Industrial & Commercial Heat Pumps

A machine that moves heat between a building water loop and an outside source, using a compressor and a refrigerant, instead of generating heat by combustion. The way commercial heat pumps work is to transfer heat that already exists rather than create it, which is why the output can exceed the electrical input. Reversing the cycle turns the same unit into a chiller, so one machine can provide both heating and cooling across the year.

Cost tracks capacity band, refrigerant choice, 4-pipe configuration, heat-exchanger material and controls scope rather than a single per-kW figure, which is why the procurement section above lists the dimensions instead of a price. Be careful with published commercial heat pump cost ranges found online: the widely quoted four to thirteen thousand dollar band describes 3–10 ton light commercial split equipment, a completely different class from a 65–2,872 kW hydronic machine. Comparing those two numbers is how a budget gets set at roughly a tenth of the real figure, and it is the single most common briefing error we see on incoming enquiries.

Capacity is the obvious difference; the carrier is the useful one. Residential equipment usually moves heat into air through a split system, while commercial heat pump systems on this page move it into a water loop that then feeds fan coils, air handling units or radiant circuits. That water loop is the reason why a single installation is capable of meeting simultaneous heating and cooling needs for more than a dozen zones; that kind of application is never required of residential equipment.

Run the Source-Side Fork above. There is no single best commercial heat pump across all six — where two branches both look feasible, civil scope decides it rather than the heating and cooling solutions themselves.

Start from a calculated building load, not floor area, then apply the delivery ratio for your design-day ambient to the rated capacity. Sizing against a rule of thumb is where most oversizing originates, and oversizing costs efficiency all season rather than only on the coldest day.

A unit that is too large cycles at low load, holds temperature less precisely and draws more energy across the year than a right-sized one, so the margin that feels prudent on paper is charged back every month.

Where the corrected figure still leaves a gap on the two or three coldest days, cover that gap with supplementary heat rather than with a bigger machine.

No — no heat pump does, and any supplier implying otherwise is describing a limit rather than an output. The delivery ratio table above gives measured figures at −12, −22, −25 and −30 °C so the derating is a number you can size against instead of a margin you have to guess.

“The air-source isn’t able to get the heat up to a decent level in the house, and it really struggles with the hot water” is a complaint that recurs wherever a heat pump was sized for space heating alone. Most Koven lines leave water at 40–55 °C, which suits pre-heat duty but sits below the 60 °C storage temperature the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for controlling Legionella in stored potable water — so pair them with a supplementary heater, specify a dedicated commercial hot water heat pump alongside, or take the cascade line, which reaches 75 °C.

No. All numbers used here come from Koven catalogue specifications, or from a project acceptance test, and they are labelled as such. Should you decide your specification documents do require an AHRI rating, this is an issue you may wish to raise within the project scope: we have not obtained it heretofore.