Daikin Altherma 3M EDLA09DA3V3 ASHP + 200 litre tank. Cost £13K less £5K Boiler Upgrade Scheme discount.

High quality equipment, but very complicated tricky controls, only suitable for nerds and geeks (like me). Needs 3 power supplies. Many many many tricky settings. Clunky display interface. Subtle bugs.

Installation began 5 Jul 2022, still unfinished at 2 Jan 2023.

Truly dreadful, awful hopeless supplier, could not care less customer service. No Daikin experience at all, used poor subcontractors. Damaged my house, still waiting for repairs.

NAPIT seems to be forcing them to complete the installation.

So far, using figures from the Daikin display, COP about 2.6 (45 degrees water flow, 19 degrees room temp), 1.6 in very cold week (-10 to 0) when the system spent nights frosting and defrosting, creating a glacier of ice before it. But it kept us warm, at enormous cost of electricity. Now testing 35 degrees water flow.

This model has A+++ rating and fabulous COPs, > 4 - but not for me.

Daikin customer support seems very good but have not yet paid them to visit.

I think the root of the problem is the shortage of Daikin trained tradesmen. Plumbers are totally lost and electricians scratch their heads and drift away.

Discovering this forum is the best thing that's happened this year. THANKS !!!

Posted by: @rayh

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Daikin customer support seems very good but have not yet paid them to visit.

I think the root of the problem is the shortage of Daikin trained tradesmen. Plumbers are totally lost and electricians scratch their heads and drift away.

Welcome to the forums. I can’t understand why manufacturers sell their products to installers that have zero training or knowledge of their products. 

Ray, feel free to start a new topic dedicated to your system, and please tell us what the installation dramas and delays.

I voted average because whilst it all works roughly - the system is way too complex. There are four ways to change the settings! Installers in my opinion need to get real, recognise that people are not very interested in the intricacies, and set things up so they are likely to work (with tweaking at the, say 6 week, 6 month, and 2 year point).

I went to 4 recommended companies 3 of which are no longer in business but gave us the run around for months and the 4th charged £300 for the heat loss calcs and wouldn’t install a system as he’d never done one so big… 

The initial system was going to be GSHP but the length of pipe work from the calculations varied by 600m! Then the cost to run pumps to factor 1.8km was astronomical. 

So many things they all said could and couldn’t be done all contradicting each other.  We decided to use a commercial M&E contractor with a domestic arm to install a Mitsubishi designed system.

Posted by: @rayh

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I think the root of the problem is the shortage of Daikin trained tradesmen. Plumbers are totally lost and electricians scratch their heads and drift away.

Discovering this forum is the best thing that's happened this year. THANKS !!!

Absolutely! This forum is how my Valiant system got set up. It was installed by a plumber who had no idea at all. I'm getting towards being happy with it. 

My ASHP was installed in 2008/9. It was the wild west back then, and it's been a bumpy ride, but it now works OK ish, although expensive, I think (mainly due to electricity cost escalating than energy use). 

I'll do a thread on may experience at some point, but I must say my heart goes out to the people who have had a really bad time here. 

Also: as mentioned above, I'm really glad to find this forum. I've joined a number of renewable energy forums over the years but there's clearly a high level of experience and knowledge among the posters here!

@pressure, welcome to the forums and look forward to hearing about system. I’m afraid the ASHP Wild West is still pretty wild! 🤠

I hate to come across as biased:-), but just finished a DIY install of a 16kw Gen 6 Samsung HP, replacing oil.  I am pretty happy with the whole setup.  It took about 9 months of educating myself, learning how to do plumbing a bit better, and building a reasonable understanding of what the best setup is and then doing the install.  Turned it on at 2:30 am on 24th Dec 2022.  Average COP so far 3.6.   I think the hot water is dragging it down as I have been getting over 4 occasionally (best day was 4.2).  Am in the process of trying to integrate it with home-assistant, early days though, and have just got the pump connected via modbus.  Ultimate goal is to do a diy homely type setup for the purpose of learning more.  That will probably take another year or so.

I went for one pump and one zone, no volumisers, no glycol (used anti freeze valves), no low loss headers or any other mixing solutions, ran 28 mm pipe as far as I could (into two manifolds), I put UFH in living space and bathroom, kept original radiators in the rest of the house.  All running on the same temperature.  (rest of house will over time be converted to UFH, so we live with the other rooms at 18 and the living area at 22).  Went for 100mm UFH spacing with max 50m circuits (over kill, I know, but all with the end in mind), will do the same for the rest of the house when we get there.  All with the goal of that record breaking COP :-).

I am enjoying reading all the posts on the site and continuing to learn.  Learnt yesterday that I should have installed a PWM pump, am in the process of planning a fix for that in the coming weeks, hopefully that will make a difference.

Posted by: @william1066

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Am in the process of trying to integrate it with home-assistant, early days though, and have just got the pump connected via modbus.

First, congratulations, it must be very satisfying having a working DIY installation.

I'm very interested in your success in getting modbus integration with Home Assistatant, as I am trying to do the same thing with a Midea heat pump, which also has accessible modbus (RTU/RS-485) terminals (A and B), Would you care to go into a bit more detail on how you set this up, what hardware/interfaces etc and how you joined everything up. At the moment, I am exploring using an RS-486 to USB converter (+/-ESP32) and doing the whole thing wired for simplicity and robustness, but I am still at the concept stage. I'd also be interested to know what you are running Home Assistant on. I currently have a PC version but it is hobbled, it seems you only get the Full Monty on dedicated hardware.   

Posted by: @william1066

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I hate to come across as biased:-), but just finished a DIY install of a 16kw Gen 6 Samsung HP, replacing oil.  I am pretty happy with the whole setup.  It took about 9 months of educating myself, learning how to do plumbing a bit better, and building a reasonable understanding of what the best setup is and then doing the install.  Turned it on at 2:30 am on 24th Dec 2022. 

Really great to see this as I am about 3-6 months behind you and have a strong potential of doing a lot of it DIY myself, with quite a similar setup. am a keen HA user, would want to do a full HA integration. just looking at the PWM pump aspect myself at the moment. how are you sensing the pump data that you're showing in HA? Is there any chance you could do a fuller write up perhaps in a dedicated thread, or maybe share more details by PM?

I do like the time that you got it running... was the deadline in by christmas 😉 ? also like your username - any conquering involved? 

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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also like your username - any conquering involved? 

Nice one.

I think the time has come to start a new thread on ASHP system monitoring, which I suggested I might do a while back, a beginner's guide that doesn't assume you have been using Strawberry Flies forever, though you might have a vague idea of what one is, at least conceptually. It'll start based on my experience based on a Midea pump, as that is what I have, and so should also be directly useful for other Midea and Samsung and other modbus interface heat pumps. Other heat pumps may have similar but not identical interfaces. The first post, written a short while ago, covers what I hope to achieve. The thread is called A Beginner's Guide to ASHP Monitoring (<=link to thread).

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/renewable-heating-air-source-heap-pumps-ashps/a-beginners-guide-to-ashp-monitoring#post-13919

@william1066, sounds like you’ve pulled it off brilliantly. Did you have any plumbing experience before embarking on this project?

Goes to show if you want a job done properly, it’s best to do it yourself.