anything around it, over it or anywhere near it.”

I note that in Australia the outdoor cylinder arrangement is a thing (at least for hot-water); they, for the most part, have better weather, so the delta-T (and so thermal losses) will be a lot smaller.

Having the DHW cylinder outside the house means you will need to run 4 pipes outside (cold water feed, domestic hot water, CH flow & return) plus the three-way diverter will need to be outside too. As far as I can tell, pre-insulated pipe of sufficient diameter is fiercely expensive, at £30/m for duo pipe.

Posted by: @alex6547

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Has anyone tried or seen the hot water cylinder for a heat pump outside the house in an insulated shed or something similar?

Yes, we recently had an insulated shed built and our hot water tank and the heat pump apparatus are all in it. Seems to be absolutely fine. Pic below if that's helpful.

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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@alex6547 sunamp is very much designed as a cylinder replacement. Its a salt solids based heat battery, it doesn't have water in. Those solids have a significantly higher energy density than water .  Hence much smaller for same amount of "equivalent hot water storage". There are installation photos , if you get googling, showing a full sized cylinder replaced by a device the size of a thin fridge. But there are trade offs.  price being the most obvious! There is quite a bit discussion of them, and those trade-offs, on buildhub.org.uk.

mixergy is still a cylinder with water in, albeit with an optimised design, so subject to the same laws of physics as a "standard" cylinder with regard to  size and heat loss. there isn't any fundamental reason why a cylinder outside won't work, you will just need to weather proof it, and absolutely insulate the **** out of everything otherwise its heat loss is going outside , you need to be really careful about any freeze vulnerability points.

the comment by heacol that I was referring to was this one below - it sounds like this is under development, not a thing you can actually buy. but you can ask him.

....3/4 of the way through developing exactly that. It has already been independently tested by Ulster University and as taken 7 yeas to get here. We are not too far room the launch. There will also be a heat pump combi version, which is a direct like for like replacement for a combi boiler, not requiring a hot water cylinder.

Is buildhub.org.uk a forum or website? I can't access it, not sure if it is down?

From what I've ready about sunamp, very little information is available on the web with reports from end users saying how it is working. I'm sure it works, I had a hot bag made with this like 20-30 years ago to heat my feet. But having so much density to heat up a lot of water equivalent to a 300L cylinder is indeed quite a feat. I'm still akeptical just because there is not much adoption so far I can see out there and I don't want to feel like i'm testing it.

I think the plan to create an airtight and heavily insulated structure seems more doable so far

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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Posted by: @william1066

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Yes [for hot water / not sure if it was hot water & heat pump], 

for weekend entertainment.... there's a great post by brendon uys (heacol) on linkedin about one of his customers who built a shed around their heat pump (i.e. almost fully enclosed). funnily enough it didn't work very well.

 

I guess they missed physics classes at school 🙂

Posted by: @chickenbig

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I note that in Australia the outdoor cylinder arrangement is a thing (at least for hot-water); they, for the most part, have better weather, so the delta-T (and so thermal losses) will be a lot smaller.

Having the DHW cylinder outside the house means you will need to run 4 pipes outside (cold water feed, domestic hot water, CH flow & return) plus the three-way diverter will need to be outside too. As far as I can tell, pre-insulated pipe of sufficient diameter is fiercely expensive, at £30/m for duo pipe.

 

Sounds interesting, still the money spend on the pipes is cheaper than the real state, so I may take that route

Posted by: @edmj

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Posted by: @alex6547

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Has anyone tried or seen the hot water cylinder for a heat pump outside the house in an insulated shed or something similar?

Yes, we recently had an insulated shed built and our hot water tank and the heat pump apparatus are all in it. Seems to be absolutely fine. Pic below if that's helpful.

 

-- Attachment is not available --

 

Cool, thanks! How long is your pipe run from the heat pump to the cylinder, and then from cylinder to the house?

The heat pump is on the exterior of the left walk in that photo, the pipework has about 3 metres outside to the house, and is very heavily insulated 

Posted by: @alex6547

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Posted by: @iancalderbank

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@alex6547

Is buildhub.org.uk a forum or website? I can't access it, not sure if it is down?

 

forum.buildhub.org.uk