My DIY installed Vaillant AroTherm Plus is now LIVE

championc

Just a quick update

My January Pinergy bill landed, and it's €140 Net after €30 FIT.

So €140 to run the house, cooking and heating, and run an EV. That's less than €5 per day 🤩

Heatpumpmonitor.org has my SCOP at 3.9 👍

championc

COP in the past week has been over 5 each day 😎

monseiur

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123181684#Comment_123181684

Hi champion, I have been lurking in the background for some time now. Your figures are very impressive, considering that your walls are cavity/hollow blocks do think that the external insulation that you plan is worth the expense ?

championc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123363924#Comment_123363924

The only way it can be worth it is by doing a self install of the wrapping.

I am possibly spending less than €500 a year on electricity for heating, so I wouldn't have a hope in hell of recouping the €20k+ that it would cost to have it done by a company, over my lifetime.

Yes, the house is far more comfortable now, and will be even more so, which is just about making it worth doing myself.

Of course, the low running cost is down to my batteries and 5c Pinergy night rate power

championc

Insulation boards all installed, and now the rendering has started 😀

championc

Not hugely cold outside yet, but very encouraging signs with that COP figure

championc

My SCOP from 01 Nov last year has been solid on 4.20, but is now rising upwards due to the external insulation and the lower heat curve value.

championc

Getting there 😎

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123869514#Comment_123869514

So that's the k-rend or coloured external coat there. How are you finding blending it in at the joins between a day's work?

championc

I am using Credit CT-74 for the top coat. You can't scrape it any thinner than about 1.5mm, so you only have hard edges, and so you just render one section up to the next.

championc

Couldn't help posting this - top of the COP chart for the past 30 days 🤩

Max Abbey

Awesome, well done

zakalibit

@championc regarding no buffer tank in your install, as I understand rads do not need to have any TRVs, neither any termostasts need to be in action, i.e. they have to be fully open? This is to ensure there is no short circuit happening, i.e. the heatpunp has always water to run around?

championc

Volume is needed in the system for defrost cycles. But it is also a key part of efficiency.

The efficiency comes from the system running constantly, with little or no system restarts. So then, if there was insufficient volume, that would create greater chances of the heat not being lost enough going around only a few rads.

But none of this is any excuse to install a buffer tank. If you somehow need volume, install a volumizer.

A buffer will complicate your system. The system itself has a pump, which SHOULD be able to drive the water around your whole house, provided that that pipework is correctly sized. But if you install a buffer, you then need a secondary pump, which MUST run at exactly the same speed as the units pump.

zakalibit

That is what I'm looking at at the moment, volumiser like install but without it, i.e. make sure rads are always open.

I'm considering https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/samsung-heat-pumps/Samsung_r290_integrated as it has a builtin expansion vessel and flow sensor, as well it comes with EHS Wifi Kit and Control Centre. So I have to buy very few extras.

Here is the schematics for the direct connection

https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/pdfs/samsung-r290-integrated-quick-start-10-24.pdf

championc

Just a quick thing on the WiFi connection - what are you hoping to use that for ?

For me, apps are utterly pointless for two reasons. Firstly, once setup correctly, you shouldn't need to touch anything 365 days a year. It shuts down automatically in summer. Secondly, if you want data, you don't want to be relying on some cloud server. You want to pull data directly locally off the unit.

zakalibit

Fair points.

As a minimum I hope to use wifi for a lazy way to monitor the system. I did not figure out yet the data extraction from the unit. First I'm focusing on getting it installed and running, then I'll figure out the rest :) as the parts and install part is already overwhelming for me :)

I see it has HA integration, so I'll be looking at leat to integrate it with my HA.

Grassy Knoll

hi did you re-pipe your rads ? Fair due to you, from the bit I understood it is working well and blows narrative that ‘it has to be a modern house for HP to work’ out of the water. Fair play to you!!

championc

I had to re-pipe one section, which was a real pita. There was a 1/2" going from the dining room doorway to the sitting room, feeding the sitting room main rad and the hall rad.

Running at lower temperatures, I needed to add a second rad to the sitting room. This meant that there were 3 rads downstream of this 1/2", so I redid it with 3/4", as I didn't want to fall foul over something simple.

The real pita was the fact that this was under a glued laminate floor, partially inaccessible.

I'm glad I did it, as if I didn't hit the COP levels I hoped for, I would have left myself with a massive "what if".

The big advantage of self installation was that I took it up in chunks, carefully, cleaned off all joints afterwards, and was able to relay it to the point you'd never know it came up 🤩

championc

And if you are planning to import it from the UK, would you not have considered the AroTherm ?

zakalibit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123919508#Comment_123919508

😎 no https://groupsumi.ie/climate-control/aerothermal-energy/outdoor-aerothermal-units/samsung-ehs-r290-monobloc-air-source-heat-pump-5-0-kw-ae050cxybek-eu

+ I think AroTherm is more expensive, not by a huge amount