Heat Pump Types for Hamilton and Waikato Homes

The main heat pump types are high-wall, floor console, ducted, ceiling cassette and multi split. High-wall suits most modern Hamilton rooms, floor consoles warm draughty villas from the ground up, and ducted heats the whole house. The right one depends on your room and layout.

The main heat pump types you'll come across

Most homes end up with one of a handful of options. Each moves heat the same way, but they mount differently and suit different rooms.

A single outdoor unit can also run several indoor heads at once. If you want one system heating three or four rooms, that's where multi split heat pumps come in, and it keeps you to one outdoor box on the wall.

• High-wall: mounts up high on the wall, the common choice and usually the cheapest to fit.
• Floor console: sits near the floor like a heater, great for older homes.
• Ducted: hidden in the ceiling, pushes warm air to several rooms through vents.
• Ceiling cassette: recessed into the ceiling, discreet in open-plan spaces.
• Multi split: one outdoor unit feeding several indoor heads.

Matching the type to your Hamilton home

Waikato housing stock is a real mix. In older single-glazed villas around Hamilton East, the cold sits low and mornings are foggy, so floor console heat pumps work well because they push warmth up from the floor where you feel it.

Newer builds in Rototuna and out toward Cambridge hold heat better, so a high-wall unit usually does the job for less. If you're heating the whole house and have ceiling space, ducted heat pumps keep every room even without a unit on show in each one.

For open-plan living or where you don't want anything on the wall, ceiling cassette heat pumps tuck away in the ceiling and spread air in four directions.

Sizing for cold mornings and humid summers

Type matters, but so does capacity. Our valley-floor climate throws cold, damp mornings at you in winter and sticky humidity in summer, so a unit that's too small will struggle on both ends.

Room size, ceiling height, glazing and which way the room faces all feed into the sizing. We measure the room rather than guess, because an undersized unit runs flat out and costs more to run than one sized right.

What it costs and how the install works

Price shifts with the type and how tricky the run is between the indoor and outdoor units. A straightforward high-wall in a modern Dinsdale home is at the lower end, while ducted across a whole house sits well above it. We break the numbers down on our heat pump installation cost page so there are no surprises.

Once you've chosen, our heat pump installation Hamilton team handles the fit, and down the track we look after heat pump servicing to keep it running clean.