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SunAmp : Snog, Marry, Avoid?


ToughButterCup

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2 hours ago, Hsquared said:

Thank you very much! 

Hi and welcome to the forum. 

The unit can be fitted by a ‘reasonably competent’ individual, and the controllers are pre-assigned to the type of unit ( hot water only / hot water + gas boiler etc ) prior to dispatch. 

If you’re having difficulties still send me a PM and I’ll see what I can do to help. 

Do you have your own plumbers / electricians? 

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  • 2 months later...

I love this forum - Just had elderly parents for lunch and Dad brought an Advertisement for a new way of heating his hot water that he was interested in.  It was the Aquafficient from Fischer Future Heat.  luckily I had read enough on here to think it sounded just like a Sunamp so after they went home, I did some research and found this post.  He has been suitably warned and I doubt will bother ringing them. 

It was a full page advert in The Sun and sounded very good.  It did mention that the Aquafficent is 'Manufactured exclusively for the home electric heating experts, Fischer Future Heat!'.

 

 

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9 hours ago, TheMitchells said:

was the Aquafficient from Fischer Future Heat.  luckily I had read enough on here to think it sounded just like a Sunamp

I was told by a friend a Local developers is putting them into new builds not so far away from me,  he was interested and asked if I was aware of them, I told him they were pretty new on the market and further research was needed before I could recommend them. 

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  • 3 months later...

Is there any sign of the version with the lower transition  temperature (ASHP/UFH compatible) becoming available?

 

The standard ones with/without electric element seem to be stocked in several places, but no obvious sign of the other temperatures that were originally promised (the lower temp I am interested in, nor the higher temp one for use with stoves etc).

 

I'm looking at a major refurb of my 80's house (insulation to Passivhaus Enerfit level, MVHR, wet UFH with ASHP, solar PV etc), so I don't have a plant room nor anywhere sensible for large tanks, but I do have a lot of nooks and crannies where Sunamp units would fit.  Existing airing cupboard for example has quite a lot of floor area but only quite a small tank for the DHW and no space for a bigger one because the roof slopes down - it could take about 3 Sunamp units if I packed them in!

 

So Sunamp unit(s) heated by solar PV when the sun shines and E7 electricity in the dead of winter seems like a good solution for the hot water, even though the efficiency isn't great.

 

But then I think about the UFH.  I know some people here talk about "store it in the slab", but we aren't going to have much of a slab (floors are block-and-beam, with very low ceilings on the ground floor, so it's been a real challenge to insulate the floor and get UFH within the height available), so some storage is desirable and probably needs a buffer tank to stop the ASHP cycling, and it would be nice to have pre-heat for the hot water to get the efficiency of the heat pump.   If I had space, a nice big tank with a coil for the hot water to pick up pre-heat on the way to the Sunamp would do nicely, except as above I don't have room for a big tank....   So a combo of the low temp and standard temp Sunamps would be just the ticket if they actually exist.

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Welcome @arg, I believe we may have "met" elsewhere in cyberspace.

 

I believe that the PCM 34 units may be available again, after having suffered some teething troubles.  @Barney12 may be able to shed more light on this.  We have a 9 kWh PCM 58 unit, that now works very well, after a shaky start with a poorly designed control system.  Our PCM58 unit provides all our hot water, with the majority of the energy coming from our PV system, boosted by E7 overnight, if needed.

 

Sunamp seem to working with some resellers who aren't always as transparent or helpful as they might be, but I'm pretty sure you can still deal directly with them.  I bought both our original Sunamp PV and the Sunamp UniQ we have now, directly from Sunamp, but I'm aware that they have recently contracted with maybe three or four different resellers, so I'm not 100% sure if they are still selling directly or not.

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Thanks.  Indeed I am the same @arg as you have encountered elsewhere, but on this forum I fear I'm going to be doing more asking than answering.

 

Having read your trials and tribulations with the PCM54 units I'd concluded they are probably now safe to go with, but was hoping someone had actually had sight of a PCM34.  Still, as you say I ought to try talking to Sunamp directly to find out what the official line is.  If I learn anything interesting I will report back here.

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We have a UNIQ 12 with PCM58 heated electrically, mostly solar, managed via an Eddi. After a long story and teething troubles, solved by getting a new Qontroller, it works fine, and we entirely heated our water from solar from early March to mid Nov (it even took 5kwh from solar today after filling the electrical battery first).

We also got a couple of 4kwh PCM34 stores (each more expensive than the UNIQ 12!) but that turned out to be a big mistake for various reasons and we haven't actually used them. I got the impression, but happy to be corrected, that these are no longer products.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Initial response from Sunamp to my query about PCM34:

 

"This was not commercialised and only used for a few people by special order."

 

On further conversation, they said that there's now a PCM43 instead (though that is not yet available either).  I'm awaiting more info.

