My ASHP

[Conor]

Working brilliantly. Keeping the house at 18-19 mostly on economy 7 overnight with an additional 4 hours in middle of day. If we had curtains/blinds it would be even less. No issues meeting the required flow temps. Air temp hasn't been over zero for several days. Can't complain. 

[ProDave]

Refreshing to hear. Ours too is working well. It shows that properly designed they do perform well and in cold weather.

 

Sadly the forum is seeing a lot of threads about ASHP's behaving badly in the current weather.

[jack]

10 minutes ago, Conor said:

Working brilliantly. Keeping the house at 18-19 mostly on economy 7 overnight with an additional 4 hours in middle of day. If we had curtains/blinds it would be even less. No issues meeting the required flow temps. Air temp hasn't been over zero for several days. Can't complain. 

 

Ha!

 

6 of the last 8 posts on the forum are ASHP questions. This long period of freezing weather is certainly testing a lot of installations.

 

Mine's fine in terms of keeping the house warm and the DHW up to temp. With no heating upstairs, I get complaints if the floor temp is much below 21 degrees (concrete floors don't help), so possibly we're running things a little warmer than you.

 

We do seem to be using an awful lot of electricity at the moment, but even with good insulation and airtightness, we live in an almost 300 m² house, and this has been the coldest week I've seen in my 14 years living the area. We should certainly expect to be paying more than usual.

 

If anything, this cold weather is showing me that I hadn't quite optimised the ASHP settings, so I'm just taking it as a learning experience.

[Conor]

11 minutes ago, jack said:

 

Ha!

 

6 of the last 8 posts on the forum are ASHP questions. This long period of freezing weather is certainly testing a lot of installations.

 

Mine's fine in terms of keeping the house warm and the DHW up to temp. With no heating upstairs, I get complaints if the floor temp is much below 21 degrees (concrete floors don't help), so possibly we're running things a little warmer than you.

 

We do seem to be using an awful lot of electricity at the moment, but even with good insulation and airtightness, we live in an almost 300 m² house, and this has been the coldest week I've seen in my 14 years living the area. We should certainly expect to be paying more than usual.

 

If anything, this cold weather is showing me that I hadn't quite optimised the ASHP settings, so I'm just taking it as a learning experience.

 

 

Yep, the cold weather forced me to look closely at the setup. Most of my flow rates were far too high which meant the return temp to the heat pump was too high. Dialled right back and the temp in the buffer tank is no much steadier.

 

I've no idea of how much electric it's using, but when I went in to the setup menu the other day the compressor and fan were shown at 100%... so guessing the full ~4kW power consumption most of the time.

 

Frosting up has been an issue, we're in a sheltered valley near the sea so very humid air. Just went outside when it was defrosting, and back out 10mins later an already fins are all white.

 

Has been a good learning experience, I now know the next time there is a period of cold weather, is to get the heating on in advance as it does take a long time to heat up the house once it's lost a couple degrees. Oh, and curtains. It's amazing how much heat you radiate away with bare glass.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Conor

[Marvin]

34 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Refreshing to hear. Ours too is working well. It shows that properly designed they do perform well and in cold weather.

 

Sadly the forum is seeing a lot of threads about ASHP's behaving badly in the current weather.

Considering there are over 280,000 ASHPs installed in the UK its a small percentage, however the recent cold weather and high electricity cost has put the issue at the forefront of everyone mind. 

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, jack said:

Ha!

 

6 of the last 8 posts on the forum are ASHP questions. This long period of freezing weather is certainly testing a lot of installations.

I blame the smart meter.

 

Years ago nobody would know it was using a lot for a few cold days, they might read the meter once a month, or very rarely and a few days high usage would just get lost.  Now so many people have a smart meter's in home display cheerily telling them how much they use hour by hour, they start to panic.

[Kelvin]

When it was less than 13p / kWh few people would have cared that much either. 

