Earth Notes: 16WW Heat Pump Sounds (2025)

Updated 2025-06-25.
How loud is it standing next to the fan? #heatpump #quiet
How much noise does our heat pump external unit make at (capped power) full tilt while making hot water in the evening? Not much: the non-heat-pump breeze rattling the hedge was louder!
35s "20250611T1926Z standing next to the heat pump at maximum" (captions) Uploaded . Downloads:
  1. • small lo-fi very low-bandwidth audio/opus mono clip 67kB (15kbps) +
  2. • lo-fi low-bandwidth mono clip 179kB (41kbps) ++
  3. • stereo clip 842kB (196kbps) +++
  4. • hi-fi lossless audio/flac stereo clip 3210kB (751kbps) +++++
Transcript:
[00:00]

1, 2, 3 testing. Standing beside the heat pump, looking out towards the car park, heat pump on the left,

[00:07]

shed on the right, the Handy about 3 inches below my mouth and about a foot above the top of the heat pump.

[00:16]

There is a breeze, you can hear other noises...

[00:22]

This is the heat pump running capped at 5 amps, roughly 1.25 kilowatts usage, generating hot water.

[00:30]

This is as loud as it should get generally, I think.

Show Notes

Recorded with the Zoom Handy H1n held in my right hand, stereo 48ksps, about 10cm (3 inches) below my mouth and facing away from me. To the left is the heat pump fan, the top about 30cm (a foot) lower.

I speak in a steady quiet voice as if to chat with someone right in front of me.

The Zoom has a wind muff on, and there is a little buffeting from the fan output, though much more from the breeze rattling the hedge also!