When it came to installing your heat pump, was the brand of heat pump you installed exclusively driven my the installer’s recommendation or were you involved in picking the brand based on reputation, reliability, etc.

Mine was driven by Mitsubishi's presence in the UK and the installer recommending it, its was the only brand I was really aware of at the time 2018.

@gary that's really interesting because we were only offered a Mitsubishi by one installer (out of six) and that was five years ago. Homeowners will be spoilt for choice now, but it does ultimately come down to the competence of the installer.

I only managed to get one installer to bother turning up!  The company didn't mention any other than Mitsubishi Ecodan so that's what was installed.

In 2019 my installer offered Nibe if we had deep pockets, Daikin but he was not keen on that choice, LG which he said would be okay or Mitsubishi which he recommended to work well in our location. Went with Ecodan.

Our installer originally specced a Vaillant since we expressed a preference for the German makes given our good history with German-made gas and oil-fired boilers. Our installer then, nearer the time, told us there were some supply chain issues with Vaillant and so gave us a choice of waiting another couple of weeks or so for the Vaillant (hopefully) or to make use of a Mitsi they actually had in stock already. The Mitsi was a very slightly better spec too, so we went with certainty rather than hope.

As everyone here knows, the brand is almost irrelevant compared with the competence of the installers so, given our installers were excellent, the Mitsi has been just as well behaved as we hoped the Vaillant would be and we’ve no regrets.

@majordennisbloodnok We had our first annual service for the Daikin this morning and the engineer working on behalf of Daikin remarked on the neat & tidiness of our installation. When he had finished his work, he complimented the installers on the quality of the installation and the cleanliness of the filters etc. He remarked that the installers must have carried out a very good flushing through of the old pipework as, after a full year (well, 363 days) there was only a very faint line of deposit on the magnetic filter and that the pump is working against very low resistance (10 radiators plus towel rail over two floors). The basket filters on the pump were almost clear too. The 10 - 12 degrees C we have experienced for the last week and more show a COP in excess of five and the consumption is running at approximately 0.5 kW/h. I think I can conclude we have a well designed system, well installed and considering we run the system 24/7 at 22.5 degrees C. in a 4 bedroomed semi, a very economic system to run. 😊 Regards, Toodles.

I agree.

Coincidentally, three or four weeks ago we had our second annual service via the original installers and I asked them to take a look at our underfloor heating pump. Over Christmas we'd been hearing a bit of a laboured noise once in a while from the airing cupboard and into the New Year the bits of floor heated via UFH were suddenly staying cold whilst the radiators in the other rooms were on. The UFH had been in the house before the ASHP was installed, so from the installer's point of view it was an inherited system but they were good enough to take a look anyway. I was resigned to needing a new pump but the engineer decided it was just a diverter valve where the actuator for opening/closing it was dying a death. He pointed out that it if it stayed constantly open there was a chance of some warm water bleeding into the UFH unnecessarily but otherwise it would not be an issue, took off the actuator and left the valve open and left me with a choice of whether to leave it at that or replace the actuator. I've chosen the latter just to keep the system as designed and their office will be arranging a follow-up visit in the near future. Long and short is that he got us back up and running with a warm house in short time without incurring a cost when he could have charged for an unnecessary expensive part replacement. Warm fuzzy feeling to be had by us for another demonstration of honest good service.

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@gary that's really interesting because we were only offered a Mitsubishi by one installer (out of six) and that was five years ago. Homeowners will be spoilt for choice now, but it does ultimately come down to the competence of the installer.

I was only offered Ecodan in the initial quote,  I discussed heat pump models with the engineer who did the installation survey, and later the installation. The engineer had installed many Ecodan and other models, including an Ecodan in his own property, and was very knowledgeable.  Although the company were happy for me to choose an alternative manufacturer, the fact that an expert had gone with Ecodan reassured me that it was the right choice. Apart from a few minor issues the heat pump has been performing well and the house is noticeably more comfortable than it was with the old gas boiler.