New air-con, part 4

As you know, I got air-con last year, and it had to be taken out. That was a Mitsubishi system. It did not manage to heat or cool even the smallest room sensibly, and had a show stoppers in terms of temperature control of the rooms. So yes, removed. We did keep the lossnay for fresh air though.

I have now got 4 Seasons Solutions to put in new air-con. It works. A lot of this blog is comparing the Mitsubishi with my new Daikin system.

Outside unit

The Mitsubishi system was set up with two outside units on the back wall. Each drove an inside unit. The Daikin is done with one outside unit. It is ironic that the old system seemed to really lack power to actually heat or cool even with more units of a similar size.

A single unit is better, not just for appearance but if there are any issues with planning permission. A heating only single outside unit is actually a permitted development. Yes this unit cools, but you then get in to interesting debates about what happens if you change a heating only (permitted development) to a heating and cooling (non permitted development) and how such a change "does not change the external appliance of the property" so is outside the scope of planning permission. One hopes we don't get in to that debate. In our case I have pictures of the place from just before we moved in with two large outside air-con units that had been there for years, so at best this is about the fact that the air-con location is slightly different. I doubt there will be issues, and retrospective planning permission is not usually an issue. If it was two units, it would be a different matter. It was quite handy as the second power cable and RCBO can be used for the solar install now.

Inside units

The Mitsubishi system had two inside units, each covering two rooms. I should have decided against this, in hindsight. The plan was that we would have motorised vents to allow each to work one room, the other room, or both. That actually worked. We also had relays to switch the controller from one room to the other (it oddly only handles one controller!). That too worked. What did not work is using the controller for temperature, so we could never control temperature in the second room on each unit (assuming the air-con worked properly in the first place, which it did not). So that was a show stopper.

The new system has 4 separate inside units. Even so, it is cheaper. It is cheaper than the rest of the original bill after paying for the lossnay to stay, even.

Like the Mitsubishi, these inside units are ducted. This is nice as it means no big wall mount unit - which frankly would have been difficult to find space to mount in some rooms.

However, one of the rooms has no loft. With the Mitsubishi system, we managed to run the air flow duct behind plaster board (there was a surprising gap) and behind wardrobes in a room above. It was a lot of work (which we did, not the installers). We decided that trying to run two more ducts, at 4 times the size each, would really not be practical. So we went with one of the 4 rooms having a wall mount unit. The pipework for this was somewhat easier.

We kept the original duct for the lossnay, so we still have fresh air.

Ducts

The ducts were different. The new system had ducts that are 4 times the size of the Mitsubishi system. This is where we changed one to the new ducts.

The vent/covers are nicer too.

What is more fun is the original Mitsubishi installation had ducts that were half the size of this, i.e. 1/8th of the size we now have, and they were adamant they should have been enough!

Wired controls

The Mitsubishi system had a separate control for the lossnay and air-con, which was annoying in itself for an integrated system. It allowed one air-con control for each inside unit. It could not use the controller as temperature reference - crazy.

The new system has wired wall mount remotes. They are not bad. (yes, some holes to fill).

The system can use the controller for temperature - yay, and all 4 rooms have separate control (the wall mount uses an IR control though). The system, as a whole, is only heat or cool at once, but each room is separately controlled at separate temperatures at the same time. As we have central heating (also controlled by Shelly modules) if we ever need mixed heat and cool we can do that easily enough.

The new controllers also have bluetooth and an app. This means the controller itself is pretty simple, and all the admin or installer menu stuff is on the app. Not a bad compromise.

Computer integration

This is where the Mitsubishi was really limited. There was no WiFi or bluetooth. The unit did have some connections that allowed for external control, so as fan speed, but not something simple like heat/cool mode. I was expecting to connect to this, and maybe even reverse engineer the wired remote. I stopped doing that when it seemed clear that the whole thing was not going to work well.

The Daikin system, however, has bluetooth on the wired controllers, and wifi modules. OK, yes, I have reverse engineered and replaced the WiF modules, but even so, that was not too hard. What they provided did actually work (if you are happy with a cloud based system).

The fact I now have fine control using my own WiFi modules is a real win. At present it is heating my room over night (see image on right).

