@editor

Whilst looking at this post I’ve noticed the time hasn’t adjusted

A brief update.  All seems well.  A few points:

• The radiators are different to the ones in our previous house in that they have more of a convection effect than just emitting heat.  
• The radiators are surprisingly (to me anyway) hot when heating the house up; 45-50 deg feels hotter than I thought.
• The whole system reacts quite quickly when I crank up the temperature; not quite like a FF system but not bad

We're just trying to get used to our two zones, when to put the wireless thermostats and how to programme the timers.  Of course it hasn't been really cold and I don't know how much electricity we're using yet.  However, it's quite encouraging that even after near freezing temps last night, the house was at its programmed temperature and the rads were quite cool this morning. The system doesn't seem like it's struggling. It should be even better when we replace our draughty old front door and french doors next month. 

Next thing to try is to programme the HW for a few hours at night instead of being on constantly.  We still have electric showers, don't have baths and have a dishwasher so we hardly use any HW from the tank. 

I'll update again when I get my quote for MMSP in the next few days. 

Did the installer include the Wi-Fi dongle/unit for the ecodan? If so you can login through a phone app or web browser and check the electricity/energy usage.

if not you can check this through the wall mounted controller (it just doesn’t have as much flexibility for checking specific date ranges as the app). 

Thanks for this.  No, they did ask me if I wanted it but I said no. I'll have a look at the controller. 

It’s definitely worth having as you can remotely change the settings from anywhere in the world and have access to lots of useful data to see what’s going on during an hourly basis or look back at what it’s done over a year. 

I like being able to change the flow temp from my phone if needed or check the water temp.

@kev-m

Hi Kev.  How’s it going now we’re into a bit of a cold snap?  Happy?

Yup, still happy. The house is still nice and warm and the ASHP doesn't seem to be working too hard. It's certainly not on all the time.  It's very early days but overall electricity consumption is less than pre-ASHP; about 60% of what it was.  More data is needed of course but initial signs are good.  Most is now daytime instead E7 night use but it will still be cheaper (and greener). The ASHP controller gives input and output kWh and this suggests that COP is averaging 3.3 if it's to be believed. So far so good.     

@kev-m

Great news.  Rob called today to check if we’re still interested.  Updated him re the difficulty getting people here to assess and quote for cavity wall insulation.  We’ve had one and managed to get a couple more next week so hopefully will soon have him back for a ‘proper’ ASHP site survey and design etc.  By all accounts we’re in for another spell of proper cold weather soon so keep us posted.   Really pleased that your install is as you hoped.

GES mechanical and electrical installed our LG Therma V R32 ASHP in November last year. We had been looking at renewables and a retrofit since 2013 but in those days we were in pioneer territory and everyone thought we were nuts. 

Our aim was for green improvements with a view to long term sustainability and lowered energy costs (and never moving house again). My dream would be a Hebridean home/Passivhaus or Hufhaus but that's for a lottery win.

The cost of installation was £11K, covered by the RHI payments over the next 7 years (almost). 

GES gave us a competitive quote and seemed keen to proceed. Their team were friendly and approachable, and the installation was a whirlwind of plumbers, electricians and roofers (for 4kW solar PV we had at the same time). GES advised about applying for the GHG for solar thermal and installed a dual coil water cylinder so that the solar thermal could plug in once we'd got the voucher.

 Pump was a bit iffy at first and seemed that the radiators weren't hot enough but we knew it was a lower temp than the gas boiler so accepted it at first. Then got a flow error code on the thermostat and the engineer visited the next day and cleared the filter. Tiny bit of kit but then everything burst into life and my husband finally took off his jumper after 7 years (official term: TOJT).

We have needed to learn how to do a reset when the RCD tripped due to decorating near a socket but otherwise it's been plain sailing.

As for energy use, it's too early to tell. We also went from single glazing to double glazing in Jan 21, and got cavity wall insulation in March too. We'd previously had 200mm of loft, and 50mm of underfloor insulation fitted way back in 2013 when we moved in and the gas bill was ridiculous.

I have signed up for Octopus Agile and I am trying to run the dishwasher and washing machine in the early hours. 

I have emailed LG today to ask for advice about the optimum way to run the pump with solar PV and an agile tariff. I have been searching the interweb for definitive answers. 

I think it would've been cheaper by miles to do a gas boiler but that wasn't the aim. My ideal would be energy self sufficiency, with a wind turbine (or the experimental Vortex skybrator), loads of solar, and selling back to the grid. I want to retire (eventually) and not live in fuel poverty.

I've attached my photos of the pump, the cylinder and buffer collection (lots more space than we'd realised), solar inverter plus PV production so far, thermostat)/control

I have yet to learn about auto mode, or altering water temp, or zoning, or any other gubbins. It feels like I need to do a Masters in heat pumps. 

Overall, our improvements have been great. The house is warm, so is the shower, and it's massively better than when we moved in 8 years ago to a cold draughty house where the bills were upwards of £2.8K/yr. 

I am looking forward to learning loads on this forum.

@pumpo-sorcerer, great story. One quick question. Sam on the forums has had issues with her LG heat pump which was undersized, and she’s also experienced noise issues. How are your noise levels, and where has the pump been installed in relation to living areas?

Noise is minimal and unobtrusive. The pump is outside my 10 year old son's bedroom window (we live in a bungalow) in the back yard. He doesn't notice the noise at all. It's only the same sort of volume as a large fan, at most. I don't think it's undersized - the house has been so much warmer than with the gas boiler, even before the double glazing and cavity wall insulation. We were going to get a Stiebel Eltron but because of Covid the supply wasn't there so we didn't get our first choice, or even second choice (Mitsubishi ecodan). It's not a pretty thing but it does the job, I think. 

We are now 2 weeks into our ASHP experience so time for an update.  In summary, if I didn’t know I had an ASHP I’d never know, if you see what I mean. To me, it works like any CH system.  The radiators are hot but not excessively so, and the HW is hot enough to wash hands/dishes. We have both set at 50 deg (heating with weather compensation).  The ASHP is relatively quiet and can’t be heard at all in most of the house and the cylinder makes the normal CH noises we remember from before. 

A couple of caveats about the numbers coming up.  We still have our showers via direct electric power and use a dishwasher so our HW usage is low. We also keep the living areas relatively cool during the day at 18 deg but increase to 21 deg for 3 hours in the morning and 4 in the evening.  I know others like it a bit warmer than this.

So the numbers.  Over the 14 days, the ASHP used an average of 32 kWh/day, with the highest 39 and the lowest 26. Our total electricity consumption averaged 48kWh/day.  To put this in context, our October-March night usage (that’s storage heaters and HW but not including additional daytime electric heating) was c. 70kWh/day.  I’ll get round to doing some graphs soon but that should give people an idea.

Overall we’re pleased.  Most of the discussion on ASHPs focuses on cost of running but we’re really happy to have a working CH/HW system that is miles better than the old storage heaters it replaced.  An added bonus is that it looks like it’s cheaper to run, although we haven’t had any really cold weather and probably won’t again this year.    I’ll do some tweaking of the settings some time but so far so good.   

A question about HW.  Is there any point in using the timer to make the ASHP only heat HW when it’s warmest outside rather than leaving it to chance?  It must be more efficient heating HW to 50 deg when it’s 12 outside rather than 2?  I don’t know the mechanics of how these cylinders (or any cylinders for that matter) work so this might be a daft idea.