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Rank 2
January 21, 2025
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Zubadan shows consumed hot water energy bigger than delivered hot water energy

  • January 21, 2025
  • 41 replies
  • 755 views

Hello! We have recently installed a 12kw Zubadan air heat pump in nov2024. I am not happy with the usage as we used thermostats and it consumed too much - but this is another topic. The issue now is that in january the consumed hot water energy is bigger than the delivered hot water energy: consumed DHW - 186 delivered DHW - 141. How is this possible? I don’t know how the settings are done for hot water, but this not seems physically possible. 
We have the model with the 200l hydrotank inside.

Best answer by juliamc

I think what you’re seeing with the flow and return temperatures is the heat pump cycling.

This graph shows an example of cycling on an Ecodan of a similar size to yours, its from a government trial which I was on.

The red and green lines show the flow and return temperatures. Cycling results in a poor COP and is a symptom of an oversized heat pump.

 

Your thermistor reading for TH1A is 26 deg, which I believe is the current room temperature, so I’m not sure why the heating is running at all when you took your previous photos. ​I need @M.isterW for more info on the heating WD curve etc.

41 replies

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 23, 2025


You’re very kind to say so ! I wish I knew more about your system but I hope we can come up with an answer for you somehow. Meanwhile I’ve had another thought…

Mine is also a split system, so refrigerant is pumped from the outdoor unit to the indoor unit to transfer the heat generated in the compressor. So at some point during the installation an F-gas licenced engineer has to charge the refrigerant from a pressurised gas bottle into the units. If for any reason there is not enough refrigerant the system will struggle to operate properly. Mine had a one-off serious leak and it lost about half of it !! The system still worked but with a low COP.

There’s no immediate way of knowing this except in cold damp weather when ice forms on the grill at the back of the outdoor unit.  Normally there should be an even coating of ice, but if the refrigerant is low you’ll see bands like in my photo. 

Now would be a good time to check !! The ice is periodically melted off so if there’s none there at first give it a while and it’ll be back, around 0 to 3 degrees 🥶 

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 23, 2025

Do you have screen 2/3 of the summary of settings? The numbers look fine on the other screens, as far as I can see.  ​@M.isterW would you agree?

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 23, 2025

I will look at the outside unit when it will freeze again..

I forgot to add this picture: 

 

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 23, 2025

Thanks. To my untrained eyes that all looks fine. 
Has the house temperature settled to a level where the heat pump is working again ? It looks like when you took the photo it wasn’t running as flow temp was 15 deg (if I’m reading that right).

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 24, 2025

From yesterday until now it was very hot inside ~ 25and outside around 13 degrees. I didn’t saw the pump running during the day, and I dont’t know if during the night it started as it didn’t needed. But now before midnight I checked the data, pump was just started I think

Then at midnight verified again the pump and it was stopped, but showed very high temp for water, the curve is set to a maximum of 30 for 0 degrees and for 8 is 27.

 

 

And the consumed energy for one day with the pump mostly stopped and warm outside is 21kw..how can this be possible?

 

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 25, 2025

Maybe it’s worth checking the heat pump readings as your installer and M.isterW suggested they aren’t always accurate.
Could you take meter readings from your main supply meter eg today and this time tomorrow, to compare how much electricity is being used in total over a whole day. Also note the readings on the hp controller at those times. As the house is still cooling down it would probably only reflect a hot water cycle, plus of course anything else used in the house. If you have any other heavy use items eg an EV, and deduct the amount they use it should indicate whether the heat pump is actually using the amount it states. 

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 25, 2025

We verified the total electrical consumption for the house and it seems that what the heat pump shows for consumed is similar with the calculations that we did extracting the usual household items. So maybe the delivered energy is not accurate, but the consumed is…

What I noticed now is that the pump started for heating water (after we stopped it today so that it doens’t start heating the house)  and it uses the electrical resistance to heat up water as the firebolt is displayed…

What settings should we do so that it doens’t uses the electrical for heating the water? 6 degrees outside…


There are so many things that I don’t understand and that are nor working as I am logically thinking..it makes me think that maybe it’s an actual issue with the pump and not just with the settings. The problem is that we cannot find a good specialist to know, the person that installed it didn’t helped us much…

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 25, 2025

I also realized that probably when the water is heating the THW1 and THW2 are not showing the temp for underfloor heating…now it stopped the hot water and changed to the house heating

 

juliamc
Rank 20
Rank 20
January 26, 2025

Sorry I’ve only just thought of this…  consulting Dr Google I’ve found advice about setting the times for the water heatup…

Can you set HWdrop to 10 and HWtime to 90.

Not sure how ECO mode affects the water heating process but this will trigger the water heat up less frequently and let it run for longer.

Is the tank reaching 50 degrees? It looks to me like it isn’t.

Further thoughts: you could lower HWtemp to 48 maybe ?

ECO mode on your system means the hot water is heating up more gradually at a slower rate with a less hot flow temperature. 
 

There’s a very good forum with a lot of knowledgeable heat pump owners at renewableheatinghub.co.uk so if you feel we’re getting nowhere with your problem it might be worth asking there. However I’m not giving up !!

MoranaAuthor
Rank 2
January 26, 2025

I stopped the immersion and booster heaters and the dropped the HW temp by 10c; I will also drop HW time. Eco is already on and the tank reaches 48-49 from what I saw.

Heating is still not ok, consuming much more than expected..I was looking at THW1 and THW2 and saw that the difference betweend them is not that big..should’t be bigger?