Proud heat pump dad

I'm on holiday, when I get back the first Haier Air Conditioning & Heating - Europe 40 kW commercial, R290 heat pump will be ready and in the Uk waiting for me. The plan is to have it tubed up and running by the end of September. I cant wait this is the first heat pump I've helped design.

I did not start this project, developing a new unit takes a lot longer than the 6 months I have been here in R and D at Haier. I came in at the end, but its the first heat pump I have had any influence over. Its got a couple of Graham Hendra features in it. So I'm super proud. Its my first born (heat pump).

So what's good about it?

First Jez Climas asked me if I could put the pipes out the back on an angle so no matter how you tube it up, left, right, up or down the tubes never cross. tick. Thanks for the idea Jez.

Next our sales colleagues asked that it be exactly the same as the smaller Haier heat pumps in look operation and installation, it is, its just bigger and its got 2 fans. It wires, pipes, operates and looks like its little brothers. It has the same indoor wiring centre across the whole range.

Next it has to be able to cascade (god I hate that name) into a group of units with up to 8 connected into one 200kW system. It can , it doesn't need any extra hardware, no cascade controller etc, its all in the box. Tens of hours have gone into the cascade spec.

In many cases people just want simple, this is something I totally believe in, simple is always best . We wanted to do a simple commercial heat pump, so you can buy it without any indoor wiring centre. There is a mini wiring centre in the outdoor unit, with reduced features. If you want simple, heating cooling and DHW its just a few wires, just like a boiler.

We wanted it to be super flexible so It comes with a massive pump inside, it needs it the flow rate is 120l / min. But you can remove it , tell the unit its gone and use the pump output signal to run a system pump if you want a pumpless heat pump.

But the bit I had most input on was the SAFETY ZONE. The safety zone is a mythical and totally made up area around any R290 heat pump. It tells you where the unit can go, it tells you you cant put the unit near a drain, window, Propane BBQ etc. The theory being if the heat pump leaked the propane could go down the drain, in the window etc and cause a fire.

We looked at this a lot. We toyed with the idea of running the fans slowly 24/7, 365 days a year just in case , but came to the conclusion that was a really low tech and a bit shit way of doing it.

Our new unit has a refrigerant leak detector installed inside the compressor cabinet. IF and ONLY if there is a leak, the heat pump and water pump are instantly stopped and shut down. But, the outdoor unit fans run, they continue to run until no more refrigerant is detected, effectively clearing away any leaked propane. And in a cascade system if any unit leaks all the other units will do the same, making sure there is no propane hanging around. Result is a much smaller safety zone and an easier installation. Clever huh?

I'm super proud.

Now onto the next project. all I can tell you at this stage is it will be simple and smaller.

thanks for reading this.