Ducted Heat Pump Recommendation in Waipa (Waikato)

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Klathman

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#303944 22-Mar-2023 11:42

We're looking at installing a ducted heat pump system into our house in Waipa in the Waikato. Currently, we only have a fire and a coal range, which is fine in the winter, but the heat and humidity are an issue at night in particular.

We've got a large house and my wife is a very light sleeper so noise will be a key factor. That's why I suspect that this will be more than just slapping up a typical high wall-mounted heat pump.

I'm aware that there are quite a few cowboys out there that we will want to avoid. Does anyone have any recommendations for our area?

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#3053242 22-Mar-2023 11:53

We had a Fujitsu system installed in our last home. It was extremely quiet - you could not really hear it running in the house at all.

Fujitsu only install via their accredited installers and warranty backup is first class.

timmmay

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#3053253 22-Mar-2023 12:38

Have you read the post I wrote about ducted heat pumps? It doesn't recommend an installer but it gives you some things to consider. I would choose your brand, make sure you can get individual room temperature control which I think is essential, then use a vendor that the brand recommends.

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#3053293 22-Mar-2023 13:52

We are also in Waipa and installed the Mitsubishi PEAD ducted unit along with their Lossnay ventilation system 2.5 years ago when we built our home. Our covered floor area excl internal garage is 200sqm and we have the below 14.0/16.0kW R32 unit which we find adequately cools or heats the home. We also have the below Lossnay LGH-50RVX-E system which I also highly recommend if you currently do not have any fresh ventilation system in place.

I also recommend adding the MAC-568IF-E WiFi controller card to the ducted PEAD unit for smartphone-based app control which is really good and handy to have to remotely turn ON/OFF the aircon and set some custom rules as desired within the app. Also, worth adding a secondary wall controller on top of primary wall controller say in your master bedroom so the aircon unit can be controlled from wall from multiple locations by kids or when the phone is not about.

The ducted unit in the roof is very quiet. The outside compressor makes noise if you about 5M from it outside when it's very hot during summer from 11AM to 6PM. We do not hear it inside. I will send you a PM on which cowboy to certainly avoid for install as that's who we used, and it took many visits, unnecessary broken ceiling which I made them all pay for, and they did and couple of their team members fired for basic competency to get it all right in the end. They even got the config of aircon and lossnay integration wrong and resulted us with high power bills for 2 years and home not cold enough in summers and overheating in winters. I was ready to fork $6k for zone control to fix these issues but after talking to BDT (Black Diamond Technologies) who are distributor for Mitsubishi electrics in NZ to try and get a firmware update to fix another issue myself, one of their super helpful engineers resolved all our underlying problems with config after spending couple of hours on phone and providing service password for me to change parameters to set everything right and now the system performs exceptionally well. I am not sold on zone control especially now that we have Solar PV and love walking into a room which are all evenly cool or hot.

https://www.mitsubishi-electric.co.nz/heatpump/i/69223BW/ducted-pead-140-heat-pump-with-wi-fi

https://www.mitsubishi-electric.co.nz/ventilation/i/685038/lossnay-fresh-air-energy-recovery-ventilation

PS - Did your water damaged Fronius got replaced under CGA by Harrisons?

Do whatever you want to do man.

Klathman

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#3053311 22-Mar-2023 14:20

@timmmay: Yes I've read that a few times now. That's part of the reason I wanted to find out about good suppliers as there are a few comments about the variable quality of installers.

Having recently been bitten by a poor Solar install with Harrisons I really don't want to get bitten a second time.

@billgates: They're currently claiming that their installation was perfect and if only our spouting hadn't changed location to directly over the inverter they installed and then overflowed (which they can't provide any evidence of anyway) directly onto their perfectly placed and waterproof inverter that there wouldn't be a problem. I'm waiting on a date from the disputes tribunal so hopefully, we'll have an answer soon. Since then they have also sold their franchise which makes it more interesting. Hopefully, I don't need to drag Harrison the franchisor into the case as well. They claim now that they have also cancelled our warranty so....I guess that's something new too.

timmmay

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#3053329 22-Mar-2023 15:09

billgates:

I am not sold on zone control especially now that we have Solar PV and love walking into a room which are all evenly cool or hot.

