Heat Pumps: anyone have one/thought about it?

Similar fir me. A price i am happy to pay, but trouble is i would need at least a 12kw heat pump and they won't do it. Yet.
Is it an old house, or particularly large? What is the footprint. We had one fitted to a 1950s bungalow which is 120sqm and the 5kw is more than enough. Installers still have a habit of oversizing so something to be cautious of.
 
Is it an old house, or particularly large? What is the footprint. We had one fitted to a 1950s bungalow which is 120sqm and the 5kw is more than enough. Installers still have a habit of oversizing so something to be cautious of.

126sqm, circa 1920's. Don't think you can do anything to force octopus to install really. They already did a survey :(
 
Its a shame they don't offer the valiant stuff. The quotes on their site are now all for a cosy.

Both prior and during my install the engineers seemed to favour the Daikin units for being quieter. Cosy being propane based likely gives Octopus more scope for installing overall I guess having a higher heat output. Plus being an inhouse design and manufactured unit.
 
I'm thinking of getting a Vaillant Arotherm Plus installed this winter. But this summer I'm doing a bit of home renovation and wonder if it's worth doing a bit of preparation.

I'm doing a full house rewire, so the floorboards are up. I wonder if I should run the electric cables for the outdoor unit (something like 6 sq mm cable) and the indoor unit uniTOWER (say 2.5mm or 4mm cable). Also wonder if I should put in two 28mm water pipes under the floors, for the connection between the outdoor and the indoor units.

This is to avoid getting flooring lifted again in a few months. What do you think?
 
They don’t make 8mm, it’s 6mm or 10mm. The backup heater/immersion probably pulls more power than the heat pump itself unless it’s a big one.

Also check the required pipe size. The higher the heat loss, the bigger pipes you need.
 
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I would invite a reputable local installer to quote to be safe. 12kw on the face of it seems significantly oversized.
Not necessarily, a 1920’s property could be in the region of 65-85w/m2. At the upper end of that range would put the heat loss at >10kw to a 12kw Daikin heat pump would be about right as the next unit down in the range is 9kw which would be too small.
 
I'm thinking of getting a Vaillant Arotherm Plus installed this winter. But this summer I'm doing a bit of home renovation and wonder if it's worth doing a bit of preparation.

I'm doing a full house rewire, so the floorboards are up. I wonder if I should run the electric cables for the outdoor unit (something like 6 sq mm cable) and the indoor unit uniTOWER (say 2.5mm or 4mm cable). Also wonder if I should put in two 28mm water pipes under the floors, for the connection between the outdoor and the indoor units.

This is to avoid getting flooring lifted again in a few months. What do you think?
You'll need a larger cable for the unitower as it has a 6kW immersion IIRC. Also the immersion doesn't work if there is a communication fault or the pumps not running in the heat pump. The immersion is not in the tank, it's in the primary circuit, so can be used to boost heating if required, sounds like a good idea, but the downside is you may not be able to heat the tank, we were without hot water for weeks due to an issue.

I know it's neater, but I'd go for a normal heat pump tank if doing it again.
 
You can also go for a regular 3kw immersion of you get a regular tank.

Should solar export rates drop, you also have the option of sticking an Eddi on it and soaking up some solar export that way.
 
You'll need a larger cable for the unitower as it has a 6kW immersion IIRC. Also the immersion doesn't work if there is a communication fault or the pumps not running in the heat pump. The immersion is not in the tank, it's in the primary circuit, so can be used to boost heating if required, sounds like a good idea, but the downside is you may not be able to heat the tank, we were without hot water for weeks due to an issue.

I know it's neater, but I'd go for a normal heat pump tank if doing it again.

Interesting, what was the issue?

Do you mean that if one has a standalone water cylinder, he can have hot water for showers, even if the heat pump is not working?

BTW I've heard cold showers are healthy :)
 
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You can also go for a regular 3kw immersion of you get a regular tank.

Should solar export rates drop, you also have the option of sticking an Eddi on it and soaking up some solar export that way.

I didn't know such a device exists.

Would Eddi work with a Vaillant uniSTOR Heat Pump Cylinder or a plain uniSTOR Cylinder?
 
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Interesting, what was the issue?

Do you mean that if one has a standalone water cylinder, he can have hot water for showers, even if the heat pump is not working?
If the heat pump has a fault or the pump dies you can’t heat the cylinder using the immersion because it’s controlled by the heat pump.

That isn’t the case with a regular cylinder where you can force the immersion on manually.

Ron received a heat pump with a rare manufacturing issue meaning there was no comms between the uni tower and heat pump which meant it didn’t work out of the box and took a week to track down. They couldn’t heat the hot water because the heat pump has a fault.

I've heard cold showers are healthy :)
That’s a hard no, I’d rather take the risk with my health :p


I didn't know such a device exists.

Would Eddi work with a Vaillant uniSTOR Heat Pump Cylinder or plain uniSTOR Cylinder?
Assuming they have a slot for a regular immersion, yes.

Solar iboost is another device that does the same thing.

There is no point in getting one unless export rates drop below off peak rate.
 
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Interesting, what was the issue?

Do you mean that if one has a standalone water cylinder, he can have hot water for showers, even if the heat pump is not working?

BTW I've heard cold showers are healthy :)
This is what happened to us. A relay went on the motherboard and left us without hot water or heating, we have a split system so the heat exchanger unit is inside the house and a separate hot water cylinder with an immersion element. All I did was wire up the immersion element separately while the heatpump wasn't working.
 
@SkyTerran

Gas boiler removed on 14th April, issue eventually found by the third Vaillant engineer that visited on 28th April, when we finally had hot water.

I tried a cold shower, I really don't recommend it!
 
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I had a faulty firmware update from Nibe the other day. It put the heat pump into a permanent start-wait-starting loop. Avoid 4.2.4 if you have a Nibe system and it's offered to you. I see on the dashboard they're now at 4.3.5 but I dare not update now.

Unrelated but one of my SDM120 electricity meters seemed to go faulty around the same time. Local screen works but the export to the RS485 reader stopped, fortunately the supplier agreed to send a replacement.
 
I've been watching Heat Geek videos on YouTube and thinking how to apply the open loop concept to my installation.

I plan to install a heat pump towards the end of the year, but doing a bit of home renovation now and thought I'd replace the water pipes with wider ones. I have a gas boiler on the 1st floor - this is where the heat pump indoor unit will go (something like Vaillant uniTOWER). Ground floor has UFH and there are radiators on the 1st floor.

I'm wondering if I should run two 28mm pipes from the cupboard - one for the 1st floor radiators and one for the ground floor UFH. Or run a single 28mm pipe from the cupboard and then split it into the two floors. What do you think?
 
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