16 June 2009

Flawed ACT Housing rollout of Airoheat hot water tanks - 'green' maybe, but don't actually work!

| miz
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A lot of govie houses had perfectly good electric hot water tanks replaced by DUX AIROHEAT hot water units that have a reverse fridge unit on top (as described here)

My previous (perfectly good) water tank was off peak and not expensive to run (I was paying around $50 per month through direct debit).

I don’t know if I will save any money on the new Airoheat, but if I do it’s because it doesn’t actually heat the water properly!

Problems:
1. It is intrusively noisy, and
2. It does not seem to be able to cope with Canberra’s winter.

Mine sounds like a noisy fan night and day, which is an issue as it is situated near the laundry which is also near my daughters (2) bedroom window. Remember, govie houses are small. There is nowhere else it could go.

Even more problematic is the fact that it ices up even when the overnight temp is nowhere near zero, causing it to constantly be in ‘de-ice’ mode and never actually get around to heating the water.

For example, child comes home from work in evening and has shower at 11pm. Morning shower is a rush job of two frantic minutes with just the hot tap running as turning on the cold would reduce the temp too low.

Calls to ACT Housing have unearthed a widespread issue with these tanks and they apparently require some kind of logic box added to them all.

This hardly seems like an efficient rollout.

I would be grateful if someone has encountered this issue and got it fixed.

I would also like to know if anyone can shed some light on the rumour that ACTEW don’t want to ‘do’ off peak hot water any more . . .?

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Gungahlin Al said :

Be consious of your neighbours with positioning of heat pumps and A/C units. Getting woken at 5am by the a/c turning on is not the way to good relationships over the fence.

How can you do anything? If your block is small and so is theirs, the A/C goes where it fits.

troll-sniffer2:32 pm 11 Jul 11

eily said :

Re: tempering valves.
Someone’s on a good deal there. If you read the paperwork that comes with one, they are supposed to be checked annually. And replaced at intervals not exceeding five years. At at least a hundred a unit plus extra for fitting.

Mind you, it would be nice if one lasted five years.

We are on our third in under seven years. The original one went: instant cold water. The second one; water temp slowly dropping down to a level that you could stand under straight hot water out of the shower head. And you needed to boil a kettle just to get clean dishes in the kitchen.

Aaah for just a couple of feet of 1/2″ copper pipe, a hacksaw and a couple of good old yorkshire fittings… not that I’m advocating the illegal bypassing of legislated water temperature nanny state measures mind you…

Re: tempering valves.
Someone’s on a good deal there. If you read the paperwork that comes with one, they are supposed to be checked annually. And replaced at intervals not exceeding five years. At at least a hundred a unit plus extra for fitting.

Mind you, it would be nice if one lasted five years.

We are on our third in under seven years. The original one went: instant cold water. The second one; water temp slowly dropping down to a level that you could stand under straight hot water out of the shower head. And you needed to boil a kettle just to get clean dishes in the kitchen.

Guys…..

Continuous flow units use 200MJ of gas everytime you turn your hot water tap on until you turn your tap off and waste between 65-90L of water per house per day…This is a fact.

Another fact is that the Dux Airoheat, as all heatpumps do have their limitations with regards to where on the house they are installed and how many people within the house they cater for, the installer MUST start to take some responsibility here, horses for courses.

I have heard about the perception out there about these, may i say fantastic units, as i have one and its the best thing ive seen, due to the fact that a few out of a couple of thousand installs have had an issue is not the best and not deserved.

Shanus…May i recoomend a 5 star gas storage unit that uses 42MJ of gas to get your watewr to temp and the ability to give you 360L of Hot water in an hour may be your solution. Ive always used the Australian made and owned Dux and the prodiy is also an amazing unit.

shanusmcmanus7:14 pm 21 Jun 09

James-T-Kirk said :

I too love my Rinnai – When it arrived we couldn’t set the heat higher than 50C in the kitchen – (all for the bathrooms being limited to 50C), but a bit of an internet search, and we can set the water in the Kitchen to 75C – Whoot!

Bloody stoopid govmit limiting what I can set my hot water heater to – Next they will want to tell me how old I *have* to be to retire!

I am trying to decide what to buy to replace a leaking electric off-peak HWS. If I got a gas Rinnai Infinity, how would I set it to 75C for the kitchen?

Dux have been aware of the problems with their heat pumps. They have a new model suitable for frost areas, SubZero D2FH00000C. My worry is the noise, as mine would have to go near my neighbour’s bedroom.

Any other ideas? Three bedrooms, 5 people.

miz said :

And JC that’s terrible, I hope you are chasing up such poor management.

