Browse Forums Heating, Cooling & Insulation Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 21Aug 01, 2012 10:42 pm We're looking at getting an Actron system in Perth before this summer and was hoping you could provide me with the details of that quote Johnny? Have you had it installed yet? How is the Actron going? CHeers Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 22Aug 04, 2012 9:03 am We recently had the Actron ESP Plus installed in our SOR home and so far, I LOVE IT! Very easy to use, quiet, works a dream. We paid around $15k for it installed. I'll report back once we've had it several months, but so far, I'm over the moon. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 23Aug 05, 2012 10:44 am We had ours (ESP SRD160c) hooked up last friday. Not much time or weather to really test it but it definitely makes a noticeable change to the environment inside. We have 4 zones 10 outlets in a 5 br 2 storey. Cost about $11-$12000. After 3 days!! ...seems easy to operate, happy so far with the purchase. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 24Aug 13, 2012 11:28 am Hi there, I thought I would put my 5 cents worth in here. I have an Actron system which works beautifully, however when I got my electricity bill I changed my mind. I have the ESP Ultima with 8 zones and only under half would be on at any given time. This monster costs over $1 an hour to run. It is now off permanently, while I look at other options. Also the temp. is set at 22 degrees in living area and 20 degrees in bedrooms and bathrooms. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 25Aug 13, 2012 11:45 am Yep, I'm waiting our first elec bill with interest (due this month I think !). I have all our bills for the past 3+ years graphed on comp. No change in the no. of users but change to new house with nat. gas and a/c. Have only used the a/c for its novelty value so far. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 26Aug 13, 2012 11:56 am mollii Hi there, I thought I would put my 5 cents worth in here. I have an Actron system which works beautifully, however when I got my electricity bill I changed my mind. I have the ESP Ultima with 8 zones and only under half would be on at any given time. This monster costs over $1 an hour to run. It is now off permanently, while I look at other options. Also the temp. is set at 22 degrees in living area and 20 degrees in bedrooms and bathrooms. I'm no expert, but I'd say those temperature are set far too low and your system is probably running at 100% power trying to get the temps to down. 'They' say to set it at 25degrees for a nice balance of comfort/cost efficiency. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 28Aug 13, 2012 12:07 pm Rex mollii Hi there, I thought I would put my 5 cents worth in here. I have an Actron system which works beautifully, however when I got my electricity bill I changed my mind. I have the ESP Ultima with 8 zones and only under half would be on at any given time. This monster costs over $1 an hour to run. It is now off permanently, while I look at other options. Also the temp. is set at 22 degrees in living area and 20 degrees in bedrooms and bathrooms. I'm no expert, but I'd say those temperature are set far too low and your system is probably running at 100% power trying to get the temps to down. 'They' say to set it at 25degrees for a nice balance of comfort/cost efficiency. Think he's in Victoria and 25deg in winter would make the unit run all the time and cost the bomb specially if run 24x7. I set my temps at around 21 degrees for Winter and have it on during the evening for about 5 hours. Mine is the 17kw ESP+ system with 12 outlets / 4 zones in a single storey house. Oh, and my system cost $10k which seems fairly reasonable given the other quotes on here. I confirmed the install quality when i walked around in the ceiling and everything is nicely put together. My only gripe is the installers just leave the insulation to the side which i have to cut to size and fix up. Building with Jandson Homes - Eclipse 18. http://adgnetworks.blogspot.com/ Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 31Aug 13, 2012 3:10 pm I am siding with mollii and think all ducted air cons should be turned off and we should be made to think more about the house we are building and find a solution at a price that is much nicer on the wallet. When it comes to heating/cooling the house I think most first home builders are like we were, you see this supposedly great machine and the $alesper$on HIGHLY recommends it so you have to have it. He will also push his open plan house on you and we too were sucked in by the open plan display homes because they do look really good and I think herein ****** the problem. We had Actron ducted installed in our 2005 build in Sydney but you couldn’t close off any areas so we were heating/cooling the house from the back hallway to the front door and the damn thing never turned off. My husband worked out the running cost at just under $2 an hour but I don’t think it was an inverter model and our last summer electricity bill came in at $1,050 but that included a pool pump and a pump for the pool solar heating. The unit did cool the house but at such a high cost and I think any brand would have cost the same. When we moved south and rebuilt we closed off the front hall with double doors, put a CSD at the entrance to the back hall, put ceiling fans in all bedrooms and also put a fan in the study which is at the front of the house facing west. We installed two split systems, a large one in the open plan living area and a small one in the theatre and we recently got our first electricity bill for $730 which was for 6 months so even with a hot summer the bill should be less than half. Remember your ducted air con will cost $1+ per hour opposed to a ceiling fan that costs 1-2 cents per hour. Regards, Grumbles Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 32Aug 13, 2012 5:35 pm I'm going against the grain here.... We sit in our lounge room which is about 5 metres away from the external unit and can easily hear the motor cut in and out over the TV. Same when laying in bed, I can hear it come on and off through the ducts. It doesnt really worry us that much, though my husband and I were very surprised just how loud it is. We set ours to 22 degrees. