Mitsubishi ecodan better control system

[eniacs]

Just starting to use the cooling feature of the ecodan and would like really to set say cooling all night till say 5am, then heating for the morning for a few hours then cooling in the afternoon to remove the heat and then heating in the evening to the living rooms then onto cooling again for the bedrooms overnight.

 

However this is not possible to set i dont think via the FTC6 controller. 

 

Has anyone seen/found an alternative?

 

Thanks.

[JohnMo]

Seems a strange thing to cool then to heat later. Just open your bedroom window. Not exactly hot at night, we are still getting 3 degs at night and after the weekend we get zero.

 

Not sure any heat pump will do what you want, because it's not a normal thing to do. It's either in heat or cool mode.

[Gary68]

If you have the MELCloud app you could do it.  There is a timer function and you can set it to heat or cool at any time or day.

[nod]

11 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Seems a strange thing to cool then to heat later. Just open your bedroom window. Not exactly hot at night, we are still getting 3 degs at night and after the weekend we get zero.

 

Not sure any heat pump will do what you want, because it's not a normal thing to do. It's either in heat or cool mode.

Over the past 12 months I’ve asked three different eco installers and been given almost exactly the same answer as John 

[ProDave]

This if course is the advantage of a really well insulated house with a low decrement delay insulation.  It just never heats up or cools down so quickly that you need to alternate between heating it and cooling it in the same week, let alone the same day.

[saveasteading]

So wasteful (decadent even) to be chucking away heat on this basis.

Tell us more please. What temperatures do you want and why.

And don't you have pullovers?

 

You need a box to store the heat for a few hours. I expect you could heat the water tank within this process. However, installers won't know anything other than the standard systems.

[JoeBano]

Cooling already, my heating was on for 4 hours yesterday 😂

[Kelvin]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

This if course is the advantage of a really well insulated house with a low decrement delay insulation.  It just never heats up or cools down so quickly that you need to alternate between heating it and cooling it in the same week, let alone the same day.

We still aren’t living in ours yet but it’s maintaining a very even 19°C temperature with very little heat input. It’s a pleasant place to be compared to the rental. 

[HughF]

Heating still on 24/7 in North Somerset. House still at 21 degrees all the time. Might turn it off in a few weeks.

[joth]

This sounds a bit like the situation we ended up with: 2 story house, bedrooms upstairs tend to overheat even in winter. UFH on the GF only keeps living room/kitchen etc a lovely temp year round, but heat rises and gets trapped in the bedrooms. Not helped by: 1/ us having cats we don't like in the bedroom at night, so doors kept closed, and 2/ busy(ish) commuter train line and road nearby so we like to keep windows closed. Part of the original attraction of a passive house was thic walls and windows to keep noise a air pollution out...

 

My solution has been to instal ducted fan coil units in the bedrooms that passively cool them in winter (just force circulate air around picking it up from cooler place in the house and dumping in the bedroom) and then actively cool the bedrooms in summer (cool water from the ASHP). This works well but quite complicated both in terms of the retrofit disruption and and control systems needed.

Originally I manually switched the ecodan from heating to cooling, then I set a schedule in melcloud app. Now I have the ecodan Modbus interface and have heating/cooling fully automated controlled from Loxone server. (It looks at the temperature of every room inside, the 48hr average outdoor temp, and makes a decision where to heat / cool.  It really should use the forecast data too as it has it, but isn't quite that smart!)

I have electronic dampers that control airflow to select which room air intake comes from for the main bedroom, to select the coldest air available indoors and use that as the cool air source. I'm debating punching a hole in the MVHR external air intake duct an T off that as a cold air source of last resort! (Effectively converting the FCU into a room-specific MVHR boost+bypass fan).

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 26 by joth

[eniacs]

On 26/03/2024 at 15:46, joth said:

This sounds a bit like the situation we ended up with: 2 story house, bedrooms upstairs tend to overheat even in winter. UFH on the GF only keeps living room/kitchen etc a lovely temp year round, but heat rises and gets trapped in the bedrooms. Not helped by: 1/ us having cats we don't like in the bedroom at night, so doors kept closed, and 2/ busy(ish) commuter train line and road nearby so we like to keep windows closed. Part of the original attraction of a passive house was thic walls and windows to keep noise a air pollution out...

 

My solution has been to instal ducted fan coil units in the bedrooms that passively cool them in winter (just force circulate air around picking it up from cooler place in the house and dumping in the bedroom) and then actively cool the bedrooms in summer (cool water from the ASHP). This works well but quite complicated both in terms of the retrofit disruption and and control systems needed.

Originally I manually switched the ecodan from heating to cooling, then I set a schedule in melcloud app. Now I have the ecodan Modbus interface and have heating/cooling fully automated controlled from Loxone server. (It looks at the temperature of every room inside, the 48hr average outdoor temp, and makes a decision where to heat / cool.  It really should use the forecast data too as it has it, but isn't quite that smart!)

I have electronic dampers that control airflow to select which room air intake comes from for the main bedroom, to select the coldest air available indoors and use that as the cool air source. I'm debating punching a hole in the MVHR external air intake duct an T off that as a cold air source of last resort! (Effectively converting the FCU into a room-specific MVHR boost+bypass fan).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Joth, yes that is my problem. The bedrooms are too warm in all but the coldest months. Heavy insulation and low response times mean that the only way is to heat the house almost constantly and then cool the bedrooms when required. I should have done insulation in the floors but didnt think i would need it. The heating and cooling wont last long, mid april ish we will stop heating at all. Then the ecodan will be on cooling the whole house until september at least i expect.

 

What is the ecodan modbus interface?! I am a machine programmer so could make some outside controls but time is always an issue. I also have now found that cooling times can be set in the menu. They must have been hidden when i looked prior to starting the cooling mode.

 

 

[joth]

4 hours ago, eniacs said:

What is the ecodan modbus interface?!

Pricey! LOL

ACC-BEMS-A1M https://www.saturnsales.co.uk/Mitsubishi-Electric-ACC-BEMS-A1M-Modbus-Interface.html

 

Really designed for BMS in larger commercial installations, but works on the domestic sized A2W monoblocs 

 

Edited April 4 by joth