Nibe Fighter 360p ashp costing me loads to run

pd001

lardconcepts wrote: »

I'd be smelling strong suspicion of a scam or backhander right now.

Good points

John_Pierpoint

It might actually be good advice as the heat pump should have been specified to be inadequate to heat the the property for say 2 - 3 weeks in the average year.
The argument being that it is ridiculous to install a huge heat pump for the 2 - 3 weeks a year that it is really cold (the colder it gets the less efficient the heat pump becomes, especially an air source one). In this situation it is obviously stupid to spend an extra £5k on the heat pump to save £150 a year in extra electricity costs.
So the small heat pump installed is fitted with a big immersion heater to make up the difference.

As has already been established on this thread, once the internal temperature drops below a figure of about 17 degrees, the pump goes "OMG hypothermia" and turns on the big immersion.
The heat pump is designed to trickle heat constantly into a super insulated home 24/7. A home with no draughts and controlled ventilation.
Any attempts to economise by turning the pump on and off will simply make the electricity bill even bigger.

The best design is to use a ground source heat pump and put the heat sucked out of the ground, where it never gets really really cold, into the concrete floor slab under the floors and make sure the floor slab is within the thermal envelope of the building - ie sitting on a thick layer of insulation.
During the time of year when the pump can cope and has spare capacity, the pump can be run to charge up the heat stored in the concrete during the cheap night time rate. Photo voltaic panels on the roof can reduce the day time consumption of imported electricity, when the pump is just ticking over anyway. The saving in costs in the milder periods of the winter should be greater than the small extra unit cost charged for day time electricity in the cold depth of winter.

However that design is obviously more expensive than having something in a kitchen cupboard that tries the Indian rope trick of creating heat by sucking warm air out of the house itself and then hoping to have got that air down to freezing before puffing it out into the garden.
15,000 Indian Rope tricks around the kingdom, no wonder nobody wants to take responsibility.

When the air in the garden is at (say) -5 degrees, if it is being sucked into the building at -5 and puffed out again at (say) +2 degrees, the heating has self evidently become a method of warming the plants in the garden and the occupiers inside the house would be warmer if they turned off the pump and simply turned on the rings on the cooker.

I really cannot understand why these TV programmes keep on interviewing two or three talking heads each suggesting the others are ignorant or lying.
What they should do is turn up at daybreak on a cold and frosty morning, making sure the tenant has had the heating running all night and then simply point an infra red camera at the outside of the houses, to show any heat leakage, stick a thermometer into the air being sucked into the building and into the exhaust from the heat pump and then film the red flashing light on the electricity meter for a minute and count the flashes.
(each red flash is one watt and a thousand flashes costs (say) 15p in the day-time).

Don't try and tell tenants what should be happening, show us all what is actually happening.

Unlike the Scandinavians, here in the UK we don't have many mountains and we do have a population of 66 million, so there is not much cheap hydro electricity per head to power our heat pumps.

[Deleted User]

lovesfarmbpha wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aFO6dKJLI4E

I was a bit taked a back when the video shows the Nibe unit... Sorry but it looks like it a cobbled together piece of junk made out of any old carp lying about. Quite shocking really...

lovesfarmbpha

NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED...
REMEMBER THESE ARE CODE LEVEL 4 HOMES WITH SOLAR PANELS HIGHLY INSULATED. 2 & 3 BED HOMES!!!! Did have NIBE Exhaustive air heat pump model 360 which had been ripped out and gas boilers put in ,here are the figures.

Below are actual bills taken from 14 houses of before and after bills in 2 bed and 3 bed houses, new build code 4 . The first figure is the drop in electricity cost following removal of the NIBE EAHP, the second is the increase in gas cost from a combi boiler doing the heating and hot water in the same house. The third column is the saving.
The houses are new and very well insulated and have a thermal solar panel to help with heating the hot water.
These costs are from the house main meter readings for a whole year before and a year afterwards the removal of the NIBE 360

For more information

http://ukheatpumpsolutions.co.uk/ukheatpumpsolutions.co.uk/Contact.html

Electricity Drop.............Gas Increase.........Total annual Saving

£240...............................£68 ............................. £172
£828 .............................£203............................. £625
£603............................... £95..............................£508
£578 .............................£214............................. £364
£597..............................£243............................. £354
£914..............................£300............................. £614
£743..............................£147 .............................£596
£451...............................£62............................. £389
£1,424...........................£234............................ £1190
£331............................. £166............................. £165
£402............................... £76.............................£326
£732...............................£374.............................£358
£574..............................£168.............................. £406
£557...............................£260..............................£297

lardconcepts

lardconcepts wrote: »

Thanks. This is shocking, but not surprising. The residents on the mother-in-law's sheltered housing estate are also starting to find that the "reduced bills" are anything but. Apparently there's a meeting this week or next - I'll try and get some figures. But they're pretty high by all accounts.

