Diverse heating demands of a household based on occupant control behavior of individual heating equipment

•Six LTAAHPs are installed in six rooms as the sole heating equipment for a family.•Usage of remote control for 75 days is considered as occupant control behavior.•Difference in heating control behavior of occupants in six rooms is studied.•Only power on/off, temperature set, and fan speed are frequently used by occupants.•The proposed method helps to further understand real-life heating demand. The traditional design principle of household heating is based on full-space and continuous heating, which does not match the true heating demands of different functional spaces and thus leads to energy wastage. In this study, we used low-temperature air-to-air heat pumps (LTAAHPs) for space heating and studied the heating demands of six different rooms by testing the control behavior of occupants using heating equipment in a rural house in Beijing, China. The diverse heating demands of the six rooms were observed for 75 days (from January 12 to March 27, 2017) and verified using field measurements: (1) the utilization rates of the LTAAHPs differ; the mean rates range from 6.0% to 58.7%, indicating that heating is not required 41.3%–94.0% of the time; (2) the desired temperature settings differ, with average temperatures ranging from 20.3 to 25.7℃; (3) the power inputs per unit heating area differ, with average inputs ranging from 34.2 to 97.4 W/m2; and (4) the energy consumption per unit heating area differs, ranging from 6.7 to 37.3 kWh/m2. These results indicate that different rooms have different heating demands, although they belong to the same household. This study helps to understand actual heating demands while saving energy based on the proper control of individual heating equipment.