Electrical – Can you replace a Q1 Circuit Breaker with two QO breakers

It sounds like you may be mistaken as to how this is wired, or that perhaps I'm just not understanding your explanation. As others have mentioned, it's not possible to get 240 volts from a single pole in a 120/240V split phase system. Each tandem breaker provides 2 120 V circuits, this is true. However, if you measure between the terminals on a single tandem breaker, you'll get 0 volts. This is because the terminals are both powered from the same leg, and so are at the same voltage potential. If you measure from a terminal on the top tandem breaker to a terminal on the bottom one, then you'll measure 240 volts. This is because each breaker is connected to a different leg, which are each one half of a 240 volt circuit.

With all that said. For this setup to work, one appliance would have to be connected to both breaker. Something like this...

Notice that each appliance circuit has one wire connected to each of the tandem breakers. In this situation, you'd need a device like Speedy Petey shows.

Which ties the breaker handles together, to provide common trip characteristics.

Notice how the inner handles are tied together, and that the outer handles are also tied to each other. This way if either trip (or are turned off by the user), the entire circuit is shut off.

If this is wired the way you've explained, where the dryer is connected to the top tandem and the heater is connected to the bottom. Then there's some magic going on in those breakers.

Yes, a GFCI sub-panel with AFCI breakers sounds like an excellent way to do that. It avoids the European problem of having the whole house GFCI (RCBO) trip and ruin a refrigerator full of food and freeze pipes (though some European furnaces don't require electricity).

I don't see a problem daisy-chaining since they are different protections. I also like having the arc-fault protection more local than the ground-fault. The GFCI doesn't care, but the AFCI does, because it is literally listening to electrical noise, and it's easier to "hear" when fewer things are talking.

The only thing you need to watch is that your large, full-panel GFCI has the sensitivity that is legally required for bathroom and kitchen circuits. Some of the Euro-style whole-house RCBOs have 20-30ma thresholds, which is not sensitive enough by far.