airtouch for ducted heat pumps

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#2702865 6-May-2021 11:25

Paul1977:

geoffwnz:

Essentially, yes. In my case, that works well as there isn't significant temperature difference between the various rooms/zones.

I have two return ducts, one either side of the hallway door as that is the most common separation point. So the lounge/dining/kitchen "Living Zone" is on one side and the 3x bedroom + 1x bathroom zones are on the other side. I haven't really experimented with closed bedroom doors other than the room that's currently set to off so I'm not sure what it'll do. The windows are old wooden ones that do not seal so there's no shortage of exit points for the air, it just won't end up recirculating.

@geoffwnz That is interesting, the Daikin website says "Individual Temperature Control". How do they achieve this is each zone doesn't have a dedicated sensor to know what the temperature in each zone is?

Can you set a different setpoint temperature for each zone?

EDIT: Actually looking at the Daikin site again, you should have a wall controller in each zone. A "Main" controller in one zone, and then either a "Think" or "Lite" controller in each of the other zones. The controllers have the temperature sensors built into them. This is for the Daikin "AirZone VAF" system.

I have a "whole house" solution rather than an individual room solution. It's zoned such that I can turn zones on or off, not so that I can have different temperatures for each zone.

So yes, if I had the AirZone system, then I'm sure I'd be tripping over controller panels every time I turn round. Though I'd probably use the App anyway.

I'm sure it would also cost comparatively more than the $11k for my install.

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#2709341 18-May-2021 22:13

FYI - for those geeks who would like local control of their AirTouch and know a bit of python...

https://github.com/LonePurpleWolf/airtouch4pyapi

timmmay

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#2709392 19-May-2021 07:20

Interesting. That could be used in place of IFTTT to automate the Airtouch. Maybe it could be incorporated into an app?

SumnerBoy

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#2709400 19-May-2021 08:04

Yep, you can integrate it with home assistant or openhab or whatever you like.

Paul1977

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#2709477 19-May-2021 09:15

My HomeAssistant that I use for my lights died and needs rebuilding, so I might see if I can get this working on it as well.

I've been putting it off since my Linux skills are rudimentary at best, and my Python skills are non-existent!

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#2735796 28-Jun-2021 13:31

Does anyone who has an Airtouch think there's any point putting the Daikin controller inside easily accessible beside the Airtouch controller? I just wonder if having the additional controller might be handy. For example, maybe it has extra functions I want to access, like maybe a super quiet mode, power usage monitoring, that sort of thing?

Psilan

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#2833025 15-Dec-2021 20:14

Hi all.

I just got a quote for a Daikin system.

I asked Daikin NZ directly about Airhub (Daikins new controllers), but that is due in NZ in the third quarter next year. It's rolled out in Australia already.

Is 3k for Airtouch4 reasonable? Looking at almost 13k for 5 zones ~12.5Kw, then adding 3k for the Airtouch4. Without the Airtouch4 it is a pretty dumb system and quite limited. It is almost 3k to have zone on/off control only as well. So that part of the decision is a no-brainer.

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#2833033 15-Dec-2021 20:39

Psilan:

Is 3k for Airtouch4 reasonable? Looking at almost 13k for 5 zones ~12.5Kw, then adding 3k for the Airtouch4. Without the Airtouch4 it is a pretty dumb system and quite limited. It is almost 3k to have zone on/off control only as well. So that part of the decision is a no-brainer.

I've had my Daikin and Airtouch for about six months now. It's not perfect but it's a heck of a lot better than not having it. If you have some rooms that get warmer / more sun that others it is super, super useful. I wouldn't have a ducted heat pump without Airtouch or similar functionality. On/off per zone would be super annoying to use.

It will take some time to get used to how the Airtouch works as well. It will generally keep the rooms within a degree or at most two degrees of your setpoint, but there's quite a bit difference between 23 and 25 degrees.

One thing I've found is with an Airtouch the spill zone gets used a lot. I'll use an example of one bedroom being heated, no other zone enabled. Note that the minimum output of a 12.5kw Daikin is about 5-6kw, they don't ramp down much lower. When the bedroom is almost up to heat the electronic damper closes so not too much air goes into the bedroom, say it might let 1kw worth of heating in. The other 4kw goes into your spill zone. That can result in overheating spill zone. Once things are up to heat a ducted system takes a while to turn off as well, a few minute sometimes, I guess it's due to pipe length or something. That heat all goes into the spill zone too. So overheating spill zones can happen regularly. I find it happens more when it's first turned on, it reduces once the house is up to heat. If you leave it on most of the time I suspect it won't be a huge deal.

