Can anyone recommend Midea Air Source Heat Pump

MrGentlyBenevolent

Our ASHP is on it's last legs and we are faced with replacing it.
One company is proposing a Midea 14KW . We get temperatures down to -12 C some years.

We have underfloor heating on ground floor, rads at first floor. Eco house with good EPC.

This will be heating only as our HW tank is on an iboost.

We'd like to hear people's experiences of Midea heat pumps; reliability, controls, servicing and any issues.

Netexporter

That sounds a large capacity heat pump for what you describe, unless it is a particularly large house.

I don't know anything about Midea, but they don't feature near the top of the HeatpumpMonitoring efficiency ratings.

https://heatpumpmonitor.org/

zxzxzx

FWIW

I have had a Midea A2A 3.5 for 2 years no issues other than the WiFi app which is a bit temperamental, but functions. Not an issue because I mainly use the included remote.
10 year guarantee provided it is serviced annually @ £150ish.

Midea re-badges for a lot of better known brands. Check out ‘Midea Group’ on Wikipedia for an insight.

matt_drummer

Heatpumpmonitor.org is useful but is not really a reflection of heat pump efficiency by brand but rather that of installation quality/suitability and operation.

My heat pump is second on the list of efficiency of air source heat pumps for the last twelve months. There are no other Daikins anywhere near it.

The heat pumps are all virtually the same and all as efficient as each other.

You will just find that the most knowledgeable people (in terms of getting efficiency) buy other brands.

It just depends how it is installed and operated.

Midea are a sound manufacturer and build components and complete units for other companies.

matelodave

Rather than just replacing like for like I'd be very inclined to have a recheck of your heat loss requirements to see if they are still valid, especially if you've added insulation, changed windows or done anything else to change your heat loss.

Get it done properly or try Heatpunk (https://heatpunk.co.uk/) together with a reappraisal of your emitter sizing to see if you do really need a 14kw heatpump especially if all the calcs were done many years ago and heatpumps were a bit less efficient. Installers were less savvy about doing heatloss calcs and still doing them on a rule-of-thumb basis.

My Daikin was installed nearly 16 years ago and although its an 11kw unit I reckon its probably a bit oversized and I'd possibly get away with an 8kw unit based on more precise calculations. The wet finger in the air calc that the installer came up with was around 10kw but a careful reassessment using heatpunk suggests that its a bit less than 8kw. Emitter dissipation is a bit more difficult with underfloor heating unless you've got a pretty good idea of its specification and what coverings and furniture you've got over the top of it.

Netexporter

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81915724#Comment_81915724

Agree. That is what I was hinting at.

My 5kW Gen 6 Samsung has dealt with minus-10 and below in an averagely insulated detached bungalow and I haven't yet swapped the radiators for UFH yet.

NedS

I briefly looking into Midea 2 years ago as my first quote was for a Midea-based system. My general recollection was that their ASHPs were solid but that the controls were not the best/easiest to use.

In hind sight, the other red flag was the use of a buffer and plate heat exchanger in the system design. Knowing what I know now, I'd stick with the KISS principle and keep the system design as simple as possible (no buffers, plate heat exchangers, hydronic separation etc). I don't know if that was something general to Midea installations or specific to that particular installer. Anyway, we didn't go ahead with that quote, but not because it was a Midea unit.

Magnitio

I have seen a couple of installations of the larger Midea heat pumps where they have been inefficient because they don't modulate to a low heat level resulting in cycling on and off and poor efficiency. However, in both cases the specification of the heat pump size was determined before the houses were insulated, so they would have had better results from a smaller heat pump.

benson1980

I cannot recall anyone posting any issues about midea units, aside from the basic controls and the app being problematic. I think they might have recently revamped these anyway. We have a midea clone and there's been no problems. Efficiency wise, good as any.

One thing you need to look at therefore is the control strategy. I use home assistant and control the unit via modbus. Not for everyone. We used homely initially but I removed it as we didn't like it. After reasonably extensive testing I can also conclude that it cost us a bit more anyway and reduced efficiency, using 3rd party controls.

Buffer and plate heat exchanger design mentioned definitely nothing to do with midea.

If I could do it all again I would have just asked our installers to put the midea in rather than rebadged unit as it seems they are around 1k cheaper. The cloned unit we got (clivet) was still 2k cheaper than the equivalent vaillant and definitely no regrets there.