@gary And if they install a single unit, what factors influence them then? Toodles.

Logically, addressing hard water issues with a water softening solution seems like common sense ie to preserve good flow rates for an ASHP system, but I’m keen to hear any views from the experts.

Moved in a few years ago, heat pump already installed. Heating bills very high and looking to optimise performance as much as possible (from browsing these forums, my system appears to show many other red flags too!)

thanks

@mjw321 welcome to the forums. Please start a new topic dedicated to your system and share some of the red flags.

We had our CTC ASHP fitted by our housing association contractors and it was a complete nightmare tbh there were several problems and we ended up after 2 years down the line after a load of visits and false info by contractor who basically didn’t know what they were doing reaching out to the manufacturers CTC who were much better and sorted out the system.
In the end they changed our unvented DHW cylinder it was faulty (noisy coils), a faulty incorrectly fitted ESBE valve, the TRV valves on rads were wrong and new ones fitted, the isolation switch outside was full of water and had been disconnected it needed replacement , the heating pump was set incorrectly and pretty much all of the settings on the control unit were wrong. 
The system is now working a lot better but we have no real way of knowing the scop or how economical it is, or what the flow temperature should be (never saw a heat loss survey)and also we were never shown how to work the system by the contractors. We ended claiming around £600 compensation from them for all the energy it used as it drove us into energy debt.

I have to say once we got intouch with CTC they were really good and Gogeothermal came out to resolve all the issues they were really great.

@retrorich It is very worrying that any of this should be necessary though,  having third parties involved to fit and commission heat pumps seems to place an additional barrier between the end user and common sense. When things go wrong (which of course, they never do, do they?!), the enduser finds redress has an additional layer of ‘not me guv’ in the chain to circumnavigate. Good for CTC that they put some effort into sorting it all out eventually - but… NONE OF THIS SHOULD BE NECESSARY IN THE FIRST PLACE! Come on MCS - wake up and do the job you profess to be doing! Regard, Toodles. (Rant over… for now)

I was chatting to a Vaillant engineer last week. He reckoned that about half of his heat pump call outs were due to poor design/ installation. And that’s for a premium brand. Shockingly poor! 

Posted by: @tallmarc

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I was chatting to a Vaillant engineer last week. He reckoned that about half of his heat pump call outs were due to poor design/ installation. And that’s for a premium brand. Shockingly poor! 

Only half!

Hi had  an ECO 4 installation in September last year. Old oil system taken out and heat pump installed complete with new radiators and pipework throughout, and a new DHW tank. Completed in 3 days.  Originally a 2 bedroom dormer bungalow.  14 radiators fitted.  The living room large radiator didn't fit as it would have poked above the windowsill so a smaller one was fitted which had a knock on later.  The system worked fine from commissioning and all seems balanced all radiators getting warm to much the same extent.  The 2 plumbers worked tirelessly and were polite and efficient they both seemed to know there stuff and had installed numerous of these systems.  Due to the grant process I had no choice of contractor so consider myself lucky. So that's the good bits now the not so good.   I had a lot of making good to do where the old radiators had been hanging.  I have no useable airing.cupboard it's full of admittedly neat pipework. The ASHP is a Grant Arona 13kw so much bigger than I was expecting, having seen my son's 6kw one.  I have not had a sight of the heat loss calculation.  The handover was pretty non existent.  Initially the system was running with WC but at a 50°C flow temp at -2°C. It was being controlled by a super sensitive wireless room thermostat, this lead to continual on/off of the ASHP.  At that point I knew nothing about efficient running of ASHP but reading and finally finding this site I 'grew a pair' and went into the installers menu and adjusted the parameters to flow temp between 40°C and 27.5°C  corresponding to -2°C to 20°C.  I have opened all the TRV to maximum and run the ASHP continuous, this has resulted in much longer runs by the ASHP and it ramping down for 3kw to 1kw power usage. I have long kept a close eye on my electricity consumption at the moment, taking out the 30kw per night of the 30 amp AGA, and 7kw background use age the ASHP is consuming 20 to 27kw per day. Is more economical than my oil, well no BUT now the whole house is warm all the time (temps around 20-21°C) all over the house. This was never the case before in fact we were chilly a lot of the time.   January Bill about £300, Dec Bill £225.  The only issue we have had was an inability to keep the living room warm when the temperature outside dropped below freezing.  A re  calculation of the living room heat loss from the installer showed the window size had been incorrectly input (much smaller than actual) plus the smaller radiator playing it's part.  A larger radiator was fitted in December and all fine since.  

We have also had 10 PV panels fitted but they are doing very little at the moment.  More on than as spring goes on I guess. Well that's it generally satisfied but much self learning having to take place little to no instruction given. 

@stopbar thanks for your contribution and I am pleased you are now sorted.

When I read it I immediately thought - this is so typical.  Installers leave giving little or no instruction to householders, and with the system set up to keep them warm, but at a high cost.  I fear that most householders grudgingly accept it and then moan to their friends about the high cost of heat pumps, the more enlightened ones, like you, take the matter into your own hands and do the optimisation that is needed.  How many times have we seen this on the forum?

On one level I don't 'blame' installers.  They know that the way to avoid call outs is to ensure people are warm but not too warm, and they also know that they cant afford to spend days adjusting things to be optimum.  So slapping on TRVs and an external thermostat, turning the weather compensation curve up high, and leaving it whilst telling the householder not to change anything is 'safe'. That is, after all, what they did with boilers, and at least some of us have been paying 10% more for our gas heating than we need to, and suffering lower comfort levels for years as a consequence, so why not also for heat pumps?

Worse still they are faced with customers who, in many cases, either don't or don't want to develop any understanding at all of the product they have purchased and expect everything 'just to work'.

How do we square that circle?  Eventually technology, in the form of interconnected heat pump specific TRVs (perhaps better called flow regulating valves) and self adjusting weather compensation, will come to our rescue.   Adia Thermal are developing just that, other start-ups will doubtless follow, and eventually (perhaps) the 'big boys' (Honeywell, Drayton, Danfoss etc) will cotton on to the fact that their current products are wholly unsuitable and in fact a mis-sell in the heat pump market (maybe someone will sue them at some point, they should.

However its going to be some years before this technology becomes mainstream and we need an interim solution.  Perhaps its a simple 'guide to your new heat pump' brochure designed to inform people and to encourage them to do a bit of self optimisation.  If its not that, what is is?