I am currently getting more and more phone calls, asking me to take a look at their newly installed heat pump, which I am more than happy to do every time, taking my time to optimise settings explain to the customer how the heat pump works, how to set up the weather compensation, the correct control strategy and any recommendations I have on their system.
Most of these phone calls are mainly due to their high electric bills in this cold weather, what I’m confronted with on most occasions is poorly installed installations.
I don’t think this should reflect on the installer itself, not all the time. It should reflect on the industry and the lack of proper training and good engineers in the industry. Especially now we are pushing more towards heat pumps and trying to move away from gas boilers and keeping efficiency at the forefront of our minds.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the types of leading industry training from Heat Geek or Northampton Academy teaching correct system design especially for low temperature systems and heat pumps that run at the lower difference of temperature of 5deg. The importance of getting flow rates correct for the perfect transfer of heat and kilowatt exchange.
Set up and commissioning of a Heat pump is also key to any installation and I see Cop (coefficient performance) of less than 2 in a-lot of these I go out too just because the weather compensation is set way to high and there are third party controls switching the heat pump on/off or there pipe work is undersized and there heat pump is struggling to keep up with the heat loss.
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