@kevinmc1970, @liamk from The Heating People is one of the top installers in your area, and definitely worth contacting. Either contact him via the website or email me (editor@renewableheatinghub.co.uk) and I'll connect you that way.

@editor thanks Mars! I'll contact them.

Anyone able to share the name of a competent independent heat pump servicer in the east Cheshire area please, near Macclesfield to be precise?

I found my nearest heat geek chap but he clearly didn’t understand my third party controls. 

Grant carried out mine. The guy arrived, spent about 10 minutes with what looked like a weed killer container and sprayed all around the heat pump. He came inside, drunk a coffee and chatted for 15 minutes. Then he looked inside the cylinder cupboard, nodded his head and declared all is well. Only when I mentioned the filter did he look at it.......no correction, he drained an egg cup full out and did not even open the filter lid.  Despite knowing it was all smoke and mirrors to maintain the warranty, I was still gutted to have had to pay close to £250 for the privilege of being taken for a mug.

When he went, I fully cleaned the filter which was disgusting, combed the fins on the pump, fully drained down the system, flushed and refilled with new chemicals. Checked the pressure release valve (something he didn't bother doing) and a few other things.

All in the name of a warranty.

@unsure Thanks. Yes, if it weren’t for the warranty I would do it myself. Going to try BG basic heating and hot water cover, it includes both the service and breakdown for £23 month, they promised to liaise with Samsung if there is a warranty repair and they also work with homely for the 3rd party controls. I always found their gas engineers good, so hopefully they use decent heat pump chaps too.

Posted by: @old_scientist

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Having bit the bullet and paid £250 for a service, our service engineer came today so I thought I'd report on the experience.

We'd paid for the ASHP and tank service, and the service engineer was great - very happy to show me what he was doing and seem genuinely pleased I was interested and engaged.

Outside he stripped the casing and thoroughly cleaned. We talked about the vibration from the compressor which I thought was a little noisy. We briefly fired up the unit for him to hear, and we agreed it was at the top end of normal. He's asked me to record a video when it's running hard for him to send to Samsung. The compressor is mounted on rubber feet, and just moving the compressor slightly reduced the vibrations, so we will see how things go.

Due to vibrations, he explained that cable connections can work loose over time, so tightened all the screw down cable clamps to ensure they were tight and had not worked loose.

He examined cabling for signs of burning and explained some cables can sometimes start to brown, so just visually checking all the cabling looked good and no signs of electrical faults.

He showed me where to check for refrigerant leaks. He mentioned the circulating refrigerant gas contains a small amount of oil so you can feel if the joints have leaked. He showed me the common failure points to check and all looked good. He did not otherwise check refrigerant levels.

Inside I am happy with all the controller settings, so we skipped checking those at my request.

We did have an issue with our immersion heater cutting out too early to complete the legionella cycle (cuts out at ~57C). He had a spare thermostat for the immersion, so swapped that and just quickly checked it powered up without tripping anything - I didn't want to fully test the cut off temp of the new thermostat as we were on peak rate by then, so I'll test that later.

We cleaned the Y strainer and the mag filter. I'd already cleaned the Y strainer a couple months after installation, but I now know how to clean a mag filter, so that's good. Checked pressure relief valves and expansion tanks.

Overall I'm pleased we did the service. The engineer was great but I do feel the price is a bit steep (part of the issue will be the amount of travelling these guys are doing to service nationally, so I expect he's done more travelling than servicing in a day). I've learned quite a bit and know more things to keep an eye on and check. Of course the main issue is the warranty. Next year I think I'll be happy to maybe just pay for the ASHP service, and take care of the tank side myself.

Well, another year has passed and this year I decided to service it myself.

Today I stripped down the outside unit, checked for refrigerant leaks, inspected and tightened all electrical connections that may have come loose from vibrations and thoroughly cleaned the unit including the heat exchanger and fan blades.

Tomorrow I will turn my attention to inside, and clean the Y strainer and mag filters.

One question - I've currently got glycol in the system, which I'm eventually going to drain and replace with water (as we now have battery backup and experience few days below freezing / power cuts). Can anyone recommend some litmus paper or similar, or other simple tests I can perform to check water quality. I'm not really interested in checking glycol concentration but am more interested to ensure the glycol has not degraded and become acidic. Should I use specific litmus paper for glycol solutions or can I use any regular litmus paper?

@old_scientist 

Many many moons ago I had exposure to glycols in biochemical manufacturing. Its physiochemical properties are quite complex and related to its molecular weight and changes thereof. It will change from being a greasy like insoluble molecule to one that is fully soluble in water. It might be something best left to a professional as below certain concentrations it’s a rather nice substrate for bacterial and fungal metabolism and you probably don’t want those organic acid by products in your system if you haven’t adequately flushed it all out. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@old_scientist 

Many many moons ago I had exposure to glycols in biochemical manufacturing. Its physiochemical properties are quite complex and related to its molecular weight and changes thereof. It will change from being a greasy like insoluble molecule to one that is fully soluble in water. It might be something best left to a professional as below certain concentrations it’s a rather nice substrate for bacterial and fungal metabolism and you probably don’t want those organic acid by products in your system if you haven’t adequately flushed it all out. 

Thank you. Yes, getting it all out of my system is going to be quite the headache given the volume (inc flushes) and safe disposal thereof.

@old_scientist 

if you are going DIY then you may want to check the outcome of your efforts, I’d get yourself a handheld combination TOC/COD/conductivity/spectrophotometer. 
Id bet there are formal protocols for doing this, the Germans are very good at generating these. I do know they have a protocol for refilling and purifying the fluid that involves recirculating it through a mixed bed ion exchange resin until a threshold purity is met. 

@old_scientist 

if you are going DIY then you may want to check the outcome of your efforts, I’d get yourself a handheld combination TOC/COD/conductivity/spectrophotometer. 
Id bet there are formal protocols for doing this, the Germans are very good at generating these. I do know they have a protocol for refilling and purifying the fluid that involves recirculating it through a mixed bed ion exchange resin until a threshold purity is met. 

just checked and it is VDI 2035

Just had mine serviced for the first time as it reached its first anniversary post-installation.  We used the company who had initially quoted for our system on behalf of another company who carried out the installation work, as they are primarily a servicing business themselves.

£240 as a one-off charge, and the engineer was on-site for a couple of hours and checked all aspects of the installation, including in the loft where the expansion tanks are sited.  Afterwards, we were left with signed service sheets for both the heat pump and hot water cylinder as separate documents with details of the work done.  I mentioned that the system had a tendency to lose pressure and he addressed this during the visit by tightening up the nuts around the site of the water pump, and this looks to have fixed it based on the post-service monitoring I've done.

Following this, I've now signed up to their monthly service plan going forward, which at £15 per month will represent a £60 saving on the overall cost.  I've voted 'good value' in the poll as a consequence as I think it was priced fairly for the work carried out.

The primary purpose of getting the service was to ensure that the 7 year warranty on the heat pump remains valid, but it has provided good piece of mind too that everything is working as expected for when the time eventually comes when we start to need to heat the house again.

@sheriff-fatman 

if you are having to top the water pressure up more than 2-3 times a year it’s leaking somewhere at a rate that is not insignificant. You want to catch that with the installer whilst you still have a valid installer warranty as that water is going somewhere.