I guess it depends on the house. Our north facing bedroom can get up to 26 degrees in the summer on sunny days, while the south facing can stay around 22. If you adjust manual dampers to put more air through the north facing room that fixes it for a sunny day, but on cool days that room turns super cold. Then in summer it needs adjusting again. I wouldn't have ducted without individual room control.

We also like our lounge to be about 24 - 25 degrees, but the bedrooms to be about 21 degrees.

We think our outdoor unit is oversized as well, so it cycles on and off a lot, rather than staying on low.

rb99

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#3075395 12-May-2023 11:15

With the annual reappearance of mild hypothermia / soggy windows, am idly considering selling a few of the children and going for ducted heatpump / ventilation, possibly Mitsubishi ducted / Lossnay, mostly because I'[ve heard of the name before.

I guess it's hideously expensive but would anyone be prepared to share / give an idea of running costs, especially in winter as it would be mostly for heating. House is a fair size double decker.

Have a scan of other threads but need to read properly.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

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timmmay

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#3075402 12-May-2023 11:45

rb99:

With the annual reappearance of mild hypothermia / soggy windows, am idly considering selling a few of the children and going for ducted heatpump / ventilation, possibly Mitsubishi ducted / Lossnay, mostly because I'[ve heard of the name before.

I guess it's hideously expensive but would anyone be prepared to share / give an idea of running costs, especially in winter as it would be mostly for heating. House is a fair size double decker.

Have a scan of other threads but need to read properly.

It depends on too many factors to estimate. Size, insulation, temperature settings, whether you have per-room thermostats (highly recommended). Look at the FAQ I linked to above for background info.

They will cost more to run than a highwall heat pump. There's some heat loss from the ducting, and it will heat a larger area. Larger heat pumps also tend to be less efficient than the smaller heat pumps.

When we installed the ducted heat pump into the lounge / bedrooms, moving from highwall in the lounge and oil heaters in the bedrooms, we didn't notice a significant change in the power bill. We already had another heat pump in the kitchen / dining area.

rb99

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#3075407 12-May-2023 12:02

Thanks for that. I guess it is complicated. We should get a quote or three but got to start somewhere - too much to buy (or not), too much to run (or not)...put something there instead of here, extra $1000, extra controller, extra zones, extra...

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#3075425 12-May-2023 12:14

@rb99 Our covered floor area excluding garage is 200sqm with the Mitsubishi ducted and lossnay system installed in a 2020 build well insulated single storey home. This is a snapshot from our Solar PV's energy monitoring system for today from 12AM. I had the ducted aircon set to 20 degrees heat at full 4 bar fan speed and Lossnay set to 3 out of 4 bars for heat exchanger mode last night. It was around 8 degrees last night here in Cambridge at 10PM and it got low as 4degrees today morning around 6AM.

We have used 15.79kWh of power from the grid since 12AM today through to 9AM. Currently the house is now running on 100% solar power since 9AM with 12degrees outside as of 12PM. The house is now using 460W of power with ducted aircon running at 20degrees and my PC running which is using 300W of the 460W. Lossnay has been powered OFF since 8AM. Lossnay uses about 200W to 300W on its own in the heat exchanger mode. If we had left the Lossnay powered OFF last night, then our grid usage IMO would have been around 4kW to 5kW max since 12AM. I will leave the Lossnay powered OFF tonight as an experiment to report the data tomorrow as it's set to be 2 degrees early morning tomorrow and just leave the ducted aircon running at 20 degrees. I noticed last night that with 8 degrees outside and 20 degrees inside, the lossnay unit was showing 15degrees being returned via the heat exchanger unit which is the reason why we pulled 15.97kWh as of 12AM today for the aircon unit to make up for 5 degrees difference between it and Lossnay unit as it's using the wall controller temperature sensor is our large open living area. If I leave the Lossnay off in winter, the kids' bathroom and guest toilet gets crying windows, so I must leave their door open at night as there is not enough gap under their door and laminate flooring, I think either. We leave the Lossnay off completely during summers.

I will try another experiment on Sunday by switching the master bedroom's wall controller unit to be master as it's currently set to slave and leave the Lossnay turned ON as well as I suspect grid power use will be a lot lower since ambient temperature of 20 degrees will be easily achievable in a small bedroom compared to the open living area so ducted aircon would not have to compensate for the 5 degrees difference run continuously overnight like it did today. It's a slight pain to do this as you must manually change the wall controllers for both sides of home to say which is master and which is slave. We just leave the open living as master all the time and master bedroom as slave.

