I’ve just received a plea from Samsung UK Helpdesk for data that supports our complaint about the algorithm that swipes heat from the DHW circuit during frost prevention cycles. It rather sounds that they haven’t been kept in the loop by HQ about the firmware update that @arundalep noted in Contribution: Samsung ASHP NASA link <-> MQTT bridge (Home Assistant) recently. But I’ll pass on their request anyway. Their email asked:
Hi Sarah,
Regarding the complaint of DHW temp dropping due to anti-freeze logic, do you or any of your friends off the heat pump group have any data showing the cycle removing heat from the DHW tank.
I’ve seen this before but I cant find the screen shots sent to me in my archive and wondered if you could help.
Best regards
Nick Kirwan
Technical Support Engineer
It rather sounds like HQ may have finally woken up to the problem and want some real data to justify some corrective action. So here’s our chance to influence Samsung! If you have data that proves that this algorithm wastes energy (@Michal_S you may be able to help here) please contact Nick at [email protected] directly.
Just for background, here’s the email I sent to Nick:
Morning Nick.
You may recall that I moderate a heat pump owners discussion group, many of whom are Samsung owners.
Amongst them, one of the biggest collective gripes with the MIM-E03*N controller is the frost prevention algorithm (the one that operates the circulation pump for 5 minutes if it has been idle for an hour and the ambient temperature is below 5degC).
The complaint is that the 3-way valve is energised, so heat is taken from the DHW tank rather than the emitter circuit. This can result in a cold DHW tank by morning, just when hot water is required for showers etc.
This algorithm is especially galling to those of us who have glycol in their emitter circuit, so frost prevention is unnecessary anyway.
The Samsung position is that the DHW tank is a better heat reserve than the emitter circuit (likely higher capacity and hotter). Yet folk who do not have a DHW tank connected to the heat pump (so there is no 3-way valve), and with no installed backup heater, seem to live quite happily preventing frost by using heat from the emitter circuit.
The widespread plea is therefore that Samsung introduce the option of taking heat from the emitter circuit if its volume is adequate (e.g. a volumiser is installed) or glycol is present. Clearly, enabling such an option should only be available to qualified installers and “sophisticated users”, so simply adding it as a remote controller setting may be inappropriate. I’m thinking that maybe adding a K-button option on the Outdoor Unit panel (which most users would not contemplate using) would provide sufficient protection from inadvertent use.
My discussion group would like to put this suggestion to the engineers at Samsung HQ but don’t know how to go about this. Can you suggest a suitable approach?
Thanks and regards,
Sarah