Dodgy Vaillant ASHP foundation & Eddi Diverter Making Central Heating Water Dirty

Jenny@ross · 2024-06-26T16:49:24Z

in September 2021 our 11kW Vaillant heat pump was installed. In March 2024 it was clear that the heat pump was leaning forward (think Tower of Pisa) and the installer returned, moved the heat pump off the existing two concrete flag stones on garden soil, put back the two flag stones set in concrete and popped the heat pump back. We paid the installer more than £500 for this remedial work. We have a Tesla battery, solar PVs (5Kw) and the above ASHP. In the course of reinstalling the foundation the system was turned off and drained. It appeared that dirty water was now moving around the system, so a flush and chemical clean was carried out (another £500). BUT the installer said that, whilst the radiator pipes were now clear, the hot water pipes to the tank were not. The filter was filling up with black gunge. He said that the fault was the Eddi Solar Diverter which was diverting solar power to the immersion and therefore the heat pump was not being used to heat the hot water during the day. He said we must remove the Eddi solar diverter and that our problem would be solved but not before he carried out a physical and chemical clean of the whole system again. We had asked a different company to service the system in September 2023 and our installer said that the 'dirty water problem' would not have happened if we had used him. He said that the system hadn't been serviced properly and implied that it was my fault for requesting the services of another company - the same one that had installed the Eddi diverter together with the Tesla battery. My questions to the community: 1. Was the installer right to charge us for making good the foundation under the heat pump? I did query it and his response was "Well this has never happened before and I've installed a large number of heat pumps" and "well its like building a house, if it suffers subsidence the house owner is responsible for repair." Thoughts please? 2. Was the installer correct to tell us to remove the Eddi solar diverter?

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Sune

(@sune)

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28/06/2024 10:15 am

@jennyross I like your descriptions, they're helpful. Sounds like metal deposits to me. It's not uncommon to find some in most systems tbh. Are you finding that this is causing any issues like high running costs, or perhaps flow faults that stop your heat pump running? Or was it mainly the engineer telling you that it was a problem?

You might consider asking the next maintenance engineer to run through the process of cleaning the filters with you so you can potentially do it yourself another time.

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Jenny@ross

(@jennyross)

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Topic starter 28/06/2024 10:35 am

@sune thank you. I’ll labour on with layperson’s descriptions then 😅

I don’t think the running costs have been higher in recent months. The installer showed me the HW tank filter blocked with ferrous (thanks toodles) material which he said was a problem.
if this is likely to be the result if the filters haven’t been cleaned or replaced at service, then maybe it’s built up over the last year?

This post was modified 1 year ago by Mars

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Sune

(@sune)

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28/06/2024 11:15 am

@jennyross a totally blocked filter will stop the heat pump from working (it would give a "flow fault") so I guess that wasn't happening. And it's good that it was doing its job and protecting some of the narrow water pathways in the heat pump from that crud which is why its there. You would likely expect some dirt there, as you would with most types of filter really.

If it was my system I'd be tempted to have a look at the filter again in a few weeks, check how much it had caught (and give it a clean), then use that to get some sort of idea of how much rubbish is in the system and whether additional action is a good idea.....or not. Checking and cleaning a filter isn't a highly technical job nor is it specific just to heat pump systems - really any heating engineer should be able to do that, or indeed a competent homeowner as long as they know the simple steps required.

I wouldn't expect much more detritus to build up in the summer as you'll probably have the heating off - so the heat pump only has a very short and simple pipe run to and from your water cylinder - there shouldn't be a significant source of detritus there.

When you turn on the heating though then the rads are part of that water circuit - and that's probably where it came from/is coming from. So perhaps also a good idea to check that filter once the heating has been on for a couple of weeks later in the year. It might well also be that you have not much of a problem at all!

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