Do whatever you want to do man.

rb99

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#3075432 12-May-2023 12:38

Interesting. I'll have to read a few more times to (hopefully) understand it though. The Lossnay doesn't seem to use much power for a decent return (to me). I guess we could just buy that, but our whole house only has one heatpump which warms maybe a quarter of the house, so guess there wouldn't be much heat to recover...

Do you usually tend to leave the heatpump / lossnay running or do you constantly adjust or turn on and off quite often ? our house generally is occupied during the day. Do you do zones much ? I struggle with the idea of heating the whole place to the same temp with fair bits of it being empty for significant periods, so sounds better to have zones and keep some bits warm and other just, well, tepid (but dry / well ventilated).

I think power is about 20c/kWh so that 15.79 is about $3, but guess it depends of course on how hard things are having to work. Thinnk thats about $250 per month in the unlikely event I've worked it out properly (plus cooking / hot water of course), hopefully reasonable for a bit of comfort.

I guess if you leave the Lossnay off tonight you'll use more power, so you're going to get a rough idea of the difference ?

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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timmmay

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#3075438 12-May-2023 13:08

I wouldn't have a ducted system without zones and per-zone temperature control. We have rooms that aren't used for significant periods, we like the lounge 24 degrees and bedrooms 20 degrees, some rooms get more sun than others, etc. For the brief period we had a ducted system without zone control some rooms overheated, some were too cold, but we had it removed after a month or so because it really didn't work well for our house.

I'd also consider having the kitchen on a standalone unit, to save pushing food smells through the house.

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rb99

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#3075441 12-May-2023 13:30

Zones sound much better, but I though I read somewhere here that adding (just) the zoning feature was an extra $6000 on top, which is not insignificant (unless I'm imagining it).

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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billgates

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#3075442 12-May-2023 13:31

We leave the ducted air conditioning running 24/7, 365 days a year unless we go on a holiday in which case, we turn off the ducted air conditioning and turn ON the Lossnay so house is ventilated at least. We only really use the Lossnay during winters and that too mostly at night unless we need to bring down the temperature inside home while heating is running as sometimes then house can get too hot so fresh air from outside mixed with heated air, brings the right comfort level. There is always someone in our home during the day. We opted to not go with a zone control system to keep every room in the home at even tempurature so when you walk in, it's comfortable.

If we leave the Lossnay powered OFF today then we will use less power as the ducted aircon will not have to fight for 5 degrees tempurature difference between it set to 20 degrees and Lossnay only returning 15 degrees re-circulated heat. I will post the results tomorrow of my findings.

Do whatever you want to do man.

timmmay

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#3075450 12-May-2023 13:53

rb99:

Zones sound much better, but I though I read somewhere here that adding (just) the zoning feature was an extra $6000 on top, which is not insignificant (unless I'm imagining it).

It depends how many zones you have, and how much labor / markup the installer puts on it. In 2021 I got a quote for the Airtouch4 from SmoothAir (the NZ importer), four zones was about $2500. I suspect dealers get better prices.

It does take more effort to install than without this. There's extra dampers to install, wires to run, units to mount, screen to mount, and setup to do. $6K for a larger house is probably about right. If you do get the Airtouch, as for the bypass zone feature, to avoid having a spill zone. Read my FAQ if you don't know what that is.

Having individual units in rooms off a single outdoor unit can be cheaper and easier in some cases. They're uglier up on wall, but you don't need return vents and don't need to think about spill zones. Ducted is typically quieter, so long as the outdoor unit isn't close to bedrooms.

Quinny

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#3075455 12-May-2023 14:08

timmmay:

Having individual units in rooms off a single outdoor unit can be cheaper and easier in some cases. They're uglier up on wall, but you don't need return vents and don't need to think about spill zones. Ducted is typically quieter, so long as the outdoor unit isn't close to bedrooms.

I'm still happy with my 9-year-old multi-system as I have 4 heat pumps with it (lounge, master bedroom, study, dining/2nd lounge). If doing now, I would add wi-fi options, but still hoping to retrofit that anyway just Daiken ones are not cheap. It lets me heat where and when I want. As others have said depends on the age of the home, insulation, and size of rooms. But I do think its worth looking at.

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