All pre-sales technical queries, several to each manufacturer, generally things you need to know to pick the unit/design the system adequately.

Mitsubishi, Vaillant, LG all excellent 

Samsung hasn't even responded to several queries 

Daikin does respond but, for anything even faintly technical, said 'ask your installer'

Valiant have been superb with me, especially useful as my installer went bust just after my bodged installation.

@witchcraft That is good to hear! Toodles

In our case, to keep this topic going, we had great service and follow ups from our manufacturer (Global Energy Systems). I couldn't knock their willingness to help but the issue was that they had no clue on how to remedy our issues apart from installing distribution pump after distribution pump after distribution pump. As with most cases, it'll come down to the competency of the manufacturer's engineers.

From my interactions with homeowners, Mitsubishi, Vaillant, NIBE and Clivet appear to be the most willing to help.

Samsung is currently the worst by quite some way. 

Vaillant were very willing but the guy who came said he didn’t know much about software. So multiple re-installs switch on and offs later everything talked to each other. That needed lots of phone and email support from someone in Vaillant who did understand software installations.

So OK overall.

Its running well now.

@judith It allmakes work for the working man to do - even if said working men don’t know what they are doing all the time! 😉 Toodles.

@judith, that’s really interesting feedback. When I speak to installers, they often rave about the post-installation support that Vaillant’s regional teams provide to homeowners. It’s surprising to hear they struggled a bit with the software – definitely something worth noting, but glad to hear it got sorted.

@editor it would have been easy if the first guy who visited very promptly had been more software savvy but he did say he didn’t know much(!)

Posted by: @editor

↑

Have you ever reached out...

Maybe not relevant to a UK forum; as being in Belgium...
Ochsner 'Ground-water' heat pump 20 years old. 

- about 1 year after the installation the installer quit

- 10 years after the installation, one other company did Ochsner heat pumps Belgium. But they are 2 hours drive from my home.

- I called them every 2-3 year to see if the heat pump would need any maintenance.  The answer was negative every time.  I had the feeling they were not really interested in support of something they didn't install

- about 10 years old, there was a part that failed.  It was 'nice' fail as the heatpump would work, but it wouldn't restart  after a cycle.  You had to push the button manually... That one company came by, identified the issue and sent me the part via mail; I installed it and since then the heat pump has been working. I was happy with the provided knowledge.  

In the next 10 years the Ochsner sales in Belgium moved to 2 other companies.  Both are basically also not interested in doing support 'as they don't have the people'....

I didn't really did an attempt to contact a 'standard' cooling service engineer to do support.  In the end these devices are really simple...

I have been largely disappointed with both installer and manufacturer support. I have a Daikin Altherma 3 8 kw installed in June 2024. I replaced a 50 year old gas boiler. I had a completely new system, pipes, rads etc. BG was the installer. In retrospect I think they did a reasonable job of the spec, they did slavishly follow the MCS specs, so presumably as to be sure the grant money would be secure ( and I applaud that) . I had a fully employed by BG team of installers most of whom seemed to be very experienced , previously fitting gas systems, so the piping and everything I assume was pretty straightforward for them. They did it super quick, 4 days and were mostly tidy. Stuff that should have been insulated seems to have been. So I was very relieved and pleased with the install. Like others on the forum pretty poor handover and frankly 8 months in and 100’s of hours spent trying to figure it out. Initially the system had a hive controller , with a mixergy cylinder ( water pressure too low for a Daikin cylinder) and a BUFFER. Because it was June didn’t get to use the heat pump other than for a bit of DHW and I came across my early issues of not understanding the controls I had and the totally inadequate response from BG. I did get good support from mixergy though. Then when at the end of September I switched the heating on, as much to start figuring it out as to get heating, I soon discovered issues with the hive controller. No surprise to most people here I assume but you get it turning off as soon as the target temp was hit and as soon as it dropped .1 of a degree it fired up again. Dreadful. So no help from BG and I had to manage it manually. Eventually I did get some support from BG and they moved me from room temp control to weather compensation. However they told me that the hive now only acted as a thermostat, or whatever ie it only gave me a temperature ( it certainly did!) . So not wanting it to get in the way, I turned the target temp right down, just in case. So run heating for a while and the top of the house is warm but downstairs just got colder and colder. Called BG, zero help, didn’t believe me, wasn’t possible. So I hit the forums and in one of those I was told that he had a third party device and that it did cause conflicts so he had his racked up to a high temperature and then it worked. I was pretty desperate by this time so I just wacked up the temperature on the hive, which as we know was no longer having any impact, and the result was instantaneous, the water just started barrelling through the system. So I got back in touch with BG and told them I had it working again but it was not satisfactory. After a couple of weeks someone came out and by that time I had figured out what was happening, not that I really understood it. In essence because of the buffer I had two pumps. The heat pump of course controlled its own, but the second pump was controlled by the Hive ( some of you are probably smiling now and saying we could have told you that!) . I was able to demonstrate this and he said he’d have to talk to his boss but clearly something needed to be done. But of course there was no follow up. I think I am probably notorious with the BG heatpump call centre or whatever it is, because calling and writing to them to address these issues became all consuming, doubly no quadruply frustrating when they are advertising 7/24 hour support for gas boiler customers and 4 hr response. For heat pumps you can only call Monday to Friday between 9-5, and then they may not be in! Eventually after writing a very critical email to the CEO , who seems to oversee several of the BG companies including the one responsible for the installs, even though she has never replied out of the blue I got some movement and for a brief moment in time I got support from both BG and Daikin. It was agreed that they would take the hive out, take out the additional pump and convert the buffer to a volumiser. There were a few other issues which they said they’d address at the same time. Then silence again. Eventually in January they came out to do the work and since then the system has been running ok. The Daikin ONECTA app on the other hand just keeps failing and when it fails it and Daikin seem to lose all details of me. Still trying to get that sorted. But the still ongoing issue I have is that when I took the contract out with BG they said they would be providing ongoing maintenance contracts but they hadn’t worked out the pricing. Now they have told me they will not be. I would be grateful to hear how other people have addressed the support issues as I have a 5 year warranty but only if you have the system regularly maintained. Perhaps those with more experience of this can point to in the right direction to both understand it and address it, it does worry me. I’m more used to the type of warranty that if it breaks they fix it and cover Labour and costs. This type of warranty feels very odd. 

Well l know that was kind of long but hopefully it addresses the question posed about manufacture support, iffy, added in installer post install support very iffy and very troubling, apart from mixergy.

Just as a by the way , apropos to my other post, I am still puzzled by the issue of the max output being limited to 4.88kw max, once in steady state. But it would explain why the installers don’t set you up on weather comp. Because it seems to me that in weather comp it can only work because you are either happy with a lower temp or outside temp is higher, in my case it’d have to be around 3c, to give me 18c. On this last point I’d be glad to get input into that because if I’m right then this really ought to be explained by installers and manufacturer. If I’m wrong help me understand.

Im sorry to hear about your troubles but its definitely good that the buffer and secondary pump has been removed.  You are on the right path, keep the faith and you should get there with the help from this forum. 

Im not clear from your post if you still have issues or are happy with the operation (leaving aside service); can you clarify and also what does this refer to (whats the symptom, how did you get to this measurement and under what conditions).

Posted by: @terry1812

↑

Just as a by the way , apropos to my other post, I am still puzzled by the issue of the max output being limited to 4.88kw max, once in steady state.