High-wall heat pumps for Hastings homes

Most Hastings homes end up with one, and three things decide whether yours should: how much capacity the room needs to beat a hard plains frost, whether there's a clear run of wall up high for it to blow down from, and whether you can live with a white box on a villa wall.

How much does a high-wall heat pump cost in Hastings?

Fitted, a bedroom runs about $2,000 to $3,000. A main living area is $2,800 to $4,500, and a large or open-plan space $3,800 to $5,500. That's roughly 2.5kW, 5 to 6kW and 7 to 8kW of capacity.

Those are prices for the job done, not for the box. They take in the indoor and outdoor units, the brackets, the lagged pipework, the drain for the condensate, the electrical connection, and someone testing the thing before they drive away. If you've found a number well under that online, it'll be supply only.

What separates one quote from another is nearly always how hard the job is rather than the brand. The easy version is the outdoor unit sitting directly behind the indoor head, one wall between them and the pipework going nowhere else. Every metre past that is more material and more labour.

What else moves it

Older places through Akina, Flaxmere and Camberley often have a switchboard with nothing spare on it, and a new circuit goes on the quote when that's the case. Out on the lifestyle blocks around Bridge Pa and Whakatu the outdoor unit is sometimes further from the board than it would be in town, which adds cable and time.

Run your room through the sizing calculator for a capacity and a figure, or read the installation cost page for what pushes a quote around.

Sizing one for a July frost and a February afternoon

Hastings asks more of a heat pump than most places, because it has to do two opposite jobs properly six months apart.

In winter the plains get the worse end of it. Cold air drains off the hills and settles on the valley floor overnight, so the frosts here bite harder than they do across at the coast. A heat pump works by pulling warmth out of the air outside, and the colder that air is the less there is in it to pull, so output drops away on exactly the mornings you need it. Size a unit off a mild day and it'll be running flat out at 7am in July and still losing.

Then February turns up and sits in the low 30s for days at a time. The same unit that was struggling in winter now has to pull heat the other way, and a lounge with a west-facing wall of glass gathers it all afternoon faster than an undersized unit can shift it.

So the figure that matters is the one that covers both ends. Start from 2.5kW for a bedroom, 5 to 6kW for an ordinary lounge and 7 to 8kW for something large or open-plan, then go up a step for single glazing, a high stud, or a poorly insulated older place through Flaxmere or Camberley.

Buying big isn't the safe way out either. Too much capacity and the unit slams the room up to temperature, shuts off before it's taken any moisture out, and leaves you warm and clammy in winter and cold and damp-feeling in summer.

Where it goes, and whether you can look at it

It only blows one way, so it wants a clear stretch of wall up high with the room opening out in front of it. Point it into a doorway or across the back of a sofa and it warms the air right around itself, decides the job's done and backs off while the far end of the room is still cold.

In the single-glazed villas and plaster homes around Akina and central Hastings, the wall that actually works is often the only one without a window, a picture rail or a high stud getting in the way. It's rarely the one you'd have picked on looks.

Which brings up the thing people are usually too polite to say out loud: a white box on the wall of a villa lounge doesn't suit the room, and for some people that's enough to stop the whole idea. It's a fair objection and there are two honest answers to it. A floor console sits at skirting height where a radiator would have been, which reads better in an older room and puts the warmth in at floor level as a bonus. A ceiling cassette disappears into the ceiling altogether, though it costs more and needs the space above the gib.

Outside, the unit wants air around it, a spot up off the ground rather than down in a frost hollow, somewhere for the meltwater to drain, and enough room for a person to stand and do the yearly service.

Does one heat the whole house?

With the internal doors open, one in the main living area carries more of a compact house than people expect, and for a single living space that's usually the end of the conversation.

What it won't do is get heat round a corner or down a hallway, because the air goes where it's pointed and no further. If the bedrooms matter you're choosing between a second unit and a multi-split, which hangs two to four indoor heads off one outdoor unit. That's tidier on a tight central section where you'd otherwise have a row of boxes down the side of the house. The price follows how many heads and how far apart they are, so it gets worked out on site.

For a whole house on one system, ducted feeds every room through ceiling vents and shows nothing but the grilles. It wants roof space, which a fair few older Hastings places don't have much of.

Whatever you fit, it's reverse-cycle, so the cooling comes free with it. That matters more here than in most of the country, because a Hawke's Bay February is long, dry and genuinely hot, and the same unit you bought for the frosts is what makes the house liveable in it.

Still deciding? Types of heat pump puts a high-wall next to a floor console, a ceiling cassette, a multi-split and ducted, and heat pump installation covers the day itself. For a number on your own room, get a free quote.