She called John Hargreaves office about it a few weeks back no one answered so she left a message. 10 minutes later the minister called back. By the end of the day the old girl received a call from housing and has had someone come and quote housing on insulation which her old house seriously lacks (beleive this was part of a recent budget) and they are looking at other options, including moving her to somewhere else. My guess though nothing will happen until winter is over.

They aren’t phasing out off-peak electricity.

If you have a look at http://www.actewagl.com.au/prices/home/ACT/elec.aspx you will see that the SmartSaver Plan (this is what they want to get everybody onto) still has off-peak.

If fact, that plan has 2 modes of off-peak, one that is for regular use during the off-peak times and the other is a controlled use (like the current switched off-peak supply).

I say again, that thing about getting rid off off-peak sounds like a load of crap. It is greatly in the electricity industry’s interest to promote off-peak use of electricity, because it makes the entire network function more efficiently which increases everybody’s return on investment.

Lucky you, Reprobate – I’m suspecting the limiting valve is the culprit. We don’t need it as there are three teens and me.

And thanks for info about off-peak –
“And yes it sounds like all electricity suppliers will phase (little sparky pun there) out off-peak over the next couple of years – only to be environmentally friendly, you understand…”

This confirms what I heard – can you explain their rationale of helping the environment by stopping off peak?

And JC that’s terrible, I hope you are chasing up such poor management.

don’t get me started on act govt housing. I was offered a place 2 years ago – a bed sit, after my emergency housing ticket came up. strange as I had been gainfully employed for oh, 17 years, and was able to turn it down…

Oh you want a flawed ACT Housing decicion my mums place takes the cake. In the 30 years she has lived there the only ‘upgrade’ she ever reveived was the removal of carpet (that she installed) to be repalced with cold vinyl floor tiles and a down sizing of the heater. So now the it is not possible to get the house warm, and as the doors have large gaps under them (due to there being no carpet) even more hot air escapes. It costs her a fortune (well actualy it costs her 3 kids a fortune) in winter heating costs.

ant said :

I do hope the government is not following the US model and mandating how hot you can heat your hot water. People with kids should be able to easily set their thermostat lower to keep the kids safe but those of us without kids would like to be able to wash up in hot water, not lukewarm greasy water like in America. More nanny state nonsense.

Too late, it has been law in the ACT for a good 10 years. The max temp in a residential building is 50. Although as the document below says if you have a tank it must be set to 60 for hygine reasons with a tempering vavle bringing it back down to 50.

http://www.actpla.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/2130/Pn18.pdf

+1 to ant’s comment

I do hope the government is not following the US model and mandating how hot you can heat your hot water. People with kids should be able to easily set their thermostat lower to keep the kids safe but those of us without kids would like to be able to wash up in hot water, not lukewarm greasy water like in America. More nanny state nonsense.

I got an Airoheat installed about 3 weeks ago to replace a 20yo electric off-peak tank. Fortunately the installers forgot (cough) to include the “mandatory” limiting valve, which incidentally would have cost another $300, so mine is unrestricted – and actually pretty impressive with the hot water it produces. Yes you can hear a bit of fan drone for a few hours roughly equal to a quiet split system a/c compressor, but again placement is more critical than volume so not an issue for me or the neighbours.

Net cost for the install was under $1500 with Kev’s rebates etc; instant gas would have been double that due to relocation of the unit and piping etc. Mind you if I lived just 10km away in NSW (ugh!) it would have cost only $700 as they have a $800 State rebate as well. And yes it sounds like all electricity suppliers will phase (little sparky pun there) out off-peak over the next couple of years – only to be environmentally friendly, you understand…

I would also like to know if anyone can shed some light on the rumour that ACTEW don’t want to ‘do’ off peak hot water any more . . .?

This does not sound right at all. The push these days is for more use of different electricity tariffs – if you have the right kind of meter (the newish ones with an LCD instead of the old spinning disc) you can even have your account set up so that you pay for your normal service electricity at different rates depending on the time of day (ie. electricity used in the middle of the night is charged at off-peak rates, but you pay a premium for electricity you use in peak time). The idea is to have better price signals to flatten out the demand for electricity across the day.

You got something fixed or replaced in a govie house??? How on earth did you manage that? Seriously though I feel for you Miz, noisy machine whirring must drive you nuts…

Gungahlin Al said :

Be consious of your neighbours with positioning of heat pumps and A/C units. Getting woken at 5am by the a/c turning on is not the way to good relationships over the fence.

Might not foster great relationships, but I know that in the morning, I sure look a lot happier because my heat pump ran through the night keeping me toasty while my neighbours look frozen and angry.

Thanks everyone for all the wise advice and good info for follow up. (And damn, now I want a Rinnai infinity too!)

GardeningGirl7:31 pm 16 Jun 09

Does anyone remember when they first started recommending that HWS temps be lowered, for safety and economy, and then they discovered that was too close to the temp for growing Legionnaires so they had to revise the recommended temp? Just saying, check this before doing any adjusting.