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 33Aug 13, 2012 5:51 pm Interesting KAN, our lounge would also be about 5m from the external unit (large window/brick wall ?) and the only sound interrupting us is the wind blowing the blinds around...have to make a few directional flow changes. Have to literally go outside to hear the motor...whatever its called. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 34Aug 28, 2012 5:04 pm Hi guys, I'm currently building with Eden Brae and get an Actron Classic - 3 phase - SRA160 as an included items. I just asked for a quote to have it upgraded to ESP plus (SRV171E/SRD173C_ 16.9 KW for $3610. Do you reckon that price is good enough? Is it even worth to upgrade it to ESP plus? I'd appreciate any input. Thanks. Building with EB - Foxley 30 @ The Ponds Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 35Aug 28, 2012 5:52 pm Peace97 we changed from an SRA160 16.4kw (3 ph) to SRD160c ESP 16.4kw (3 ph.) and our price went up by $1000.00. I think from memory the $ difference between the ESP and the + was only about $500, which I thought, when I compared the technicals line by line on the actron website, was not really warranted. We purchased through our electrician (the system wasn't included in our build contract). I do suggest comparing the difference between the base model and ESP (+) models on their website as the additional features tipped me in favour of paying the extra $ to upgrade. Having said that, I'm thinking your $3610 sounds a bit pricey. edit: note you are talking 16.9 kw, perhaps the upgrade cost is not as far off the mark as I originally thought. Very hard to judge when I'm only an amateur and not in the business !! Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 36Aug 28, 2012 7:08 pm MY builder was installing an actron classic but when I asked for a esp+ I was told the smallest unit being 13kw was too large for my home (living areas 115 sq mts). My previous home I have a daiken inverter ducted system 7kw. So it looks like I can only install 10kw daiken. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 37Aug 28, 2012 7:23 pm Can't give you specifics on a 16kw system, but we just had our 23kw ESP plus system installed last week in our build. So far we are really impressed with it. We aren't living in the house yet, but we are there most of the day, every day working inside, so have been testing it out. We went for the ESP Plus model as it has the ability to run on variable speed fan mode, not just the standard 3 speeds. Having already had a ducted evaporative air con unit in our last house, with a variable speed fan, we wanted similar. Nothing worse than trying to sleep with a contsant strong breeze blowing down on you...instead of a nice gentle hardly noticeable one. When it Actron first starts up, in a cold house, you initially hear some 'air thru the vent' noise, (as the fan is obviously working a bit harder) but that soon disappears as the fan automatically backs itself down (running on ESP mode), quietly adjusting itself to maintain the temp set from there on. The outside unit itself we can't really hear it inside, having placed it on the side of our garage. Only notice it when we are outside, but it's no worse than the evaporative air con was....if anything it's quieter. We also added the option of another controller to our Main bedroom, so at night we can run just our bedroom only (and the kids bedrooms too...if they are home), not having to run the living area also (where the main controller is with the thermostat). The bedroom controller also has it's own thermostat, so it can sense our bedroom temp and properly adjust through the night....not wasting money running an empty living area. (without the 2nd controller.....if we ran the just the bedroom......the system would be trying to run using a thermometer in cooling down...not on.. lounge.. for guidance) Settlement 1/2/12 New Shed 23/3/12 Slab poured 27/3/12 Frame complete 4/5/12 Roof complete 1/6/12 LOCKUP 29/6/12 Our new build blog http://kareenhillsownerbuild.blogspot.com/ Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 38Aug 29, 2012 11:21 pm Thanks jj1, I'll be asking for an updated quote for SRD160c. I found that it's a bit difficult to find a list of model from actron's web site. I couldn't even find the classic SRA160. Hi delatite13, your explanation on the thermostat is exactly what I'm looking for. Seems like the thermostat only comes with the controller .. does it mean that if I want to have 4 zones, I'd need 4 controllers? It's just that having a zone without a local thermostat seems like a waste of electricity. I'm aware that with esp plus i can only have 1 temp at a time. Btw, Do you still remember how much did you spend on an additional controller? Thanks. Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 39Aug 30, 2012 8:34 am The extra controller wasn't expensive, less than $100, just can't remember exactly how much. Unfortunately you cannot have more than 2 controllers with the ESP plus. We looked at that option as well as it could make life easy, but the system doesn't have that option. The only option if you want individual control in each zone is to get the Ultima system, but at a pretty hefty price for only + or - 2 degrees. Each controller (the 2 we have) can operate, turn on/off each zone. There is a master unit and a slave unit which will work when the master is turned off. Each one has the ability to operate all your zones, we have 8 zones for maximum flexibility. The more the better. You need extra software for the extra zones from the standard 4, about $800 I think, but certainly gives the option to zone the house, to get maximum benefit. Settlement 1/2/12 New Shed 23/3/12 Slab poured 27/3/12 Frame complete 4/5/12 Roof complete 1/6/12 LOCKUP 29/6/12 Our new build blog http://kareenhillsownerbuild.blogspot.com/ Re: Actron Air-Thoughts/Reviews from People who already have 40Aug 30, 2012 12:19 pm peace97 if you go from their homepage>brochure>ducted systems there seems to be a lot of info near the end of the brochure If your patio is going to be 35 sqm then that's going to need Council Approval. 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