Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Daikin Inverter Heat Pump on the building roof mounted on a chimney stack

My Daikin Inverter Heat Pump

In 2008 when we did major construction in our apartment, merging 3 small 1-bedroom into one big duplex 3-bedrooms, the heating systems had to be renewed: each apartment had its own natural gas heating system, and two out of three were more than 20 years old and really needed to be changed

That's when I looked into having an Inverter Heat Pump installed to replace all these individual systems
That was a good opportunity to change to a system that is clean and more flexible: it uses only elctricity (can be made from renewable sources like wind and solar), two thirds of the energy to heat up comes from the calories in the ambiant air, and it can heat up and cool too, and this room per room, pretty fast on top of it

I thought the best place to mount the main external unit was on the roof, onto a chimney stack (all chimney stacks are sealed because unused)



Discussing with a colleague who had done that, he told me that Daikin was a very good brand, with good reputation for the quality of their products
I contacted them in Paris and they gave me only two contractors in my district qualified by them to do the job; I contacted both and got two quotes, close to each other, and hired the one I liked best
They did great job in only one day and a half:
- They installed this exactly like I wanted: they used the chimney stack I told them to use, passed the cables and fluid conducts through the chimney stack and made them run in the attic, going down through the ceiling right on top of each unit, no piping is visible at all :-)
- And most important for me, nothing shows from the street, you have to look from above to see it

I had the gas supply cut off for good and was happy about it (gas prices are always going up, following petrol prices), and if natural pollutes less than coal, it's still not good for in my opinion

The external unit is securely mounted onto the chimney stack, on the most discret side (hidden from the street)

As I asked the cables and conducts are running down through & inside the chimney stack

Here is a view from the sky (taken by a plane)



We have 5 internal units, with the same capacity, one in each bedroom, and two in the dining room / family room that is much bigger than a bedroom

These units are independent from each other, meaning, I can turn on the heating in the dining room only, for example, closing the kids rooms, and use the energy to heat up only the room where I would spend the day alone if working from home during the week let's say. When the kids are back from school, we turn their room units back on. We usually stop the heating completely (all units off) when going to bed, because it would be a waste anyways; Then when we get up in the morning, I turn the heat on in the dining room only to have breakfast, and we go up from 16-17°C to 20°C in 10 or 15 minutes ! it is very quick, because the hot air is blowed everywhere and fills up the room fast

White on white, very discret, they open up to let the air in and out, their fan is very silent, and we no more  have radiators taking space on the walls

Upstairs in the dining room/family room


Downstairs in the master bedroom


This unit is practically invisible when you enter the room because hidden behind this leftover part of wall


Now the costs:
External unit was 5000 EUR
Each Internal unit was 1000 EUR
Labor & parts was 2500 EUR
Total was then 12,500 EUR, but an incentive on 50% of the External unit was credited back to me :-) so the whole system cost me 10,000 EUR => not bad at all I think :-) and now I am saving everyday ... 

5 comments:

  1. Excellent post! Heat pumps are indeed great, litteraly taking energy from thin air.

    The only problem is the efficiency in the long run. From the first year of the installation, did you monitor the electrical consumption of it? Because if it deteriorates and have a COP of 1, it works basically like a heater.

    Do you have a warranty from Dalkin that certifies that the COP will stay flat during a certain amount of time ? (A bit like a car battery)

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  2. Hi & Thanks :-)
    I have a 5 yeras warranty I think, and an annual check up from the installer and once they had to refill fsome fluid and fix a tiny leak, but other than that no problem
    The COP is not going to drop just like this you know, it is Japanese stuff
    Well what I use to tell my colleagues is that my average electricity bill is 52 EUR/month including everything (heat pump, water heater, cooking, oven, etc) and I think is much cheaper than gas

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  3. I'm accustomed with heat pumps but you didn't give any specs, how I was suppose to know that it has a Japanese origin? :)

    Thanks for the info by the way. The 50% cut is clearly interesting. Don't know if the rate were adjusted back from now.

    Heat pumps are so efficient, it's strange to think that so much people literary wants to produce heat only from petrol or natural gas. Producing heat from a cold source surely looks crazy at first sight. Maybe.

    PS: Can you reverse it to produce cold?

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  4. Yes it is Japanese, I thought I would be obvious (but maybe only for me); Japanses have had a long experience with these, and they usually build stuff for long lasting periods and with high level of quality
    Of course it can be reversed to produce cold (mentionned in my post) and we actually almost never use that function, but in extremely hot days, we use the drying function (which is removing moisture from the air) and it is works great without consuming too much power

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  5. You have different heat pumps model. Yours is a air-air model and Japaneses indeed have great products because it minimizes its footprint and can easily switch to a coll mode, so precious in humid and hot Japanese islands.

    But you have other models too like the water-air, water-water, etc. where great European companies work their way out too.

    Only problem is the lack of inertia, where a air-water model is interesting (and can produce hot water too) but costs are higher because of the installation.

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