Heat pump a goner :( now what?

Water
1

My 13 year old Kwikot ran as usual yesterday. It did not run at all today. The display is dead. I don’t want to peuter, but I do want hot water fairly pronto.

I have established that the unit does get power (even I can use a multimeter)

I can get Kwikot in. They’ve already told me that there is no fixing this model. So that will be a new installation, effectively from scratch.

I could go for another brand, but I suspect that other than ITS they are all the same. And again it will be an installation.

Third option, and maybe the quickest to implement, is to reconnect the element that is still in the geyser. Put that on a timer so it doesn’t draw from the battery at night. But is this a long term solution?

It’s a 200l geyser. I suspect the element in there is 4kW, so that will need downgrading. But I expect that a 1kW will need to run a long time, whilst 2kW is more than the pump draws, so I get closer to overloading. Ok…i can move it to non-essentials.

Inverter is a 4.6kW Goodwe ES.

2

Sounds like the insurance company’s problem.

3

Indeed. But then I lose control. They will want to appoint the installer.

4

The trouble with such a small element, is that it takes an awfully long time to heat a cold tank. You need around 9kWh to heat the whole thing from cold, and with a 1kW element, that is going to take 9 hours. That means you can’t turn it off and go on holiday, because when you get back (in the late afternoon) it will take all night to get the thing heated up again.

Your insurance should allow you to get your own contractor, and then submit the claim on your own.

Personally I am quite pro-heat pump, but I haven’t lost one yet, so I haven’t yet done the emotional math that comes from losing a large chunk of your savings because the pump broke. I do think they pay back the extra cost within their lifetime, so that it is probably a good idea to get another heat pump again. My own back of the envelope calculations says, at present top Cape Town rates, the heat pump pays for itself in about 18 months.

5

That sounds like an interesting problem, so your Heat pump was installed on the Solar back-up side, now due to the heat pump failure you can’t risk switching on the (potential 4kW) element.

In this case temporary move to non-Essentials would be the best bet, I would not recommend fiddling with the element (most plumbers will find fault on the geyser and want to replace it, which happened to me).

I am getting my heat pump on Wednesday (200l geyser), as I did the calculation and considering my SWH has cost me more in maintenance than what I saved the Heat pump on my essentials makes a lot more sense.

Let us know what your outcomes are, I will also have to generate some contingency planning for if something like this happens!

The installer I am using is using Sunscan Heat pumps (apparently ITS and Sunscan are the same but split some time ago).

I’ll let you guys know how they operate and if they are reliable (in about 5+ years?)

6

Well if you have solar then ROI is very different. The key thing for me is that I can run it on the backed up side, which means that even when load shedding was its worst I had hot water every day. Which is worth something but I can’t put a number to it.

Now it’s different, but heating water for free is still attractive, and that’s easier with a heat pump.

Hey… maybe you can put a number to it.

1 Like
7

I agree. As an aside, maybe somewhat ironical, the whole debate over the remote CO2 emissions of an EV. Buy one in SA, where our electricity is 85% coal, and the effect is maybe 20% cleaner (if you charge from the grid). Go to the UK, where half the energy is natural gas, and the picture is entirely different.

For myself, since I still buy at least 600kWh from the grid monthly, and more in winter, I still consider every unit as being worth R4.75/kWh.

8

OK… So I’ve just had Kwikot’s service manager on the phone. He asked me to describe the situation. Was not upset when I said I’d checked that there was power coming into and out of the isolator.

So, he says, there’s two things on that model. One is the isolator (nothing special, buy one at AC/DC), the other is the transformer that drives the PCB. Either way his guys carrry spares and he is confident they will fix it tomorrow without having to take anything away.

So it’s not a total no on repair. It’s anything to do with the gas, the compressor, the heat exchanger. All that stuff is ruled off limits.

He did make the quite sensible point that life expectancy is 10 years, and this one is 13 now, so I shouldn’t expect another 10 years out of it. He can give me a bit of a better deal on a new one because the sensors are the same, the mounting bracket is the same, and all the plumbing is in place.

So this sounds like they’re trying to provide fair service.

I’m waiting to hear from insurance, but I can discuss everything with the tech tomorrow - maybe even get the quick fix done now and then get the new one when they can schedule it.

2 Likes
9

Don’t you just love it??
The message is: We won’t even look at it… don’t buy from us because we won’t go the extra mile for you the customer :face_vomiting: :face_vomiting:

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You must have been responding at the same time as me. It actually turns out that there are some things they can fix and still have spares for.