Right, I have some figures, and apparently there's a major bustup going as everyone was told their bills would be "the same or lower" and everyone (who has come forward so far) has got much higher bills.

Here's the mother-in-law's situation.
1 small, 1-bed modern old person's bungalow. Recent build, fully double-glazed, in the south-west.

Storage heaters were ripped out and a Hitachi ASHP was installed (waiting for model, will update). Temperature was set at 20 deg C.
EDIT: Yes, I realise this is a NIBE thread, and I thought it was NIBE until today. Still, the point about badly installed ASHP is the same

Direct debit was set at £88/month, and by end of October they had £198 credit. Their bill for 6 months arrived and they are now £240 in arrears. So:
6*£88 DD =£528
+£198 credit
= £726 + the £240 in arrears = £966 / 6 months = £161/month or around £40/week.

Almost double their previous usage.
To put this in perspective, £30 was the highest ever weekly usage from a NIBE F2015 in a 3 bedroom converted chapel with a family of 3 working from home, and that's when it hit -10 outside.

She was so upset. So, I'm waiting for as many names and bits of paperwork as I can get together, then I'm going Watchdog on their a**!

Silent_Dancer

lardconcepts wrote: »

EDIT: Yes, I realise this is a NIBE thread, and I thought it was NIBE until today. Still, the point about badly installed ASHP is the same

Post this into to one of the ASHP threads.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=1464827

Nonpapist

ra200 wrote: »

I have put the high usage down to the immersion kicking in but if you disable it the house is freezing.

Under mcs guidelines, the ashp MUST be sized to supply 100% heating demand, you should have had the back up heaters disabled, and be running at a flow temperature less than 45C. How was the ashp sizing done, and were your hat emitters (radiators) changed?

John_Pierpoint

It does not make economic sense to fit a heat pump that can manage to supply 100% of heating demand and hot water 365 days a year.

Heat pumps become less efficient the greater the temperature gradient they have to climb. In other words in the spring and autumn a heat pump with an outside temperature of (say) 10 degrees and a needed inside temperature of 19 degrees might have an efficiency CoP (coefficient of performance) of (say) 3.5 (one unit of electricity produces 3.5 units of heat inside the home)

Given a mid winter outside temperature of minus 10 and a required inside temperature of 21 degrees, the CoP might be a low as 2.0, while the house now needs more than twice as much heat as in the autumn. So there we have it we need a heat pump 7 times as powerful in mid winter to heat the house.
So economically it would make sense to fit a heat pump (say) five time more powerful and fit it with a nice big immersion heater that uses full price electricity on a CoP of 1 to make up the missing heat in mid winter. The design secret is sizing the pump to the house and judging the payoff between a cheaper pump and those higher electricity bills.

crociato

albyota wrote: »

My system is the Mitsubishi 8.5 kW Ecodan and is fitted in a four bed detached running UFH, it has been using on average 45 - 55 units per day (£4.50-£6/day) throughout this cold spell, there is no electric backup element, but I'm running it at a low temperature of 40 degrees, it does the hot water twice a day. house is toasty. I suspect that it is the colder temps pulling in the electric heater to assist, but as you are not warm either the unit is incapable of working at capacity at very low ambient. I agree if there is gas on site...they should have used it, or fitted something that can cope at lower temps.

Hi I have a NIBE fihter 360p and it copes perfectly well at sool ammbient temperatures, in fact its great at any temperature.

You nee someone who can read the online instructions in PDF format 3rd item on google search, and set the heating curves correctly for your microclimate.

I did this on mine from the instructions as no plumbers nor the builders plumber of my New Build home 2 yrs old have any idea what to do.

The default settings are for Scandinavian countires with a very different climate so you can't leave the system on default and expect it to run properly, the plumber should have known this and the installer.

Once you have worked out how to access the heating curve settings and offset heating curve settings, set them at about 4 and 1 respectively and then take meter readings or use an energy usage monitor to show the NIBES sage only, and then if needed proceed to change them daily upwards until you have your desired effect in heating and hot water, you'll have to open yor rads to full if on thermostatic vavles and ensure the system is pressure is above 1 BAR prefferably 1.5BAR.