Some limitations of ducted systems

Having now tried two ducted systems, they are a little different than the wall mount I have been used to, and some things still hold true for that.

Both systems had few fan settings. The Mitsubishi had 4 levels, but only the top two actually ran the compressor, the first two just blow air, so very limited. The Daikin has 3 levels. The wall mount Daikin has 5 levels and "auto" and a "night" mode. I'd love a "night" mode on the ducted systems to be honest, but looking in to noise attenuators possible, or just getting used to it.

Another caveat is that a ducted system, having vents in the ceiling, it can take a while to heat as the heat fills from the top of the room - this creates a noticeable lag in heating at bed level. The wall mounted unit is much better at this as it able to direct the airflow down and create more circulation.

The proof of the system

The real proof will be in the summer, and we will see. Tests so far suggests it just works, and works really well.

Ooops

Almost forgot, as people will ask: It cost around £10k and took a week to install.

Part 5

New Mitsubishi Ducted Air-con with Lossnay (bad user interface)

As some of you will know, I have moved to sunny Wales. My new home did not have air-con so I am finally having that installed. I have gone for a ducted system this time (yes, more expensive) as it allows simple vents in the ceiling rather than a large indoor unit in the rooms, and it should be quieter. However, the main reason is that we now live on a main road, so cannot really open windows to any of the bedrooms - the ducted system I have gone for has a "lossnay" which provides fresh air as well, and saves us having to open windows. More on the actual aircon later, this post is just about the quite unbelievably bad user interface.

For a start this is an "industrial" air-con, which sadly means it is a simple wired controller and not WiFi, or anything useful like that - do not be surprised to find a "reverse engineering Mitsubishi air-con controllers" in a future blog post :-)

The air-con is three parts, an outdoor unit, and indoor unit (GUG) which does the cooling/heating, and a lossnay which does the fresh air (filtering and heat exchange). This is in the loft...

The lossnay is on the left and the GUG is on the right. To be clear, the GUG is designed to work with a lossnay, it cannot work without one as it has no fans of its own. I think the lossnay could be used for fresh air without a GUG though.

Controller

The controller is not too bad, it has a dot matrix LCD and buttons. It is newer than some where they have fixed icons on LCD. It has the obvious controls: mode, temperature, and fan speed. Good.

But, no. The fan speed says "unsupported function" if you try and change it. You need to have a separate "lossnay controller", which basically just lets you set the fan speed.

But there is a 4 wire link cable between the lossnay and GUG, what the hell is that used for? Well, all I can see is that it means is it turns off the lossnay when turning off the GUG. Remember the GUG can only be used with a lossnay attached, this is not some obscure optional extra.

We (myself and the installer) found the setting to tell the GUG it has a lossnay connected (but this unit cannot work without one so why is there even a setting?!), and it shows a nice icon indicating it has a lossnay. But still does not let you control the lossnay from it. Why? Also, the icon looks like it shows the "mode" the lossnay is in (yes, it seems to have a non heat exchange mode, which is pointless) and fan speed, but in fact the icon does not change to actually show the mode or fan speed. How shit is the UI?

Apparently you can run the lossnay without a controller, and the GUG will turn on/off at full fan speed, which is not that useful.

Of course, this also means you cannot run the fan in an auto mode as the lossnay does not know what the GUG is doing. So you cannot have full fan to get to temperature and quiet fan to maintain temperature.

Oh, and crossed zeros. A pet hate of mine. This is not a hand written COBOL coding sheet in the '70s, it is a temperature display. Why make it look like 28℃ not 20℃ to anyone with poor eyesight?

Another gem is that you can turn the temperature down to 12℃, nice, but then it snaps back to 19℃. Why 19℃, that is way higher than I have seen on other air-cons - it will probably do as I would rarely want it that cold. But still, why? And why allow setting below that if it cannot be set lower? Just stupid UI again!

Another thing that seems odd is that the controllers are identical. Same display, and buttons. Looks like identical hardware. The lossnay controller even has a thermometer in it even though it does not need it. But they must have different firmware as they cannot be swapped around. I would have made one controller and made it generic to work anything, but no, they are different!