 

 

Given the PCM54 quotes a 65C water temperature to charge it, and an old manual for the PCM34 says 45C, PCM43 will presumably want something like 55C, which is a bit on the warm side for ASHP efficiency.

 

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Interesting - we certainly didn't know that it was not commercialised, but rather that we were just early adopters of the new products. Our feeling now is that we wish we'd chucked these PCM34 ones on the skip when we had the chance!

 

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What made me most annoyed was really bad communications with Sunamp, further complicated because they and our m&e consultants couldn’t agree on how to make them work with the ASHP for UFH. We eventually got new controllers for all three batteries so they now work, but now there’s not much justification for using the PCM34 ones just for pre-heating water for the PCM58 battery. 

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8 hours ago, MrMagic said:

Just out of interest... where are people buying their sun amps these days? Do they still sell direct or only via wholesale partners now? (feel free to DM if you don’t want to post publicly)

 

Sunamp will re-direct you to any of their official resellers/installers. I bought mine direct from Sunamp (a few years ago...long story) so was looking for an official installer. Out of 4 contacted, 3 did not bother replying and 1 has dragging foot syndrome. I would hope they they are more interested in supply and fit enquiries but have heard that it's a bit of a shambles with many of them also. Fischer also do supply and fit but I think their prices are on the high side iirc. Only yesterday did I see they have their marketing campaign on facebook:

 

image.png.089352f6ce70c9f4ab087ceb20f4e044.png

 

Some of the answers they give to people's questions make me think that they don't really know 'their' product ("Aquafficient heat batteries")very well.

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8 minutes ago, oranjeboom said:

 

Sunamp will re-direct you to any of their official resellers/installers. I bought mine direct from Sunamp (a few years ago...long story) so was looking for an official installer. Out of 4 contacted, 3 did not bother replying and 1 has dragging foot syndrome. I would hope they they are more interested in supply and fit enquiries but have heard that it's a bit of a shambles with many of them also. Fischer also do supply and fit but I think their prices are on the high side iirc. Only yesterday did I see they have their marketing campaign on facebook:

 

image.png.089352f6ce70c9f4ab087ceb20f4e044.png

 

Some of the answers they give to people's questions make me think that they don't really know 'their' product ("Aquafficient heat batteries")very well.


finally an actual justification for buying a Sunamp.........................

 

.....................more shelving for your towels. 
 

 

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  • 3 months later...

How is everyone that has them getting on with their SunAmps nowadays? Not heard a lot of talk about them recently! I'm creeping closer to making some decisions in the plumbing department and have a quote of just over £4thou for 2 x Uniq12s - I'm being a bit lazy, does this price stack up with what others have found/are finding? 

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1 hour ago, LA3222 said:

How is everyone that has them getting on with their SunAmps nowadays? Not heard a lot of talk about them recently! I'm creeping closer to making some decisions in the plumbing department and have a quote of just over £4thou for 2 x Uniq12s - I'm being a bit lazy, does this price stack up with what others have found/are finding? 

2x 12’s is a LOT of hot water capacity!

Reason for that?

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25 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

2x 12’s is a LOT of hot water capacity!

Reason for that?

Ha, yes it is. I haven't had the time yet to sit down and work out an actual value for DHW so I am just plumping for worst case of 2x12s for budgeting reasons and if I come down from there then the money can be reallocated!

 

I intend to put a 3ph electric shower somewhere so in reality, if I run out of hot water there is always a fallback option - I just need to find time to crunch some numbers and see where I land with DHW requirements. I am pricing up PV from the supplier and they do the SunAmps so added them onto the quote to see what they come out at - won't be buying for another 6mths or so I reckon.

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12 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said:

2x 12’s is over 450L ;)  

568L (if you charge using 75C or with PV). 511L (if you charge using 65C) equivilant, assuming UVC temp of 60C.

 

I wanted 400L initially to ensure good capacity, but decided that by using WWHRS i'd get 400L equivilant with a 300L UVC while also having less heat-loss and using less electricity (which PV won't cover in the winter)!

 

31 minutes ago, LA3222 said:

I intend to put a 3ph electric shower somewher

Why wouldn't you size your DHW system for you needs, rather than install an electric water heater?  Also, isn't a centralized backup solution better than one that will only serve as backup for a single shower?

 

I looked at Sunamp recently but ruled it out baed on price, ASHP compatability and the fact there are other alernatives for short-term load-shiting.  Sunamp still wins on size, heat-loss and longer-term (24hr+) load-shifting though.

Edited by Dan Feist
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I went with ASHP and unvented DHW tank as when deciding my setup people were having problems setting sunamp,s  up. I must confess I am a Luddite so I like simplicity. Immersion in DHW tank is backup . Regarding losses from the DHW tank, my airing cupboard is barely above room temp and any escaping heat helps heat the house, apart from last month (hottest month on record) we need a little heat so I do not consider it “wasted”. If I had PV I would simply dump excess into the DHW tank before due its top up from the ASHP.

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