Are ASHP the way to go?

Reed_Richards

matt_drummer said:

Have you seen something that makes you suspect that it hasn't been installed correctly?

No, not at all.  I was just interested to compare and contrast your installation with my own.  

matt_drummer

Reed_Richards said:

matt_drummer said:

QrizB said:

Reed_Richards said:

What is the white cylinder top right "...ukin"?  I thought it might be a buffer but it doesn't seem to have enough connections.

The brand is Daikin and I think the silver label says "volumiser"?

It is a World Heat volumiser with a Dakin sticker on it. made in Manchester!

If you have a volumiser you must also have a means of ensuring that there is flow, even in the scenario that your room thermostat calls for heat when the TRVs on all your radiators are closed.  If you have more than one heating zone that requirement must apply to every zone.  The usual central heating solution is to have an Automatic Bypass Valve; do you have one of those somewhere?  A lot of heat pump installations use a buffer tank instead of a volumiser.  The buffer removes the need for an automatic bypass valve but I don't know the reasons why a buffer might be preferred to a volumiser (any cost saving is minimal).  

I refreshed my memory on radiator plumbing

Of course you are right that if all the radiators are shut then there is nowhere for the water to go if heat is called for.

The plumbing at the top of the volumiser is more complex than I thought. There seems to be a two ways for water to enter the volumiser, straight from the return and from the flow side. I would assume that if water cannot flow through the radiators for any reason then the flow is diverted through the volumiser back to the heat pump.

We also have one radiator without a trv that will always be able to flow water, but I am sure that they haven't installed the system with this as the only safeguard.

Mstty

Well, some.may be interested in this and I would say it made a lovely difference to the house downstairs last week.

Some will know we have a mitsubishi Ecodan now 8 years old.

What I have found out is that our heat pump can run in reverse. It can cool as well as heat.

A quick open if the control panels, a single flick of on to switch 2-4 and a power cycle and boom cooling mode available. Simples. Not something an engineer would have done on install if there were RHI payments as it would invalidate these.

First mistake, I left the 6 foot tall metal upstairs towel rail (huge) on and this set at 12oC condensates a pooled water on the bathroom floor upstairs. In fact as we have radiators upstairs we quickly turned off cooling upstairs completely.

Set the water temp to 12oC and let it run through the downstairs underfloor pipes.

The dogs loved it, like an all over house cooling mat and it certainly made a difference especially when fans were used to whip the air from the floor upwards.

We set it to run noon til 7pm and it used roughly 3kwh and in the morning the floors were still nice and cool. 

Didn't make.much difference to upstairs but we do have the luxury of a downstairs bedroom ensuite should we hit the 40oC of last year.