We have a bit of a mystery here - the brand new, expensive, ducted air-con in the house does not work!
So what does not work exactly?
Not actually able to cool a room!
The biggest issue is it cannot cool a room - not even close. (It can't heat one much either)
This is a temperature plot for my study, 3m x 3m, you don't get a lot smaller than that in terms of a room to air-con. A=Portable unit on, B=Portable unit off, C=Start two hour cool only full fan test.
The test was with the other room vent closed so the unit was only cooling one room, in to a closed empty room, no heating on anywhere in the house, and outside temp of 19C. Not a challenge for any air-con really, and as you can see, the cheap portable unit managed with no problem (even with the door open most of the day). And yes, the fan speed control does work, and was on full.
I expected at point C the room to cool at least as fast as the cheap portable unit. What happened is it just about managed 0.8C in two hours! It was blowing cold air (measured at 9C) but not as lot...
The fix - well, the unit only has a 100mm vent in to the room. This seems small I must admit, and at full fan like this it is noisy. So they are changing to a 150mm vents today...
Did it work? In short, no. The bigger vents are quieter, which is nice, but the same tests showed maybe 1.5C drop and bottoming out just below 21C after more than an hour. Compare these big 3.5kW systems to a much cheaper 1.5kW portable unit which is able to drop my study (and hall way as door was open) from 23C to 18C in 15 minutes. With the door open the new air-con cannot cool my room at all!
This is now waiting on Mitsubishi to explain and fix. I won't say who the installers yet as they have been pretty good. Let's give them the chance to get Mitsubishi to fix it all.
But how is this even possible?
The issue for me here is that they sell this system, even with the smaller 2x 100mm outflow vents. So forgetting, for a moment, whether the suppliers got it wrong for the rooms we are trying to cool (two rooms each unit, one of which is much bigger than this 3m x 3m study), we have the issue that this whole unit running at full cooling and full fan cannot cool a 3m x 3m room.
So what the hell is the this unit for - what size room are they expecting it to be used with, ever?
The change to 150mm vents actually meant them cutting out the larger holes as the cowl as it is only supplied with the 100mm outlets.
This leads me to think something else is wrong, but we have no idea what. How could this ever work anywhere?
Cannot set temperature!
The controller has options - either "return air" temperature measured at the lossnay unit, or the room temperature at the controller. The controller has a sensor in it. Given that we have two rooms per unit, we are using the temperature at the controller (which is not in the room with the return in it). This is all as per the manual.
Only it does not work! Cooling the room down to 19C (using the portable unit, obviously), it showed 24C. Indeed, it even went up from 23C while we did this. Using freezer spray actually on its sensor does nothing, still 24C. No clue where it is measuring but it is not in the room - we even tried putting hot air in the room that has the return air flow but that did not make it go up at all.
The fix: Well, again, waiting on Mitsubishi.
Watch this space.
