Air Source Heat Pumps

johnnywadster

I have recently moved into my first home and it is installed with an Ecodan boiler to run the underfloor heating and water. I have had some pressure issues with the hot water but thanks to the aid of a plumber I have sorted that.

My question is to those who have used or use the system as to how I should set it up/programme it. How often does it need to be on? How long should I set the water to heat? I want to run efficiently as possible without running the system uneconomically. I don't want to be wasteful for the environment let alone my pocket.

Any suggestions in how I should programme it or what worked best for others i would be very grateful for. I am in a single storey one bedroom house.

this is my first post in any forum let alone on this site, so bare with me.

Thank you all for reading and I look forward to any advice you can give

Wilson

albyota

Hi johnnywadster, welcome to the forum, it will be useful to others if you can keep us posted as to how you get on with your heat pump system once you have it set up properly and running efficiently.

How you run the system is dependent on your lifestyle, however, UFH generally should run almost continually, that is to say, during the day, it can go off at night, usually night set back or programmable room stats are best, so from 10.30pm set it back to 16/17 degrees, at 6am it can be set to say 18 or 20 depending on if you are out at work or in the house all day.
You can also set to higher 21/22 for early afternoon/evening, it will take a while to get to know how long after the temperature setting the room gets to set point and adjust accordingly. The Ecodan can only do heating or hot water....not both, so program the hot water to come on for about an hour at times when heating is not required I.e. early afternoon preferably, or late at night or early in the morning.

A bit more info on the type, make and amount of room stats, manifold actuators, and hot water cylinder details size, type, make etc.

Good luck with it though, Mitsubishi are, IMO, the best heat pump out there, I have the 8.5kW in a four bed detached house, all with UFH and 210 litre DHW cylinder. Had it since October 2008

gneiss_2

At this time of year it would be interesting to know daily cost of different ASHP +rest of house electricity use.
At the moment we are averaging since the 1st January 2013 £6.20 a day
Nibe F2015 +8 radiators, 285lt tank.

TiredGeek

gneiss wrote: »

At this time of year it would be interesting to know daily cost of different ASHP +rest of house electricity use.
At the moment we are averaging since the 1st January 2013 £6.20 a day
Nibe F2015 +8 radiators, 285lt tank.

I don't think you'd get any meaningful information. Every house is different and each installation varies, so there would be very little common ground on which to base a comparison.

As an example my system is currently averaging roughly £2.10 a day to run at 14p/kWh.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Except that's not doing any DHW and the house temp is 10'c....

So without pulling my system out and fitting a competitors in the same house and running it the same way there's nothing to compare it to. Even if you did do that, there's no way to be sure the weather is exactly the same so there's variance there as well...

Nice idea, but I think it'd just confuse / worry people

Hulkwogan

Hello, can any one give us an idea what the best elec tariff to go on with an ashp(Mitsubishi) fitted in a well insulated new build. Also looking for average running costs in a 3 bed house all information appreciated. Many thanks

lovesgshp

TiredGeek wrote: »

I don't think you'd get any meaningful information. Every house is different and each installation varies, so there would be very little common ground on which to base a comparison.

As an example my system is currently averaging roughly £2.10 a day to run at 14p/kWh.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Except that's not doing any DHW and the house temp is 10'c....

So without pulling my system out and fitting a competitors in the same house and running it the same way there's nothing to compare it to. Even if you did do that, there's no way to be sure the weather is exactly the same so there's variance there as well...

Nice idea, but I think it'd just confuse / worry people

Sorry to hear that, as with 28Kw output you should not have a problem with either DHW or heating. I do not know the Ecodans so I cannot comment on the setup of them.

gneiss_2

Hulkwogan wrote: »

Hello, can any one give us an idea what the best elec tariff to go on with an ashp(Mitsubishi) fitted in a well insulated new build. Also looking for average running costs in a 3 bed house all information appreciated. Many thanks

People are very reluctant to tell anyone what they pay out for electricity!
We were advised that economy10 was the best deal for ASH, but at 18.17p and 10.53p plus 14p daily charge we would be just as well going onto a standard tariff actually at present it would work out about 50p a week cheaper!
If the economy times were changed then it would make sense, but having the ASHP running between 12.30 and 4.30 when the house is asleep makes it expensive.
Depending where you live, the price varies as well, the SSE is the only company that will provide E10it for our post code, the same company will supply economy 10 at around 2p a kwh cheaper for those in the south of England.
The SSE say its down to their transmission costs but the government insist that transmission costs are averaged out across the country, but then we are talking about big money making companies.
A friend in a new built 3 bedroom house on the west coast of Scotland with ASH and under floor heating says that at the moment their costs average about £15 a week.
If the system has been set up correctly then you should have a nice warm house and low energy costs.

[Deleted User]

Hulkwogan wrote: »

Hello, can any one give us an idea what the best elec tariff to go on with an ashp(Mitsubishi) fitted in a well insulated new build. Also looking for average running costs in a 3 bed house all information appreciated. Many thanks

We are on nPower Go Fix 11 - Elec - 24Hr which costs 9.01p/unit plus daily 39.2p + 5% VAT. We pay £88pm which is spot on. This is the cheapest I can get at the moment. Shop around every year... Currently well into credit £000's but no doubt the winter period bill will wipe that out

E7/E10 would not work for us as heating does not run during the night plus these tarrifs look really expensive anyway...

TiredGeek

Geotherm wrote: »

Sorry to hear that, as with 28Kw output you should not have a problem with either DHW or heating. I do not know the Ecodans so I cannot comment on the setup of them.

Sorry Geotherm if that was ambiguous, what I meant was that the heating is working superbly and it's meant to be doing 10'c and no DHW.
We're working away and the house is closed up for winter so it's on frost 'stat.
We're very happy with how it's working and the great thing about it is that I can log on and look at how it's doing

The average since December has been £2.08 / day, which we think is pretty good for the size and low insulation of the place, average COP is roughly 4 across both units which again is pretty good.

I'll try to be clearer next time

TiredGeek

As far as electric costs go you'd need a PHD to figure out the cheapest tarrif for our place:we have two domestic meters, neither is E7/E10.

So one supply is used for the heat pumps, some lights and some sockets. The other supply is used for everything else.

That now means one meter tries to spin itself off the wall while the other barely moves.

They're both on the same tarriff and Scottish Hydro can't or won't put each meter on different rates.

One supply would be better off on a no standing charge rate while the other would be better with standing charge but lower cost kWh.

Add in the complication that as soon as the heating starts to shut down for summer the electric consumption on that supply drops to almost nothing then that one would be better off with no standing charge....

So we've got to figure out over a year if it's better to pay higher kWh or a standing charge, on two supplies. It get's very complicated very quickly