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Samsung EHS Quint Design Survey: What Needs Checking?
A quote without a survey is a guess with a number attached.
Blunt, and meant to be. In eighteen years of reading heating quotations, the ones that go wrong on site share an origin story: the job was priced before anybody worked out what the house needed. The Quint sharpens that, because one product doing three jobs means three sets of calculations.
This page sets out what a pre-quote survey covers. For the wider picture, see the Samsung EHS Quint hub.
Survey before quote, not after
Most people meet the survey the wrong way round. They collect three quotes, choose one, and a surveyor arrives afterwards to confirm what has already been sold. By then nobody wants to tell a customer the system they signed for is the wrong size, so awkward findings get absorbed into the installation rather than the design.
Reverse it. Establish what the house needs, in numbers, then ask installers to price against that. Every quote then costs the same scope, which is the only way comparison means anything. It also defends you against the two commonest quoting habits: sizing the heat pump off the old boiler, and sizing the cooling off a hunch. And whether one outdoor unit beats a heat pump plus separate air conditioning is a question about your house, not the brochure.
The survey checklist
| What gets checked | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Room-by-room heat loss | Sets heat pump size, every emitter size and the flow temperature you can run at. |
| Fabric and insulation | Wall build-up, loft depth, floor type, glazing. EPC assumptions are not a survey. |
| Ventilation and air change rates | Draughty and ventilated rooms differ, and this is one of the easiest inputs to fudge. |
| Existing emitters and their true outputs | Every radiator measured, typed and rated at your flow temperature, not the catalogue figure. |
| Design flow temperature | Drives efficiency, emitter sizing and cost. Chosen deliberately, not inherited. |
| Pipework size and condition | Whether the pipes carry the flow a low-temperature system needs. Microbore often limits a room. |
| Hot water demand and cylinder sizing | Occupancy, bathrooms and showers set volume, coil size, reheat time and legionella provision. |
| Cooling load, room by room | A separate calculation. Sets indoor unit capacities and the outdoor unit total. |
| Which rooms genuinely need cooling | Cooling every room is expensive and usually unnecessary. |
| Indoor unit positions and wall space | Units need clear wall, an airflow path and filter access. |
| Refrigerant pipe routes and lengths | Lengths and height differences have limits; disruption depends on where pipes run. |
| Condensate drainage routes | Cooling units make water, and it needs a fall or a pump. |
| Outdoor unit position | Airflow clearance, defrost water, service access, and a mount that carries 126.5 kg. |
| Noise and boundary distances | Distance to neighbouring windows and reflective surfaces. Published figures are not a site assessment. |
| Electrical supply capacity | Main fuse, consumer unit capacity, spare ways, earthing, and whether an upgrade is needed. |
| Controls and zoning strategy | How heating and cooling are each controlled, and by what. |
| Planning and permitted development | Boundary constraints, conservation areas, listed buildings, flats. |
Heat loss — the foundation
Everything else depends on this one.
A room-by-room heat loss calculation works out what each room loses on a cold design day, from its construction, exposure, glazing and ventilation. The total sizes the heat pump; the room figures size the emitters. And the gap between a room’s heat loss and the emitter that physically fits decides your flow temperature — which decides your running cost for the life of the system.
Which is why “the old boiler was 24 kW, so we’ll fit a 16 kW heat pump” is worthless. Boilers were routinely oversized twofold or threefold, which with a boiler is cheap and mostly harmless. I have surveyed houses where the real heat loss was under a third of the installed output. Oversize a heat pump and it cycles instead of running steadily, efficiency drops and you paid more for it. On a Quint that figure is only one demand on the outdoor unit, so approximately right will not do. See what drives the installed cost.
Emitters and pipework
Radiator output falls as flow temperature falls, faster than most people expect. The catalogue figure is quoted at a test condition well above what a well-designed heat pump system runs at.
So the survey measures every radiator — height, length, type, panel and convector arrangement — and calculates what each delivers at your design flow temperature against that room’s heat loss. Some rooms are fine. Some need a bigger radiator. Occasionally nothing larger fits. That is why can the Quint work with my existing radiators? ends in a calculation, not a yes or a no.
Pipework matters as much and gets checked far less. Lower flow temperatures mean more water moving for the same heat, and microbore is the usual sticking point: it can work, but it limits what a room receives whatever radiator you fit.
Hot water
Cylinder sizing is a demand question before it is a product question. How many people, how many bathrooms, what showers, who wants hot water at once. From that comes a volume, a coil size, a reheat time and a legionella strategy.
Then heat recovery. Samsung describes heat extracted during air-to-air cooling being diverted to the hot water tank — attractive in principle, and the feature most likely to be oversold. What it is worth depends entirely on how much cooling a household runs, at what times, against what hot-water demand — and nobody has UK data on those patterns yet. A survey establishes your demand and likely usage, so the assumption is at least yours. It cannot put a credible saving figure on it, and nor can anyone else.