[Bozza]

-10 outside here the other night.  House is lovely & warm and plenty of hot water.  ASHP working fine. In fact a bit too warm at times so might need to turn down heating a bit.  Perhaps the snow is acting as an extra insulator.  So glad that when self building made sure budget went into fabric of building, 3G windows, UFH etc as opposed to designer branded appliances, expensive landscaping, furniture etc -  the showy things.  Perhaps that could be a good self build mantra “think snow, not show”.

 

 

 

 

[jack]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

I blame the smart meter.

 

I genuinely can't understand your relentless hostility towards smart meters. Literally all they do is tell people how much energy they're using. I've personally got a lot out of having one over the last few weeks. 

 

If someone seeing their usage is enough to panic them then surely it's better they know now than when the bill arrives?

 

You know that there are people who are virtually unable to turn on their heating because bills are so high? It isn't because it's colder than usual, it's because our housing stock is shit, inflation generally is out of control, and we're paying 2+ times what we were paying for energy only a year or two ago.

 

54 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

When it was less than 13p / kWh few people would have cared that much either. 

 

My unit rate went up by a factor of 2.5 when I came off my last deal.

[ProDave]

23 minutes ago, jack said:

genuinely can't understand your relentless hostility towards smart meters. Literally all they do is tell people how much energy they're using. I've personally got a lot out of having one over the last few weeks. 

I dislike the hidden agenda behind smart meters, but in this context I was just pointing out one of the "benefits" that you get to see high usage immediately so in this case this might be why so many are raising this issue at the moment.

 

24 minutes ago, jack said:

You know that there are people who are virtually unable to turn on their heating because bills are so high? It isn't because it's colder than usual, it's because our housing stock is shit, inflation generally is out of control, and we're paying 2+ times what we were paying for energy only a year or two ago.

Yes I know that.  That is why it annoys me when some installer has installed an ASHP in a sub optimal manner and given bad advice, resulting in higher running costs than if it had been installed better, and worse when they "sell" the system as being cheaper to run than the old heating system.  And it annoys me when in some cases even recently built developer houses have cut corners are are still being built a lot worse than they need to be.

 

There is also a lot of ignorance among the public, on another forum I was reading of someone that just bought a house with an ASHP and because of that, he expected low heating costs.  When questioned a bit more, it was an old stone house with an EPC E.  It should have been obvious that with such a poor EPC any heating system is going to use a lot of energy.

[jack]

18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I dislike the hidden agenda behind smart meters, but in this context I was just pointing out one of the "benefits" that you get to see high usage immediately so in this case this might be why so many are raising this issue at the moment

 

But you disparaged people for panicking about the high usage they could see during cold snaps.

 

I don't disagree with anything else you say. ASHPs are absolutely being missold, designed badly, installed shoddily, and commissioned poorly. More government funding is just going to bring in more cowboys, unfortunately.

[ProDave]

20 minutes ago, jack said:

But you disparaged people for panicking about the high usage they could see during cold snaps.

No I just pointed out that it is more obvious now than it would have been in the past.

 

Sorry sometimes I am not very good with words.

[joe90]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

No I just pointed out that it is more obvious now than it would have been in the past.

+1 now we can instantly see usage and not wait till the next bill, plus the extra cost recently!!!

[dpmiller]

6 hours ago, Conor said:

when I went in to the setup menu the other day the compressor and fan were shown at 100%

 

sure it was the compressor was 100%? More likely the circulation pump, as the compressor maxes out at 78 or 80% IIRC

 

The fan being at 100% probably means it was due a defrost, as the speed is pressure related. You'll see the EEV increase in steps too as it tries to compensate.

 

 

We're doing pretty well here in our cold humid dip, ASHP consumption has maxed at 28kWh for a 24hr period, for all DHW and heating our 250-ish m2.

[HughF]

Encouraging to hear that the outlier that no-one seems to buy is doing well. Can't wait to get mine installed when we crack on with our build next spring.