Its not always piped in/outside. IIRC mine the refrigerant never leaves the outside unit, instead hot water (and a shitload of glycol) is pumped around between the unit and the inside of the house. My heat pump only does heating in this configuration though but because of that I got £7.5k from the UK government towards the install, more than half the total cost and that included getting all new pipework and radiators. I assume the idea is they don’t want to be giving people AC as that is seen more as a luxury.
Its not always piped in/outside. IIRC mine the refrigerant never leaves the outside unit, instead hot water (and a shitload of glycol) is pumped around between the unit and the inside of the house. My heat pump only does heating in this configuration though but because of that I got £7.5k from the UK government towards the install, more than half the total cost and that included getting all new pipework and radiators. I assume the idea is they don’t want to be giving people AC as that is seen more as a luxury.
I suppose that makes sense if you’re retrofitting a heat pump onto an existing hot-water radiator system. The unit replaces the existing boiler.