TL;DR: This thing is purely awesome!

It’s been almost a month since my Sanden heat pump system being installed.

The unit is scheduled to start running after 9AM. It probably should start a bit later than that because my solar system can barely produce 900w of power at 9AM in late winter, if it’s sunny of course. I think it should start in the afternoon so even if it’s cloudy winter day the solar system can carry the heat pump without struggling.

But looking at the home energy chart, the heat pump probably consumed less than 2kw each day given we do a few hot showers and do other daily cooking and cleaning routines, so it’s not a big deal at all even if I don’t have solar.

Water is pre-heated and stored in the well insulated steel water tank, so at the nearest tap the hot water is almost instant, even more instantaneous than my old gas one. Guess it takes a few seconds for a gas heater to warm up its heat exchange pipes which obviously not needed by the water tank.

The unit is almost silent when it’s running. I can only identify its noise when I’m within 5 meters with it. If I’m in my kitchen, I can certainly tell if the fridge is working but not the heat pump which sits just outside of the kitchen wall.

This heat pump also works like a good combo with my induction cook top. For instance when I start to cook some noodle, I use hot water from the water tank, which is an instant boost from 10°C to 60°C. This saves me some time waiting for the water to boil and also some energy thanks to heat pump’s very high thermal co-efficient, ie. only 1/6th energy is used to heat water to 60°C, then 100% energy to heat up to 100°C.

Now I only hope this thing runs reliably and won’t have a break down. Fingers crossed 🙂