We have a contract with a Stiebel-Electron maintenance firm. Not the same as the installers. They come once a year for annual check-up which is €220. But then you can all them in whenever there is a problem. The only time we had a problem they were able to diagnose and fix over the phone as it was an issue with the programming. Possibly following an electricity cut. They only deal with their contract customers.
Worth it for us to get on the books of someone who knows what they are doing as the heat pump provides fir the gîte so has to get fixed quickly (not that it ever has in 9 years since installed). And instant call-out maintenance firms are rare as hen’s teeth in our area.
Before making any new purchase I would survey the area local to you for engineers and see what companies they support. Mitsubishi and Daikin should be everywhere. Lesser imports always a problem even when in reality they are white labelled units from a major manufacturer. New units are far more efficient, far quieter than even 6-7 years ago. Some use a 3 pipe system now that allows heat recovery so whilst producing heat in aircon mode they could put that into the hot water cylinder.
@billybutcher
A useable chimney is a boon…
We camped in one room, when we first moved in and needed to use the fireplace to keep ourselves warm while it was -15c outdoors…
Nextdoor neighbours were astounded at our courage and gave us some logs… firm friendships are forged during such times…
I’d definitely suggest folk do guard a well-maintained chimney/fire-thingy if only as a backup…
Something I’ve learnt about life in rural France. Having come from capital city centres I had previously viewed these annual maintenance contracts as completely unnecessary when there are plumbers and heat engineers on every street corner. But now it can be the only way to be able to get service at short notice. So we have an annual contract with our plumber/chauffagiste, with the heat engineer, the chimney sweep and the hedge cutter. 2 years for the arboriculturalist.
Yes, it’s done that before and I’ve arrived to find it sulking and had to reset it - turns out that “frost protect” doesn’t do what you think it does, and needs hot water in the system. That’s why I tend to leave it on during the cold months now.
On this system I’m pretty certain that both the frost protect and defrost cycles - which it runs periodically if the air temp is below a set point (not sure if that’s 5° or 10° but somewhere around there) involve reversing the flow so that warm water from the buffer or DHW cylinder is circulated into the outside heat pump - I’m pretty certain that the first thing that it did this morning was just that, the DHW temp has definitely dropped a significant amount - but the system reports a flow of 52° at the moment which is hotter than the DHW cylinder (it’s set as high as I dare frankly to try to at least dissuade legionella from growing) and a return of 17° - certainly the output side from the heat exchanger feels hot, but so does the return from the system. However I *think* the return is a bit hotter (though potentially could be confusing if it is still runing reverse flow).
I’ve turned the immersion off, so if it working it should maintain temps and eventually start to flow water around the rads, if it isn’t it will gradually cool down - but the exit air from the heat exchanger does feel colder than ambient so maybe it just needed a kick start (why it got into that situation is another matter).
My bet is somewhat on not working though, until proven otherwise.
Basically very little specific to Stiebel Eltron and all more modern systems.
I rather wish complex systems like this had a mode whereby you could get a system status such as “running defrost” or “heat pump idle as temperatures above set points”.
I guess if it did that it would be easy and the maintenance engineers wouldn’t be able to charge as much
Have you any way of checking the gas pressure?
The compressor needs a certain pressure to work, if the pressure is to low, as a quick fix you could ask your local garage if they wouldn’t mind topping it up if they have the right gas.
Yes agreed but that would through up an error code immediately. As Billy said if the unit is having trouble on its defrost cycle. An electric backup defrost would be a good thing to add on if possible.
Also checking for the basics like clogged condensate pipe. Its not always the tricky tech bits but the srevice guys make out it is to increase sales. I know, they have been trying it on with me at work for a couple of months!
Other than there isn’t a “refrigerant low” error showing, no.
You’d have thought so - it’s certainly one of the errors in the list.
I don’t think there is one - more a condensing boiler thing?
I don’t think it’s an option - it’s a WPL 16S, the only defrost mechanism listed is “flow reversal”.
At the moment the DHW temp is being maintained at the daytime level, the CH buffer temp is rising and it has started pushing some (lukewarm at the moment) water through the rads - given that the DHW temp is not dropping I don’t think it’s just stealing heat from there for the radiators. The immersion is off so I’m not just expensively heating the water using the electricity supply directly.
My theory, not sure how plausible, is that the water in the cylinder was just warm enough to run the defrost (that’s another error and the one I encountered previously), but not warm enough for it to be effective (i.e the heat exchanger temps remained below whatever point would have made it happy - assuming that it measures/takes into account some target temp) - so it got “stuck”. I’m clutching at straws a bit though, the system normally starts OK from stone cold - and indeed colder than it is now when we came over in December, even if I’ve had to clear the “water too cold to run defrost” error to get it going.
That’s about the only way I can think it could have go itself into a mode where the DHW pump was running, I think the fans were running (hard to tell from inside when there’s a gale blowing outside anyway) but no heat was being produced - but where no fault condition was triggered.
Which is pretty expensive given that they probably don’t do much when they do the check.
That said I think even if the system is working I will invite someone over for some entretien rather than dépannage - but it can be with less urgency.
The engineer tends to spend nearly two hours removing, draining and restoring bits. And the advantage is that in your situation he would have been at the door this morning to fix it if he hadn’t already identified and resolved the problem last night. Which, since neither of us are techie, and we have gîte clients who need heating is money worth spending. We are happy to spend money on reducing stress in our lives.
as with JJ, the engineer spends ~2 hours checking the whole system out and checking/refreshing the refrigerant as well as the correct function of the individual units inside the property. It’s not a false economy in our view but a very necessary step in the correct maintenance of the system on which we rely and establishing enduring relationships.
Our garagiste performs an equally useful function in checking out our car even though there may appear to be nothing wrong with it.
No, inside the fan core units and on the condenser as well normally. Condensate pumps if fitted (no gravity drain) are always failing. But pipes do get blocked with nasty gunk.
During the annual service they should do a leak test, check pressure relief valves high and low pressure and clean filters with a deep clean of the heat exchanger coils certainly after inspection, minimum.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not against maintenance, and the older I get the more I am of the mindset that although I *might* be able to do do some of it, I can’t do all of it (checking the refidgerant gas pressure for instance) or will miss stuff that simply needs experience to spot so paying someone to do it right is preferable to spending my own time, only doing half a job and getting that wrong.
But, as I said, the original installer blanked me on an enquiry for a devis for fitting a room thermostat and annual (or bi-annual) maintenance, so I thought “sod him”, put the thermostat in myself (massively improving the performance and general “well behaved ness” of the system) and figured I’d get someone else in if I needed dépannage.
220€ annually seems a bit steep, that’s all (different if you are running a gite - I quite see Jane’s point).
It’s interesting that the system can be set up without one - it relies on surveying the building for heat loss, then giving the controller that info and then relying on the outside temperature and desired room temp to work out how much heating to be doing.
There’s also no way to adjust the room temperature without the room unit, which allows for +/- 5° around the system set point - the only way otherwise is to fiddle with the target room temperature on the controller itself - which isn’t that easy to do, it’s down one of the sub menus that only appears in the system maintenance mode (though all you have to do to get that is open the flap on the controller, some of the more “interesting” stuff like reading and resetting faults is pass code protected).
Once fitted the system started behaving much better than it had - instead of erratically heating or not when we arrived it runs the rads until the house is warm, then stops.
I think the outside temp+heat loss curve thing might work when the system is running continuously - but it didn’t work well starting from a cold system and a cold house.