@17

You wouldn’t get that response if you spoke to “Belconnen Al”.

LOL

Gungahlin Al5:13 pm 16 Jun 09

Be consious of your neighbours with positioning of heat pumps and A/C units. Getting woken at 5am by the a/c turning on is not the way to good relationships over the fence.

I had one of these installed recently. Tempering valve was to blame for initial cold water, but they came and adjusted it for me. All good now.

Its not that noisy. Silly to put it near a bedroom, but its quite tolerable next to my kitchen. Barely hear it.

Gungahlin Al4:19 pm 16 Jun 09

screaming banshee said :

miz, I’m just wondering if they have also fitted a tempering valve that may not have been there previously causing the hot water that is available to be ‘less hot’

Yes likely a source of the problem. When we rolled out a lot of solar HWSs in a pilot retrofit program with Brisbane City Council, we then got a number of complaints about inadequate heat. But it was invariably a tempering valve issue, where they weren’t installed before.

For those not familiar, hot water to ‘hygiene uses’ i.e. baths, showers, basins now have to be limited (under the Building Code of Australia) to 50 degrees max to prevent scalding, which IS a serious problem in older (and not so old) places. But most plumbers do this cheaply by just putting one valve right at the beginning, meaning the kitchen and laundry are also capped at 50. A “Greensmart” plumber should know how to avoid this problem.

In our new home, we specified that only the hygiene uses be tempered. They had to run a separate line for the laundry and kitchen, and this had to be copper instead of black pipe, due to the high temperatures that come out of the Endless Solar HWS. But we get great hot water where we really need it, and safe hot water where needed too.

On the noise, this is a big problem with heat pump systems. When heat pumps cost similar to a good solar HWS, and Canberra has such consistent sunny days even through winter (just not the last week or so…) I don’t understand why Housing would have gone the way of heat pumps. Poor advice I think. The noise from air conditioning units is bad enough, without throwing heat pump HWSs into the mix too.

James-T-Kirk said :

I too love my Rinnai – When it arrived we couldn’t set the heat higher than 50C in the kitchen – (all for the bathrooms being limited to 50C), but a bit of an internet search, and we can set the water in the Kitchen to 75C – Whoot!

Bloody stoopid govmit limiting what I can set my hot water heater to – Next they will want to tell me how old I *have* to be to retire!

they set it to 50c for the kiddies who are far more clever than mummy and daddy, and can work out the settings on the DVD player like the child lock – they didn’t want a child scalded by really hot water. the dishwasher still cleans, as does the washibng up in the sink under 50c temp.

Thumper, sadly, the warm fuzzies have iced over!

I’m pretty sure a tempering valve is fitted – they said the max temp is lower for safety and economic reasons.

Mind you, I could ‘turn a dial on my old one to a safe temp that also saved me money. . .

Peewee Slasher4:10 pm 16 Jun 09

Banshee’s right. All new or replacement storage hot water units must have a tempering valve fitted to limit temperature to 45 degrees.

screaming banshee said :

miz, I’m just wondering if they have also fitted a tempering valve that may not have been there previously causing the hot water that is available to be ‘less hot’

By law any new or modified hot water heaters must have a tempering valve. It must limit the temp to 60′ or 65′.

One odd thing though is with ‘infinity’ systems are limited to 50′ without a controller, or 55′ with. Not sure if this is gov regulation or just the way the company makes them. My guess is regulation as taking the cover off one reveals they can, in theory go higher, but doing so clearly loose efficency.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy4:05 pm 16 Jun 09

I’ve had a Rinnai Infinity for 7 years now, and wouldn’t have anything else.

Choose your temperature, turn on the hot, and enjoy.

And you only heat what you use.

James-T-Kirk4:02 pm 16 Jun 09

I too love my Rinnai – When it arrived we couldn’t set the heat higher than 50C in the kitchen – (all for the bathrooms being limited to 50C), but a bit of an internet search, and we can set the water in the Kitchen to 75C – Whoot!

Bloody stoopid govmit limiting what I can set my hot water heater to – Next they will want to tell me how old I *have* to be to retire!

peterh said :

makes me love my rinnai infinity. 42c constant gas heated water.

+1

screaming banshee3:43 pm 16 Jun 09

miz, I’m just wondering if they have also fitted a tempering valve that may not have been there previously causing the hot water that is available to be ‘less hot’

Peewee Slasher3:32 pm 16 Jun 09

Reverse cycle air-conditioning or heat pumps lose efficiency below 4 degrees, i.e. they don’t work.

makes me love my rinnai infinity. 42c constant gas heated water.

Yet another example of the Government giving the public the cold shoulder.

Sorry can I correct the cost of my old hot water – should be $50 per fortnight, not per month.

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