Change the boiler heating schedule of your Daikin heat pump

In order to make better use of external high temperatures during the day to heat the boiler, one needs to adapt the schedule for hot tap water heating. By default this is set to be heated when the tank temperature drops below a certain threshold. This setting can be overruled, so that the boiler will heat itself only once a day.

Steps to change the boiler heating schedule:

1. Go to User Settings (Gebruikersinstellingen) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
2. Go to Preset Values (Voorgeprogrammeerde Waarden) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
3. Go to Tank Temperature (Tanktemperatuur) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
4. I changed the temperature for Comfort and Eco to both 45 degrees Celsius. This will be the temperature until which the boiler will heat itself during the daily heating cycle.
   
   
   
   
5. Go back to the User Setting menu and go to the Defined Programs (Ingesteld Programma) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
6. Go to Hot Water Temperature (Warmtapwatertemp.) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
7. You have the choice now to edit your Own Program 1-3 (Eigen Prog 1). Select one and remember it for later.
   
   
   
   
8. I choose to set the Comfort program only to be triggered during the day at 16:00 from the months March until October. From November to February, I will schedule the program to run at 14:00. Remember to copy the program from Monday into each other day of the week and to fully save the new program.
   
   
   
   
9. Head back to the main menu and navigate to Select Program (Programma selecteren) and press OK.
   
   
   
   
10. Select Tank Temperature (Tanktemperatuur) and press OK.
    
    
    
    
11. Now select the Own Program 1, 2 or 3 (Eigen Prog 1) that you programmed just before and confirm the usage of it.
    
    
    
    
12. You can check the boiler temperature under the menu Information and then Sensor Information.

Below you can see how I make use of the higher outdoor temperature during the afternoon to heat my boiler. The red line is the daily heating cycle starting at 16:00. The yellow line is the outdoor temperature.

Effect of disinfection function on Daikin heat pump

Our heat pump has functionality to disinfect the boiler (hot water tank) on a weekly schedule. I wanted to understand how much energy this consumes and how long this takes.

Test setup

• Daikin heat pump
• By default our hot tap water in the tank is set to 45 degrees Celsius
• Energy meters:
• 1 main meter for the overall house consumption (red graph)
• 2 sub meters measuring for the heat pump installation (1) the outdoor heat exchanger and (2) the indoor boiler. (yellow and blue graphs)
• Heat pump user interface with Advanced user enabled
• The test was done mid-October with an average outside temperature of 7 degrees Celsius

Test background

The disinfection was scheduled to start at 19:00 and the disinfection temperature was set to 60 degrees for a duration of 40 minutes. All of these parameters can be edited through the installer settings.

Test results

The graph clearly shows that the outdoor unit consumes energy (between 2300 and 1700W) first to start heating the incoming water up to 60 degrees from 19:00 until 19:40. From 19:34 onwards, the boiler itself consumes energy (4100W down to 3000W) to further heat the water inside the boiler up to 60 degrees Celsius until 20:18.

Summary

The heat pump consumes on an average 5-7kWh per disinfection that lasts roughly 80-90 minutes. The total estimated consumption per year is in between 250-350kWh.

Changing the parameters or disabling the disinfection function of a Daikin Altherma heat pump

In order to save on my energy consumption, I decided to disable the disinfection function of my Daikin Altherma heat pump. By default this function is enabled to run once a week at Friday evening. The purpose is to heat up the hot tap water boiler to a preset temperature during a certain amount of time, so that bacteria that can start to live in your boiler will be cooked to death. When speaking to Daikin, they told me that this function could be disabled, as long as you use daily or very regular hot tap water by showering e.g.

To understand how much energy the disinfection consumed, click here.

Steps to disable the disinfection function

1. Change the user level to installer. Steps can be found here.
2. Press the Back button and Navigate to the Installer Settings (Installateurinstellingen) and press OK.

3. Navigate to Hot Tap Water (Warmtapwater) and press OK.

4. Navigate to Disinfection (Desinfectie) and press OK.

5. To disable the disinfection, select Disinfection (Desinfectie) again and press OK. When asked to disable the function, change Yes (Ja) to No (Nee) via the Navigate buttons. The confirm by pressing OK.

6. Press the Back button. You are being asked to restart the heat pump. Press OK to confirm. The display will reset itself and show a message Busy (Bezig) and restart itself. Note the wrench symbol that indicates that we still have installer as user level.

7. Now you have disabled the disinfection function. Alternatively, you could also change the parameters so that the function runs during the afternoon (instead of 11pm), when there's more heat in the air to exchange into water.

Changing the user level of a Daikin Altherma heat pump

Our Altherma Daikin heat pump at home, comes with a handy control display, you can change and tweak a lot of settings, as long as you have the right user level. Below it is explained go to go from one level to another.

The heat pump comes with 3 user levels that all allow to set different settings of the system:

1. End-user (Eindgebruiker)
2. Advanced end-user (Geavanceerde eindgebruiker)
3. Installer (Installateur)

Changing to a different level can be done through the control display which has 5 buttons and navigation arrows.

1. Top left: Information
2. Top right: Enable/Disable
3. Bottom left: Home
4. Bottom right: Back (to previous menu)
5. Center: OK

How to check if you are on the end-user level?

Now, by default the user level will be just end-user. To detect if you are end-user, press on Back (Button 4) and check the shown menu. If you only see 4 main menu options (Set Date/Time, Holidays, Select Program and User Settings), you are end-user. In Dutch the naming will be Tijd/datum instellen, Vakantie, Programma selecteren and Gebruiker instellingen.

How to go to the advanced end-user level?

To go to the advanced end-user level, while you are now in the main menu (and you see the 4 main menu options), press the Information button until the menu options change from 4 to 6.

Two additional menu options (Low noise mode and Information) will appear. Or Geluidsarme stand and Informatie will appear in Dutch.

How to go to the installer level?

To go to the installer level, still while you are in the main menu (and you see the 6 main menu options), Navigate to Information and press OK. Then Navigate to User Settings (Gebruikerinstellingen) and press OK. You will now see the current user level which should be advanced end-user. Press the Back button for 5 seconds until the user level will change to Installer. If succesful, you'll see the user level as Installer now. Press OK.

Checking the current user level being advanced end-user.

Having pressed the Back button for 5 seconds, the level changes to installer.

An additional main menu option appears, which is Installer Settings (Installateurinstellingen).

Now being installer, you can for example:

• Allow to set a schedule when to heat your hot tap water.
• Enable, disable or reschedule the disinfection function

How to go back to end-user level?

Press in any menu the Information button for 5 seconds, and you'll go back to the end-user level and to the home display.

Daikin Altherma heat pump at home

At home, we are having a Altherma Daikin heat pump for our central heating and hot tap water.
The heat pump system consists of 3 main parts:

1. Daikin EHVH08S26CB9W (heat pump boiler)
2. Daikin ERLQ006CAV3 (heat pump outdoor unit)
3. Daikin EKRUCBL1 (heat pump control display)

Furthermore specs and information can be found here.