It is the machine air conditioning is built on, run in both directions. It warms the winter and cools the summer. This is what we install.
Request a surveyThe two names describe one machine. An air conditioner built to warm a room as well as cool it is an air-to-air heat pump. Bristol installers use both words for the same box on the wall, and the confusion between them is genuine and common.
Nothing inside it is burned. It moves warmth between the house and the outside air, drawing heat in through winter and carrying it back out through summer. That is the whole idea, and it is why one system covers both seasons rather than needing two.
A cooling-only air conditioner is a different, lesser machine, built to do half the job. The law treats it differently too. A unit that heats as well as cools generally falls under Permitted Development for a house. A unit that only cools generally does not, and needs planning permission instead.
It moves heat rather than makes it, so on running cost it sits close to gas per unit of warmth delivered, not below it. See the full maths in the cost guide. What gas cannot do is July. An air-to-air heat pump runs in reverse and cools the house; a boiler has nothing to offer.
No radiators, no cylinder, no wet system running through the walls. Warm air moves into the room directly from a unit on the wall. A typical air-to-air install takes a day or two, rather than the week or more a wet system with new radiators can need.
A portable unit is installed by no one, drains into a bucket you empty, and only cools. An air-to-air heat pump is installed properly, drains itself, runs quietly, and heats the room as well.
One outdoor unit, sometimes two on a larger house, sits against an outside wall and serves a slim indoor unit in each room. We place each one where it suits the room, not where the pipework happens to be easiest.
On some houses, the indoor units can be recessed into a ceiling void or a bulkhead, so nothing hangs on the wall. Whether yours is one of them is a question the survey answers, not a brochure.
Set it to warm and one kilowatt of electricity moves about three kilowatts of warmth into the room.
What that means on the bill, next to gas and plug-in electric heating, is laid out in full in the running-cost guide.
Figures illustrative. Your fixed quote follows a survey.
A size that comes from a survey, not a BTU chart on a website. Too big wastes money and cycles noisily. Too small never quite gets there. We measure the room and size it exactly.
The manufacturers who have made these machines for decades: Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Fujitsu. We fit whichever one the room asks for, not whichever one happens to be on offer that month.
For most houses, a unit that heats as well as cools falls under Permitted Development. Flats and conservation areas need more care. We check your property before we quote, so you know before you commit to anything.
A day or two. Your quote says which.
We measure the rooms and listen.
One figure, in writing. That's the price.
Your quote says which. Dust sheets down, tested, tidied, the house left as we found it.
In writing. If something isn't right, we come back and put it right.
Fern Climate is run by its founders, Hom and Simon. If you speak to us, you're speaking to the people who do the work.