11

Better to get shot of Kwikot…
If you’re in Cape Town contact ITS in Somerset West.

12

Now there’s a debate with the insurers as to whether or not this is a geyser. Do I have a conventional geyser in the roof? Well yes I do, but it just stores hot water, it doesn’t do any heating. OK… so maybe it’s like a solar geyser. They’re going to send out an inspector to rule whether or not it’s a geyser. If they do so rule, then they want to take over and repair or replace at their cost.

If they rule it’s not a geyser then I shouldn’t even bother sending them an invoice. It’s not stipulated in my policy. But when I took out the policy they didn’t ask questions about whether or not it is a CONVENTIONAL geyser. Whatever that is. The inspector will rule.

On a tangential note, they told me that it makes no difference to anything that I have actual SPDs in my DB. They aren’t interested, it makes no difference to cover or premium.

13

Why??? They are coming to the party and could repair. Sounds like good service to me…

14

Kwikot themselves will not come to the party. They send one of their appointed subcontractors.
Even if you remove the heat pump and take it to them yourself I bet you won’t get a warm feeling…
They are just too big. They were bought out by Elecrolux which was quite a feather in their cap. Now I hear there has been a further buyout which I don’t have the details of…
Stop Press: https://www.electroluxgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/electrolux-Electrolux-Group-divests-South-African-water-heater-business-240718.pdf

15

Sorry - the Op was clear - “So I’ve just had Kwikot’s service manager on the phone” - that is good service im my book!

1 Like
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I believe it is AEG.

This doesn’t bother me too much. I used to work for Tedelex who had eleventy dozen brand names. They famously owned two different furniture chains, so if you went to Ellerines (I think was the one) and though their deal was not so good you could cross the road to the other store (Lubners?) and buy the same stuff from them and you’ve showed Ellerines but either way Tedelex were going to get the sale.

You can’t afford that Sony stuff which is imported and expensive, but Blaupunkt (nice German name) seems much better priced. Either way you were buying from Tedelex.

The workshop I was in was at the back of a big warehouse full of Candy fridges when Candy was a very cool name. But the fridges had come in from Brazil and Tedelex just had the rights to use the Candy name in Africa south of the equator (same with Blaunpunkt, which either came from Taiwan or were made in a factory down in Atlantis).

So the brand name games don’t bother me, as long as there’s support.

This is why I often take the big corporate’s side in issues around service and guarantees. Tedelex had done a deal with Casio, and had genuine Casio watches coming in from Japan that they had bought from Casio. And we were Casio appointed service agents.

You may or may not know what it takes to become properly accredited with these brands. We used to have people coming out from Japan every now and then to make sure that we were properly equipped. This meant multimeters that measured down to fractions of a milliamp (in 1981!). It meant that the solder we used had to have a certain percentage of silver in it. There had to be an oscilloscope (to some specification that they gave us) on every desk. Before a watch was reassembled the little PCB had to be cleaned in an ultrasonic bath with some solvent in it to take care of any flux (that shouldn’t be there because of the quality of solder we had to use, but this IS Casio you know). And etc.

Then some retail chain figured out a way to get crates of casio watches out of Hong Kong at a price we couldn’t match because we had to stock spares according to what we bought, and we had to stock batteries (and not just any old brand), and had to have all the tools to open the watches, to pressure test the water-resistant models, to make sure that the back was not replaced too loosely etc etc.

And then the poor customer buys the watch, has a problem, goes back to the shop and gets told oh Tedelex are the agents, can I give you their address?

We were in a bind, because they were not so stupid to bring in a model we weren’t selling. And one of the reasons Casio had appointed an agent for Africa south of the equator was because if you owned a genuine Casio watch, you should be able to get it repaired wherever you were.

We couldn’t refuse the job. So we’d check the warranty card that the dealer had to complete at time of sale, and if it came from an outlet in South Africa who didn’t have an account with us, we’d charge a “handling fee”, or tell them about the guy down the bottom of town who wouldn’t ask pesky questions (but also didn’t have spares, which we knew because he was buying bits from us).

I felt sorry for the customers who had bought a good brand expecting good backup. And I sometimes felt sorry for my work colleagues who would sometimes have to have suffer abuse from disgruntled customers.