By a simple "suck it and see process" you'll get the effect needed and see the usage cost come down. I have a Condenser dryer running twice daily and washing machine running twice or more, so should have massive bills if the NIBE was not set right. I only pay £83.00 pcm by DD and am in credit, I keep below £90.00 even in the coldest of winters with the system on Winter auto setting, so the problems really are due to poor installation and lack of knowledge on the part of plumbers/electricians trying to set the machine correctly.

Take the time to read the PDF, section 6 shows how to access settyings. The PDF 1s 48 pages but not solid writing like a book but gaining a full understanding of how the system works should put an end to your problems by enabling you to get YOUR NIBE set how YOU want/need it.

I am disabled and need it warm all year round in my home to ease joints aches and problems of autonomic temp regulation of my own body so extrenal heating being correct is essential.

My best friends next door use the heating less than me as they are of Northern Stock and used to colder climates than a Southerner like me.....lol. They nevr get above £70 pcm and they use a prepay meter by choice!

Hope this helped in some way.

Regards Baz :-):D

crociato

lardconcepts wrote: »

Thanks. This is shocking, but not surprising. The residents on the mother-in-law's sheltered housing estate are also starting to find that the "reduced bills" are anything but. Apparently there's a meeting this week or next - I'll try and get some figures. But they're pretty high by all accounts.

NIBE, and others including installers, don't help themselves though.

I was told by NIBE and the installer that I would be "better off" to move from an off-peak tariff to a flat rate. That would have been disastrous and extremely costly for us, but it's also what the MOL has been told. OK, ours is a plain ASHP not an exhaust system.

I've also seen this bad advice repeated right here in the forum. It's like the myth of "leaving the heating on all the time is cheaper than just heating the house when you're there". It defies all laws of physics and economics. Anything above 10% off-peak means you'd be better off on an off-peak tariff. Even if it ran on an even on/off spread throughout 24 hours (which it wouldn't, of course), then I'm sure even Gordon Brown could figure out that's over 30%.

And in the case of the "better off on flat rate" myth, if the specifiers and installers are that stupid, then it's no wonder they're installing the wrong systems and configuring them incorrectly.

The second thing here is... if I were the residents, I'd be submitting an FOI request for as much detail as possible on who at the residents association accepted the idea of installing these EHPs, what they were told, what guarantees were put in place to promise lower bills, what assumptions were made. I'd be smelling strong suspicion of a scam or backhander right now.

Hi

I have a NIBE Fighter 360p and it copes perfectly well at sool ammbient temperatures, in fact its great at any temperature.

You nee someone who can read the online instructions in PDF format 3rd item on google search, and set the heating curves correctly for your microclimate.

I did this on mine from the instructions as no plumbers nor the builders plumber of my New Build home 2 yrs old have any idea what to do.

The default settings are for Scandinavian countires with a very different climate so you can't leave the system on default and expect it to run properly, the plumber should have known this and the installer.

Once you have worked out how to access the heating curve settings and offset heating curve settings, set them at about 4 and 1 respectively and then take meter readings or use an energy usage monitor to show the NIBES sage only, and then if needed proceed to change them daily upwards until you have your desired effect in heating and hot water, you'll have to open yor rads to full if on thermostatic vavles and ensure the system is pressure is above 1 BAR prefferably 1.5BAR.

By a simple "suck it and see process" you'll get the effect needed and see the usage cost come down. I have a Condenser dryer running twice daily and washing machine running twice or more, so should have massive bills if the NIBE was not set right. I only pay £83.00 pcm by DD and am in credit, I keep below £90.00 even in the coldest of winters with the system on Winter auto setting, so the problems really are due to poor installation and lack of knowledge on the part of plumbers/electricians trying to set the machine correctly.

Take the time to read the PDF, section 6 shows how to access settyings. The PDF 1s 48 pages but not solid writing like a book but gaining a full understanding of how the system works should put an end to your problems by enabling you to get YOUR NIBE set how YOU want/need it.

I am disabled and need it warm all year round in my home to ease joints aches and problems of autonomic temp regulation of my own body so extrenal heating being correct is essential.

My best friends next door use the heating less than me as they are of Northern Stock and used to colder climates than a Southerner like me.....lol. They nevr get above £70 pcm and they use a prepay meter by choice!

Hope this helped in some way.

Regards Baz :-):D