SWTK - Split Aircon best brand?

[Sookie]

Hi,

Just curios to know with those in the know/have them already.

I'm in the market for a 8.5-10kW split system to do approximately 58m2.

Chasing something that will cool, more than heat as we have a nice gas heater for this.

Have had a range of quotes so far from $2500 to $5800 for the one unit supplied and installed.

My question is, the cheapest quote, is being a Fujitsu and most expensive being a Daikin, can anyone shed some light?

I've used Daikin's all my working life in our plant rooms, but that's to deal with pilbara heat...(as the others seem to just collapse with the heat/dust) but around town, we don't have any sorta heat / dust like that...

I'm still awaiting on a price from TECO (as I know this is by far the cheapest) but the four guys we've spoken to so far are just bagging on the Fujitsu, funnily enough, that installer was the nicest guy...

[boeman]

Used teco once on our apartments. Had so many complaints about breaking down or being ineffective.

Daikin since and 100% success. Worth the money. Just try and get a back to back installation if you can to save $$$.

[19andrew59]

You need to speak to this guy: Callen 0422 522 five four zero
He did all our splits, excellent workmanship and price.

[rc_sam]

You'll find allot of installers bagging out Fujitsu.
They all say their quality is crap now and there are only a few models in the range which are any good these days.

I had the same thing when i got mine a few years ago.
If I were looking for another a/c I'd be interested in the new versions with wifi, so you can turn them on and off as you want when your not at home.

[=Stevo=]

I've got a Samsung 6.8/8kw system for my apartment to cool the living room and it works very nicely, and has wifi which is rad for turning it on before I leave work via phone. The outside unit is also whisper quiet, even at full noise.

The whole apartment is 65m2 and it will cool the whole thing on full bore down to about 18-19 degrees in summer but due to the hallways/shape doesn't quite cool the second bedroom so easily and that sits around 22. If it was all one room I reckon I would need about 9-10kw just to be on the safe side, it can happily chug along at 8kw all day but your 8kw system won't manage to put out 10 if its needed

[Heretic]

Sookie, can you stretch to having whole house reverse cycle ? from our experience worth the bucks, especially in the kids rooms

We have a Fujitsu, no issues

[RRossi]

WE use Mitsubishi for a Mining chambers and there underground in coal and gold mines,



So I figured we put this into our house and It is too fucking cold!!!!


I will get another Mitsu in our next house for the master bedroom.


RR

[rnelson955]

Also interested in this subject, about to do the same thing for the house we just bought. And I also wouldn't touch anything Teco make, cheap rubbish.

Does anyone know if moving from ducted evap to ducted r/cycle requires the ducting to be fully replaced? And if one was going to extend the house later how feasible is getting a larger unit installed now and running it with a smaller area for a while? Will the multi-zone units handle this type of situation?

[Sookie]

Sookie, can you stretch to having whole house reverse cycle ? from our experience worth the bucks, especially in the kids rooms

We have a Fujitsu, no issues

Would love to do that...but unfortunately due to our house size I've had quotes from 12-18k.

At this stage, just getting one for the 'living area' is the way to go, then if we really can stretch it later, prob going one or two little splits for the bedrooms. We really only have 1 room that has an issue which is the younger one's room because it gets the day sun... we might just move her into the spare room which is cooler.

I like the idea of the wi-fi version!

Back in the rental days, we would just sleep in the main living area(couch) on the really hot days as the heat was shit in the bedrooms... we had a chat and this is probably the same thing we will do again...as you can imagine there are only a few days per summer over a few seperate weeks where the heat is really crazy...just need something to take the edge off.

[out_in_front]

Wow big quote for the whoel house system... we got a LG fully ducted system for about 10k - although that was 8 years back. It's the biggest single phase unit we could get - about 8kW from memory. Hasn't skipped a beat since theen and it can drop the temp of my 200m2 house from 40deg down to 25 in about an hour. Our electricity bill gets a bit horrendous doing that though...

[Heretic]

yeh Sookie, 12k - 18k does sound a bit up there. we didn't pay that for our place ( 6 zone) and we got a $400 credit card cash back, by the time you have installed in 2 or 3 splits you will get up around 10k. whole house also wipes out your heating gas bill for heating too as reverse cycle far better effective than a gas point or room heaters - imo

we also have / are putting ceiling fans in the bedrooms and only use the reverse to cool the room down in the evening so the kids / us can get to sleep then use the fan to maintain it throughout the night as we found running the aircon dries the air out and the kids got a few coughs, colds too and everyone slept well and we keep the running costs down. we installed a solar panel too mainly to help offset the aircon during the day

we cant put a fan in the young blokes yet as he has a riser bed and the ninja turtle collection would get too much airtime.

[Sookie]

Yeah good point Heretic but I guess it's about what cash your willing to spend at the time!

My father in law had a single split (the way we are doing it) then eventuated to a ducted system for the rooms/master/spare etc.

That's something we are looking at probably doing...just a big dirty one for the living area and in the future prob just get this zoned system.

Worked out that each room is about $2-$2.5k to do...so it really does make sense.

We have ceiling fans for each room but the house we are in...it seems in summer that the heat sorta remain inside...even though its insulated etc its just humid as I think due to the proximity to the lake..but I could be wrong.

My wife is pretty cost conscious of the electricity bill and being for north qld she doesnt mind the heat...however my pc and I do not agree with her mentality

[out_in_front]

It's called double brick construction. Bricks are ceramic, ceramics are typically great at storing heat - lots of it. So if your house gets up to 40deg, and everything starts cooling down, those brick have retained all this energy and slowly start leaking it out, meaning that the temp inside the house stays high - IMO in WA with our hotter than average climate it stays too high and your aircon actually fights with the heat capacity of the bricks when you do turn it on when you get home from work etc.

Double brick would be great if the temps only got to 30deg, but my next house will probably only be single brick with stud walls where possible (or something similar) and heaps of insulation for exactly this reason.

[crowtribe]

We got quoted 10k by Ford and Doonan in Canning Vale, I think it was, for 5 rooms, one of which is a dining/lounge/kitchen. Ducted, Panasonic 12.5kW unit (I think it was) with some rinky-dink controller thing.

That is with 1 outlet in the master, 1 in each of the 2 bedrooms, 3 in the dining/lounge/kitchen and 1 in the front 'study' room. Might be worth getting a few quotes and having them undercut each other as much as possible?

It's also possible to get a setup that runs off the one outside unit and connects to multiple split system outlets through the house apparently, might be cheaper in the long run?

[alpha]

There have been some great split system reviews on Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (not Mitsubishi Electronics). Choice magazine ranked them very highly (and so do a few aircon guys i've spoken too) Unfortunately Perth doesn't seem to have a lot of outlets for MHI compared to other competitors.