1 Like
17

Which brings us to a little story. Our workshop manager, who we’ll call Mr Smith, had been to Casio in Japan for training. His first day there, the man giving the training made a blunder, and Mr Smith, a jocular type, from a country where people pulled each other’s leg a lot, said “you know bugger all.”

In Japan it is very bad manners to cause somebody to lose face, and the situation took some smoothing over.

Fast forward a couple of years and the same man comes out to inspect our workshops. He says “Smith san! I remember you. You think I know bugger all, but I want to tell you that I know bugger nothing.”

3 Likes
18

So now here’s a thing. Something happened here, between Saturday afternoon and early yesterday morning.

I went to bed all grumpy because of the heat pump. My mood was not improved when the fence energiser started beeping at about 1am. But two things

  1. a light marked “service” was glowing
  2. ADT didn’t call nor send anybody.

Then the energizer just died. Dead as a very dead thing. So this morning I put another battery in and it started working. But there was another warning light glowing.

So I call the guy who looks after my security and gate, and he surpassed his usual high standards and got here today. The energizer had been fitted new earlier this year. The old one, that I still had, wasn’t putting full woema on the fence. Wizord said it was the HT transformer and that costs as much as a new energizer, and the replacement was quicker. So we went that route.

Frans (security guy) is scratching his head. The energizer is saying it’s getting no mains. But we’ve measured right up to the socket and there’s 230V all the way. No fuses blown. So he says “lets hook the old one up”. And it works, with the drop in fence voltage, but no warnings.

So, what had happened is that at some point something had failed and the energizer started running off of the battery and eventually ran it down.

Then Frans tries to get out. Garage door won’t open (it had worked this morning when my wife went out to get the battery for the energiser). A quick bit of trouble shooting shows a blown fuse on the line that carries grid voltage into the transformer that steps the voltage down for the motor. In the event of a grid failure you will get a few operations off of the battery. Which is what happened.

But whilst we’re looking at this, I had turned off all the plug breakers on the DB and turned them back on again (Frans did not want to believe my kill-a-watt). As things come back on they beep. But there was one beep less than usual.

Hmmm… Frans goes, but my mind is still wandering on. So I press the panic button. Usually you hear a relay click. Then ADT will call. Neither of these things happens. Then I notice the control panel for the alarm is dead.

This time I have an idea where to look, given what has happened up to now. Yep. There’s a little PSU box which powers the alarm system screwed to the wall. Has a screw in fuse holder. Fuse is popped. So, again, this is on the input side of things, the grid side.

So now it’s looking like something happened but who knows what. We’ve had no storms. There was nothing turning off and restarting unless it was during Saturday night (last time the heat pump ran was Saturday lunch time).

I am waiting to see what else won’t work. And I’m surprised because these are backed up circuits and the PV system has SPDs between it and the grid, and between it and the backed up circuits.

But it looks like something happened between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning that fried a lot of stuff.

Insurance sends a plumber out to check what I have. He tells me two things

  1. it’s electrical
  2. insurance will send out a sparky to investigate.

Kwikot thinks it’s the transformer. Like the gate motor, the mains comes in, and is stepped down for the motor and the PCB. But unlike the gate motor there is no fuse on that line. Frans had told me that that fuse is purely sacrificial - it’s to help protect against surges on the power line.

I don’t like somethings.

19

This sort of thing is quite common and it often makes you think you’ve lost it…
A good check is to ask your neighbours if they noticed any similar failures. If they did then that helps with your diagnostics (and your sanity!)

20

Maybe the Eskom volts went to high for a split second?

Geyser Insurance, IF they decide to pay out, you can ask for the cash instead, and do your own thing. Just ask them for the option.

Me, I would have replaced the 4kw with a 3kw element and carried on with some automation.

Because …

Again you hit the nail on the head. Referring to myself complaining about the cost to replace a entire EV Tube System after 9.5 years of bliss. The parts, not the installer, around anymore.

It takes “an emotional toll” when you do the sums in Excel for the next maybe ±10 years to “enjoy” the savings.

Hence my reluctance towards a heat pump, with maintenance, versus 3kw element, a Shelly + big relay and NodeRED, and a stock standard Kwikot geyser for insurance claims.

And IF it becomes an issue, some more panels and a Solis to do the heavy work. Yes, it will cost more in winter, but the sums on a napkin, makes no difference, as the property benefits when they geyser is hot … and Eskom is on.

EDIT: Then I watch Cpt winters … and gas is becoming awfully attractive, coupled with the Eskom proposed increase for 2025.