Nibe Fighter 360p ashp costing me loads to run

John_Pierpoint

This kit is intended for the house that qualifies for the mantra:

"Build tight ventilate right"

Think: car with the recirculate button pressed on: You drive along in the winter and just cannot understand why the condensation is getting so bad, even with the heater on the windscreen (or the electric heated windscreen is turned on if you have a Ford).

The intention is to have a building that is so well draft proofed that there has to be mechanical ventilation, for the health and well being of the occupants.

So if you have such a well insulated and sealed home that it requires mechanical ventilation, you might as well add a compressor and ventilate sub ambient cold air into the night.

Hands up anyone living in one of these zero carbon homes:rotfl::rotfl:You will know who you are, because, unless there are facilities to passive ventilate you home, you will need to turn on the ventilation system in the summer and be moaning that there is no air conditioning.

The idea of passive ventilating your home in the middle of the winter, by opening a window, is just nuts.

[A couple of weeks ago "Grand Designs" featured a home built under a giant tile arch covered with "grass".
That proud owner explained the concept quite well - and between you and me I think there were dark grey days when the heating system meant putting on a second woolly jumper - he trotted out the air change rates to demonstrate that they were well within the regulations (and he had a log stove something that is carbon neutral but that reduces the energy performance certificate, because it is a hole that sucks hot air into the garden.
Alice in Wonderland will be along to explain in greater detail soon.]

lovesfarmbpha

Totally agree with the stove or secondary heat...most scandanavian homes have a log burner and do not rely on the nibe as the sole source of heat...the impact of secondary heat(wood burner,gas fire etc) will makew a massive saving.
On our facebook page (nibeboilerproblems) we have had a lady that got the local coucillor involved and the housing association ripped the nibe out...
I really do hope that this is the start of the HAs realising that the systems are phoo....
we are looking into a away of re wiring our 360 so the fan only comes on when the compressor runs....that will still supply pleny of ventilation....our house is 1 year old timber frame 3 bed semi ,,,,under shared ownership.
One option we are also looking at is bolting on a secondary boiler such as wood chip or even gas,,,,its easy to do....nibe sell a kit (£45)to add these on....should cost £1,500 to £2,000 for a gas boiler bolt on alot more for a wood chip burner....

richardc1983

The 360 is one of the bottom of the range models in the literature the higher end models pre heat the "make up" air so you are not feeling the icy blast from the wall vents. It's a bad design issue the principle is good but poor design and components of the system let it down.

lovesfarmbpha

If you bought a 360p then get a refund quick!
The real tragedy about this saga is that most the NIBE 360p machines have been bought by housing associations (social housing) where the tenants have no choice and the HAs are not willing to listen to the fact they have waisted £6,000 on a bad system....
The other tragedy is that most these have gone into new build social housing which is heavily funded by goverment money...yep your tax...
Something is very wrong here!!!
Also a liitle tired of the NIBE sales people telling us that the 360p produces 3kw power frrom 1kw...utterly utterly impossible as it has a CoP of 2.6 (taken from the NIBE 360p manual).....and thats not including the fan power......
God do they not do the maths!!!!

oyster1

After a year of tweaking we have got ours doing 12-15 units per daywith an outside temp of 3C. Pretty happy at that with a family of 4; 2 showers and one bath a day. I put all of our problems with this system firmly with the installers not helped by the ridiculously un-userfriendly controls and manual. I still don't have a clue about heat curves.

We have:
reinsualted all of the ducting
installed individual zone thermostats
and set the fan up so that it drops to a low level when the compressor is not running

Now i no longer wish it to occupy my mind at all, like all good heating systems it should just be in the background heating my house and water.

The posts i found most useful on this forum were from Denial
Many Thanks

1plus1equal3

my house has been freezing for the past 4 weeks, my housing associatin has eventually sent someone out to have a look at my nibe fighter, and their report says they cannot find a problem, and that my house is running at an average of 20 degrees which is acceptable, I would like to say to my housing association, that it should be my choice what i have my heating on , not yours, i pay the electric bills , not you, i am cold, and yet you have the nerve to tell me you have fullfilled your obligation to me , because my temprature is 20 degrees. Perhaps i will come down to your working enviroment with a themostat, and see what the temp is in your offices.Give me a heating system that lets me choose a temprature that suits me, not this expensive, impossible to understand, heap of metal that has now given me 3 years of stress, and worry.

richardc1983

Are you all following the nice group on Facebook?

lovesfarmbpha

Well...we are pushing the Housing Ombudsman to provide an independent review...that is to say a review not done by NIBE,or as we are now calling them NOBE, or a review by an installer of such systems...we are calling for an open INDEPENDENT review..
WE now have 2 housing estates that have started formal complaints...one the Loves Farm at St Neots and the other Wixam n Bedford both BPHA HA......Loves Farm has sent complaint to Housing Ombudsman and Wixam is starting formal complaint processs....these estates have collectively 200 Nibe Units...
Lets take the final panel hearing response to the Loves Farm people as an example of the fact that there are some really great myths(sales pitches) about the system...They ,BPHA,stated in the final panel hearing response letter,that the Nibe is 300% effcient and for every 1kw you get 3kw....impossible as it has a CoP of 2,6 which is only the compressor CoP and does not include the fan power so it would actually be lower than this...but it clearly shows that these people cannot do simple maths nor have ever had an understanding of what they have bought...
At the end of the day the facts and the figures tell the truth not the sales pitch,,,,,if your connected to the gas grid you would need an electric boiler to be at the very least 300% effcient constantly to even match a gas boiler in terms of cost and CO2 output...
Facebook page NIBEBOILERPROBLEMS,,,,we only deal in facts and figures....oh and the odd rant about this lump of ~~~~ :rotfl:

richardc1983

The facebook page address is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/NIBE-boiler-problems/109940359085493

John_Pierpoint

lovesfarmbpha wrote: »

At the end of the day the facts and the figures tell the truth not the sales pitch,,,,,if your connected to the gas grid you would need an electric boiler to be at the very least 300% effcient constantly to even match a gas boiler in terms of cost and CO2 output...
:rotfl:

Simple fact of life:
When gas is burnt in a jet engine to make electricity, roughly two thirds of the energy, captured into the gas over the last 8 million years, is wasted in the production or heating the wires in it's subsequent transmission.