I am looking in to upgrading the heating system in my house, and I am surprised that I can hardly find any systems that heat up the house by blowing hot air in to the desired areas, as is standard for office building etc. I prefer this system because I also have a wood burning stove and would like to install a ventilation system anyway so I can distribute the heat through the house and make better use if it. A ventilator and some piping seem like a low cost way of improving the heating in the house.
I would like to use a heat pump for warming the air and I can only find two types of systems:
- Air to water systems. These warm up water and the water then needs to be pumped through a piping system in the floor or through a piping system with radiators. I don't want to replace all the floors in the house and I don't want ugly pipes and expensive radiators in the whole house.
- Air to air systems. These warm up air, which is what I want, but they all work through big "indoor units" that need to be placed in every room where heating is required.
What I would like is one big "indoor unit" on the attic, and a piping system with valves that distributes the warm air to where it is needed. That way I can keep my floors and don't need to install any pipes or radiators in my living area. Do systems like this exist for a reasonable price, and if not, why?
Edit to provide additional information:
I live in Denmark and centrally heated forced air is nearly nonexistant here. The electricity price here is about 2.5 Danish Krone (0.37 USD about 3 times US price). About 70% of this amount are taxes. I am close to buying a house which has the following heating system. 1 times 4KW heat pump with 2 indoor units, one in the living room and one in the entrance on the other side of the house. Electric heaters in every room and a wood-burning stove in the living room. It has an electric heater for hot water. I see the following problems with this system:
- Heating hot water will be very expensive.
- The bedrooms are only heated with electric heaters if the door is closed, which is expensive.
- If it gets very cold the efficiency of the heat pump will go down and electric heaters need to be used to keep the house warm
- The warmth of the wood-burning stove does not reach far enough to heat the rest of the house
I am considering to buy an additional heat pump and a ventilation system to fix most of these issues. The additional heat pump should provide hot water, but I believe it can also provide extra heating with little additional cost. The ventilation system can spread the heat of the stove to the rest of the house. It would be very nice if I could also use the ventilation system to distribute heat from the additional heat pump through the house, because I would like to avoid placing pipes and radiators or additional indoor units in the whole house.