HVAC
Heat pumps versus air conditioning for Algarve winters
Mild winters still leave stone houses cold at night. A heat pump that already cools in August can heat properly in January — if it was specified that way.
Visitors remember the Algarve as a summer place. People who live here remember January nights in a house with thermal mass and single-glazed patio doors.
A wall of portable heaters will warm a corner and wreck the bill. The more honest answer is a reverse-cycle heat pump specified for both seasons.
Mild is not the same as comfortable
Overnight temperatures on the coast often sit in the low teens; inland they drop further. Stone and concrete dump the day's heat and then sit cold. Guests in December lets notice this immediately. So do owners who work from home.
One outdoor unit, two jobs
Daikin systems we install are heat pumps first. In summer they reject heat outdoors; in winter they reverse. That only works if the indoor units and the refrigerant charge were designed with heating in mind, not as an afterthought on a cooling quote.
Houses that also struggle with winter humidity need the dehumidify mode understood, not hoped for.
What we check on a winter survey
- Whether existing indoor units actually deliver heat to occupied rooms
- Draughts and the usual patio-door losses
- Whether a single multi-split is being asked to heat a wing it cannot reach
- How solar and battery can carry a larger share of the winter morning peak
The draft is ready for a last local pass — names of typical villa typologies, a short note on wood burners as backup rather than primary heat — then it can go on the calendar.