Heating in Mallorca
Heating here is a smaller question than in northern Europe and a more awkward one. The season is short, the buildings were made to keep heat out, and a property with air conditioning on the wall may already have most of its heating. What is worth adding depends on which of those the property is. Describe it and we pass the request to air conditioning and heat pump companies that take on heating work.
request describes the job
companies see it
for you, always
obligation to accept
Why heating here is a different question
The cold is short and damp rather than deep. A property needs warming for part of the winter and at the edges of spring and autumn, in the evening far more than at midday. That changes the arithmetic before anything is specified: a system sized and priced for a northern winter is being bought for a season that never quite arrives, and whatever it costs to run is spread over a fraction of the hours.
The buildings then work against the intuition. Stone, hollow block and single glazing were put together to keep the summer out, and they do it by having mass and by not being sealed. The same qualities make a house slow to warm and quick to give back what it has gained, so warm air blown into a room disappears into the walls and the floor while the thermostat reports success.
The third thing is that the heating is often installed already and nobody thinks of it that way. A split system that cools is a heat pump: it moves heat either way, and in a mild winter it warms the rooms it reaches perfectly well. The useful first question is therefore not what to buy. It is what the property already has, and where that stops being enough.
Where heating is answered on this site
Heating here is rarely a category of its own. What warms a property is a floor, a heat pump, or the unit already on the wall, so the pages are grouped by the thing that does the work rather than by the word.
Underfloor heating
Heat pumps
Split and multi-split
Not sure which yet
Servicing before winter
Controls
What the unit on the wall already does
A split system that cools will usually heat as well, because the ordinary kind reverses. The same indoor unit that runs cold in August blows warm in February, and it does it the way any heat pump does, by moving heat rather than making it. For a property used mainly in the warm months, and for the rooms those units are in, that is often the entire heating answer, so the cheapest decision available is to find out whether it is already there.
Where it stops is predictable. It warms the room it stands in and no other, it dries the air while doing so, and it blows: warm air from above is something people notice in a way they never notice cold air from above. The hallway, the bathroom and the bedroom at the far end stay cold whatever the sitting room is doing.
Finding that line is worth doing before anything is bought. If the gap is one cold room, another indoor unit is a small piece of work. If the gap is the whole ground floor of a stone house lived in through the winter, the answer is usually a warm floor and something to feed it, and the split goes back to what it is good at.
What to settle before asking for heating quotes
A brief that answers these is comparable. One that does not gets priced on assumptions, and every company assumes something different.
- Which rooms are actually cold, and at what time of day
- How much of the winter the property is lived in, and by how many people
- What is installed now, and whether any of it heats as well as cools
- Whether the floors are coming up anyway for some other reason
- What heats the hot water today, and how it is doing
- Where an outdoor unit could stand, and how far that is from the rooms
- Whether the electrical supply carries another load as it stands
- Whether the property sits empty and needs holding above damp rather than warm
Working out what the property needs
The order matters. Most of the regret in heating comes from choosing the machine first and finding out afterwards what it has to feed.
-
01
Start with the winter you actually have
A house lived in from November to March is a different brief from one opened for a fortnight at Christmas and a week at Easter. The first wants steady background warmth; the second wants rooms brought up quickly and then left alone again.
-
02
Count what already heats
Every unit in the property that reverses is heating capacity somebody has already paid for. Knowing which rooms they cover, and how well they cover them, turns a vague request into a specific one.
-
03
Decide what puts the heat into the room
A floor, fan coils, radiators, or the units already on the wall. This is the choice that decides how much building work there is, and how much of the house has to be opened to do it.
-
04
Then choose what feeds it
A floor and a radiator ask for water at very different temperatures, and that difference decides both what is sensible to install and what it costs to run afterwards. The machine is the last decision rather than the first.
How your request reaches a company
Mallorca Climate Control is a comparison service. A request for heating goes to the air conditioning and heat pump companies on our list; they quote the work and carry it out, and any agreement is between you and the company you pick.
-
01
Describe the job
Tell us the property, roughly what you want and where it is. Photographs and a rough plan help, though neither is required.
-
02
We match it
The request goes to companies that work in your area and take on this kind of job at this size.
-
03
They quote you
Each company contacts you directly with its own price, timing and approach. We do not set any of it.
-
04
You compare and choose
Put the quotes side by side and take the one you want, or none of them. Using the site costs you nothing.
Does a property here need heating at all?
It depends on when it is used and what it is built of. A modern apartment used in the warm months rarely needs more than the reversible unit it already has. A stone house lived in through the winter is a different proposition, because the fabric is cold and the fabric is what people feel. Owners arriving from northern Europe usually need less heating than they expect and more than a summer visitor assumes.
Is underfloor heating worth it for a short season?
Often, and for reasons that have less to do with the length of the season than with the building. It suits mass, it is silent, and it warms the surface people stand on. Whether it earns its place on a particular property is what the underfloor heating page is for.
Can the same system heat and cool?
That is the ordinary answer here rather than the clever one. A split does it room by room, and a larger machine feeding water does it through a floor or through fan coils and can take the hot water as well. Which of the two suits a property is a question about the building rather than about the equipment, and the heat pump pages take it further.
What heats the rooms a split unit never reaches?
Either another indoor unit, which is short work in most properties, or a different kind of system entirely if the cold rooms are the ones that matter. Bathrooms and hallways are the usual complaint, and a warm floor answers both without anything hanging on a wall.
Should an empty property be heated in winter?
A house shut up for months is usually better held at a low steady setting than switched off, because cold surfaces are where damp settles. That is as much a controls question as a heating one, and the second home page is where it is worked through.
Get heating quotes you can compare
Describe the property once and let several companies price it against the same brief.