Daikin outside air system

Just wondering if anyone has any experiences with Outside Air System fitted together with a Daikin Aircon sys. Cant seem to find any reviews on it.
It would seem to be pretty effective in Perth when the seabreeze kicks in.
The cost to upgrade to it quite high though, $500 for the controller(E-Zone to MyAir5) and another $1550 for the system!
Any thoughts appreciated.

Just curious why you're looking to bring in outside air? It would be very rare in a domestic situation. That's the sort of thing we do in commercial situations to ensure that sufficient fresh air is bought in to the space to prevent stale air. In a house that's not really a problem because you generally don't run the AC full time with all the windows and doors shut.

Or do you mean you just want to use the AC on fan mode and bring in outside air to blow through the system?

Firstly, whereabouts are you located in Perth? Our climate is changing, the Doctor, unless you're right on the coast, is not what it used to be and temperatures tend to peak later in the day. Middle of summer dragging mid 20's outside air in overnight is just going to mean higher cooling costs the next day.
If you're really interested in this sort of idea why not go with an evap combined with splits in the bedrooms?

Yeah I doubt that a system that drags in outside air to an internal space without conditioning it will have any noticeable cooling effect. It would be about a hundred times more effective to just open all the windows and have ceiling fans everywhere. Or the dry heat of South WA would probably be perfectly suited to an evap cooler as Althom rightly suggests.

There would be times when it would benefit. From an energy point of view, they are the times when the outside air temperature is cooler than inside, and you want to cool the inside. This could happen after coming home to hot house, or after a cool change has come through. The efficiency gain is roughly proportional to the difference in temperature between the inside and outside air.

However, in most of these cases, just running the A/C will bring the inside air temp to at least as low as the outside temperature fairly quickly. Then after this, you get no thermal benefit from the outside air intake. Say this takes half an hour, with the A/C running at 15kW (5kW power draw). During that time, you might get away with only 10kW (3kW power draw) if you could instead draw on the cooler outside air. That means a 1kWh energy saving per instance of this. Then say these conditions happen 30 times a year, then you might save 30kWh a year, or around $10 a year. At that rate, the economic payback is only going to happen if the unit costs less than $100 to $200 in total.

I think those estimates are generous though, because a nice sea breeze outside might actually be 28 degrees, which may still be hotter than that stifling 27 degrees inside temperature - which just feels hotter on account of less air movement.

I kind of like the idea, but I don't think the economics stack up, especially when you can open up windows to get a similar effect.

I'd be keen to hear feed back on this also.
We've just finished a build with a good amount of insulation added for winter.
We have a lot of glass to the North for winter. Now that the sun is getting lower the living area is warming up. The house has been designed to allow good cross flow from windows. However if there is no breeze there is no cooling. Once the temp cools in the evening the house remains warm all night due to the insulation properties. Putting the ceiling extractor fan on in the ensuite helps a lot to pull a nice breeze through the bedroom window and thus cooling the room down.
I think fitting an outside air inlet or outlet will have a lot of merit at our place (Adelaide)
Ceiling fans aren't really an option as we have standard 2400 ceiling height, again for heating efficiency.

In the absence of a breeze, A large extraction fan located centrally exhausting out through the roof (like a Cardiff Air unit for example) will provide a cooling effect from air movement, as long as all the windows are open and there is an air path all the way to the fan (e.g. bedroom doors open).

Using the ducted air con system to bring in outside air is unlikely to have any significant effect as the air velocity is very low, and in the absence of conditioned air you need the rapid movement of the air to have any cooling effect (cooling effect is the air moving past you and your perspiration makes it feel cool)

Yep agree that's a great idea, and better than firing up the aircon just to use the fan.
I installed an air transfer kit at our last place to transfer hot air from the wood heater, heated living area to the back of the house. It worked a treat.
I think I'll look for a large inline fan and run it independently as required.
The question is how large, it would have to be of similar flow to an evapcooler for 3 bedrooms or the living areas.

You'd need a serious fan to move enough air to have an effect. So big in fact that it would probably sound like a cyclone was passing down your hallway!

Seriously, your best bet is ceiling fans for economical air movement (work fine with 2400 ceilings). The other option is an evaporative cooler which would work great in the dry heat of Radelaide

Hi All, thanks for everyone's input. We have been given this optional upgrade by Advantage Air. Its called a Fresh Air System.
We live pretty close to the beach so we get the sea breeze pretty early normally. so the whole idea of using the sea breeze was pretty attractive.
I think our money might be better spent upgrading to a premium inverter.

A much better idea.

Great thread,

I am thinking (possibly overthinking) about this topic for a 2 storey home!

1. Extraction of hot air, using the AC return Duct (a.k.a Home Economiser)
2. Distribution of Fresh 'Cooler' outside air using existing AC ducts (some call it Ventilation mode)
3. Incorporating to switch over from Ventilation mode (cooler External Air distributed by HVAC fan) to AC mode (where the HVAC Compressor is active) depending on external temps and desired internal temps/humidity.

I hear that its common in Commercial systems but not in residential.

Has anyone actually got something like this?

Cheers!