In cooling mode a similar thing happens, but your spill zone can end up colder than expected.

Because of that I would tend towards having a heat pump that can ramp its output down as low as possible. Daikin isn't great for that. Panasonic ducted are awful, don't get one of those, I had one but it was removed due to various issues. Mitsubishi would be worth checking, I think they cost a bit more. I have 10kw for four zones in a well insulated house but I reckon 5-7kw would have been more than enough given we leave it on most of the time in winter. The 10kw unit spends most of its time off even when it's pretty cold outside.

I've been meaning to write up my ducted heat pump experience but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Psilan

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#2833038 15-Dec-2021 21:03

Awesome. Appreciate you posting your experience. I just read another post you wrote which was handy too. Thank you.

It's such a big chunk of change to invest. I do get a discount through work - but it's almost impossible to tell if the discount was really applied. You never know.

On top of that, this is just for my wife and I. We are generally in the same room...

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#2833139 15-Dec-2021 21:05

Putting in a few high wall units gives you better control as it's per room and quite precise, probably at a lower price, and more efficient as well I think. Ducted looks better, doesn't give you control as good but it's really handy.

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#2833197 15-Dec-2021 22:06

At our previous home we had separate high wall units installed in each room, a total of seven units and two separate external compressor units. Having each room seaparately controlled was great when you we in that room, but it did mean having to heat up or cool down a room when you wanted to use it.

For a current house we decided on a ducted system with six separate zones. This meana its much easier to keep the whole house warm or cool without thinking about it. The hardward for the heat pumps and compressor uses a Fujitsu componets with the system using controlled as part of the low voltage lighting & security montoring system from www.atatouch.co.nz

insane

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#2833270 16-Dec-2021 09:42

timmmay:

Putting in a few high wall units gives you better control as it's per room and quite precise, probably at a lower price, and more efficient as well I think. Ducted looks better, doesn't give you control as good but it's really handy.

I went with high wall units. Have six of them across three compressors. 4x 1x and 1x. Bedrooms, Lounge, and Granny flat. Gives freedom of heating/cooling at the same time across zones, and I figured there's no point heating/cooling areas not in use, or trying to balance out temperatures as one side of the house gets a lot more sun than the other.

If my house was more modern, or always looked staged as if it was on sale then I'd probably have gone ducted for the looks, but we live in our house so practicality won.

timmmay

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#2833379 16-Dec-2021 11:43

insane:

I went with high wall units. Have six of them across three compressors. 4x 1x and 1x. Bedrooms, Lounge, and Granny flat. Gives freedom of heating/cooling at the same time across zones, and I figured there's no point heating/cooling areas not in use, or trying to balance out temperatures as one side of the house gets a lot more sun than the other.

If my house was more modern, or always looked staged as if it was on sale then I'd probably have gone ducted for the looks, but we live in our house so practicality won.

Yeah the whole sunny / dark side thing is a problem with ducted if you don't have per-room thermostats and don't want to mess with it manually each day. Units in each room with shared outdoors units probably works out a similar cost, I guess, maybe a bit less.

My wife doesn't like the look of the high wall units and the one we had already was quite loud, and we wanted our wall space back. It cost us about $14K from memory for the ducted unit, I suspect just putting high wall units in two rooms (since we had one already) might have cost $7K or so, so half the price.

Paul1977

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#2833545 16-Dec-2021 15:23

timmmay:

One thing I've found is with an Airtouch the spill zone gets used a lot....

We had our installer back out to sort the last (hopefully) of our ongoing issues. He advised you can now get a "Bypass" kit for AirTouch to eliminate the need for spills zones. Basically any conditioned air that isn't needed is recycled back through the unit rather than being dumped into a spill zone.

It involves getting some extra ducting and damper installed, but sounds like a good idea in theory anyway. Don't have any pricing.

@timmmay out of interest, how many spill zones do you have configured?

timmmay

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#2833556 16-Dec-2021 15:41

Paul1977:

We had our installer back out to sort the last (hopefully) of our ongoing issues. He advised you can now get a "Bypass" kit for AirTouch to eliminate the need for spills zones. Basically any conditioned air that isn't needed is recycled back through the unit rather than being dumped into a spill zone.

It involves getting some extra ducting and damper installed, but sounds like a good idea in theory anyway. Don't have any pricing.

@timmmay out of interest, how many spill zones do you have configured?

That sounds really useful, can you update us once you get more info please?

Our system has four zones, three bedrooms (one spare) and the lounge. Our lounge is the spill zone, because usually an extra degree or two isn't a problem. Sometimes when it's annoying me I configure the spare room as the spill zone, though it's wasteful to heat / cool a room that's not actually being used.

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