Cooling
Cooling load is a separate calculation and it does not behave like heat loss. Heat loss is mostly fabric and temperature difference; cooling is dominated by gains — solar through glazing, people, lighting, appliances and shading.
That changes which rooms are the problem. A north-facing room with poor insulation can be the hardest in the house to heat and untroubled in August. A well-insulated south-facing room with big glazing can be miserable by mid-afternoon and cheap to heat in January. The rooms that are hard to heat are frequently not the rooms that are hard to cool, so anyone sizing cooling by scaling the heating figures is guessing. Done room by room, the gains calculation also decides which rooms genuinely warrant an indoor unit. More on the Quint air conditioning page.
CONSIDERING HEATING AND COOLING TOGETHER?
Before committing to one system or two, find out what your home actually needs.
Outdoor unit and routes
The outdoor unit position is one of the few decisions genuinely hard to change later. It needs airflow clearance front and back, somewhere for defrost water to drain that will not ice a path, service access, and a mount that carries 126.5 kg without passing vibration into the building. Somewhere you can live with looking at, and your neighbours can live with hearing.
Published sound figures are measured under specific conditions and describe the machine, not your garden — reflective walls, narrow passages and close boundaries change the outcome. Then the routes. Refrigerant pipework has to reach every indoor unit through real voids and past real joists, and condensate has to reach a drain. That decides how disruptive the work feels, and it is what gets skipped when pricing from photographs.
Controls
Two systems, two control questions, and they are answered together.
Heating side: weather compensation, zoning, sensor positions, hot water priority, and how the system behaves doing several jobs at once. Get that wrong and a correctly sized system still runs badly.
Cooling side: whether rooms are controlled from their own indoor units, a wall controller or an app. Samsung publishes a WiFi Kit and SmartThings connectivity. What we have not found published is how the two control layers interact in a UK installation. Put that to whoever is quoting, in writing. Controls belong in the survey because they dictate wiring and sensor positions — cheap on paper, expensive once the plaster is back.
MCS, BUS and budget
Plainly: a design survey establishes what your home needs. It cannot guarantee grant eligibility or product availability.
At the time of writing we have not found an MCS Product Directory listing under the EHS Quint name or its model references. Boiler Upgrade Scheme treatment for a unit doing both air-to-water and air-to-air work is an open question, because BUS pays different amounts for those categories and excludes hybrids. No UK on-sale date or installed price has been published.
None of that delays design work: heat loss, emitters, cylinder sizing and cooling loads do not change with the product you buy. But the survey should carry its assumptions explicitly — grant assumed, not confirmed. Do not let a quote deduct a grant nobody has confirmed for your installation; the quote checklist covers the rest.
Comparing the options
Here is what the survey is actually for. Done properly it lets you compare three routes on your own house, with your own numbers:
- A Samsung EHS Quint doing heating, hot water and cooling from one outdoor unit
- A conventional air-to-water heat pump, no cooling
- A conventional heat pump plus separate air conditioning — two outdoor units, two sets of kit
The third gets left out of most conversations, and it is the one the Quint has to beat: proven, available today, with settled grant treatment. The comparison is the deliverable, not a product recommendation. If a survey concludes “you need a Quint” before the numbers have been run, somebody decided the answer in advance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a survey before a quote?
You need one before you accept a quote. A price with no heat loss calculation, emitter schedule or cooling load behind it is an estimate of somebody’s guess. Survey first and every quote costs the same scope.
Can you tell me if the Quint suits my house?
We can tell you what your house needs — heat loss, emitter outputs at your flow temperature, cylinder sizing, cooling loads, where units can go — and how the Quint compares against the alternatives on those numbers. We will not guarantee suitability; given the open questions on certification, grants and availability, nobody can yet.
How long does it take?
Time on site depends on the size of the house and how accessible it is, since every room gets measured and every radiator recorded. The calculation work follows, and the decision-making afterwards is what to budget time for.
Is the survey wasted if I choose a different product?
No, and this is the most important answer here. Your heat loss does not change based on which outdoor unit you buy. Neither do radiator outputs at a given flow temperature, hot-water demand, cooling loads or pipework constraints. The survey describes your house, so it travels with you across every product and installer.
Do I need a survey if I only want cooling?
If cooling is all you want, you want an air-conditioning system rather than a Quint — and you still need a cooling load calculation to size it. A full survey earns its keep if there is any chance you will replace the heating within a few years, because the cooling is then designed around it rather than worked around later.
Will the survey tell me what it costs?
It tells you what the job involves, in enough detail that quotes become comparable and hidden scope stops being hidden. No installed UK price has been published, so any figure you are given is that installer’s, not a market rate. See the cost page.
Ask Us About the Samsung EHS Quint
Tell us about your property, your existing heating system and whether cooling matters to you. We reply personally by email, usually within two working days. No sales calls.
CONTENTS
SAMSUNG EHS QUINT GUIDES
NOT SURE?
Tell us about your home and we’ll give you a straight answer by email — before you spend a penny on surveys.