Why I created HYDROCLOUD: the compact plant room, told by the person who designed it
If you install heat pump systems, this solution can help you if you're looking for a way to cut installation time, cut the space you need, and stop having to reinvent a plant room every time with all the surprises that come with it — but above all, to monitor what's happening in the plant room, with any type of heat pump. Let me introduce HYDROCLOUD.
It's the compact plant room with everything you need to put together a heat pump system. It works with heat pumps of any brand, as long as they're hydronic and no more than 13 kW: just connect flow and return to the heat pump and hook up to the system, because everything else is already inside.
Who I am, and why I designed it
I'm Samuele Trento, a mechanical engineer: since 2012 I've specialised in heat pumps, and I've put the know-how I've built up over those years into this product. I wanted to build this because it's getting harder and harder to find the right amount of time to build plant rooms for heat pumps, harder to find skilled labour able to build them to the standard they need, less and less space available inside homes — and because you often don't know what's happening in the system while the heat pump is running, maybe in the depths of winter, in December or January.
That's why we designed a compact, "cloud-connected" plant room, made in Europe, that arrives pre-assembled on site: there's no assembling it there, or in a warehouse before delivering it to the customer — it arrives as a single, complete piece.
What's inside
On the system side you already get a recirculation pump with a direct circulator, with the option to add a mixed group (direct circuit + mixed circuit). There's also a dirt-separator filter, an expansion vessel, overpressure valves, air vents, and a 3-way valve that switches between heating and domestic hot water, plus in-line electric heating elements integrated on both circuits. Everything flows into a 65 l buffer tank of technical water, connected as a hydraulic separator — a deliberate choice, because compared with a buffer on the return it delivers maximum efficiency with heat pumps and effective defrosting, whatever the system is doing on the other side and however many zones are open.
On the domestic hot water side you get the hot water connection, its own expansion vessel, 210 l of storage (with a 6-year warranty on the cylinder) — also available with a coil for solar-thermal — the overpressure valve, and the cold water connection.
The real strength: monitoring online
HYDROCLOUD is named for combining the hydraulic side — everything you need in a plant room — with the cloud side, which lets you monitor online the domestic hot water temperature, the flow temperature to the system, and the heat pump's power draw, among other parameters. It doesn't control the heat pump — that's left to each manufacturer's own dedicated controller, which can be installed in the electrical compartment — but all the conduits with wells for the probes are already in place, and the main electrical connections (the recirculation pumps, the 3-way valve) already run to the terminal block.
If this solution can help you cut installation time and space and monitor online any hydronic heat pump up to 13 kW, find out more on the product page.