HI,
Just makin the decision on a/c. We are having ducted throughout the house. Some quotes are for ACTRON and some for DAIKIN....I know both of these are very good makes...anyone with any thoughts on these?
Browse Forums Heating, Cooling & Insulation Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 3Aug 14, 2009 6:11 pm ’’Quondo Omni Flunkus Mortati ’’ If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Stila BK1 Build Thread The best place to talk about sport Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 6Aug 15, 2009 3:03 pm also depends on what you want/need. what size house, how many zones, etc? ’’Quondo Omni Flunkus Mortati ’’ If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Stila BK1 Build Thread The best place to talk about sport Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 8Aug 15, 2009 10:28 pm serge44 also depends on what you want/need. what size house, how many zones, etc? It is approx 45sqs - split level...so we would like 8 zones. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 9Aug 16, 2009 9:43 am My new home is 33.9 sq double storey and I wanted 8 zones (1 each bedroom x 4, theatre, family/dining/kitchen, living/study, tv area). Apart from the local Daikin outlet doing their best to convince me to buy anything else, the functionality of the ESP Ultima was always going to be hard to ignore. ’’Quondo Omni Flunkus Mortati ’’ If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Stila BK1 Build Thread The best place to talk about sport Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 10Aug 16, 2009 11:05 am serge44 My new home is 33.9 sq double storey and I wanted 8 zones (1 each bedroom x 4, theatre, family/dining/kitchen, living/study, tv area). Apart from the local Daikin outlet doing their best to convince me to buy anything else, the functionality of the ESP Ultima was always going to be hard to ignore. Hi serge44 what functionality did you like ?? My builder is quoting the Brivis HE model and I am trying to understand why there is a $10K differnce between the ESP Ultima * Are we there yet ? Demolition has come and gone ! yippeeee..hang on that was months ago !! come on Mr Builder, dig a hole at least Finaly ! Hole Dug ! well done darren 20/06/2010. Slab is down ! Framing is complete 20/10/2010 we are progressing like a snail on heat - excited and determined but very very slow Steveo Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 12Aug 16, 2009 2:04 pm chatterbox Just makin the decision on a/c. We are having ducted throughout the house. Some quotes are for ACTRON and some for DAIKIN....I know both of these are very good makes...anyone with any thoughts on these? There are a number of threads on this subject. You might want to do a search. However, I may be one of the few people here who has actually had both Daikin and Actron ducted systems installed in two very similar sized homes. Our current AC is Actron ESP Ultima and, IMO, it is far superior to Daikin in some important areas. I should first say that only you can make a decision on what's right for you. You have to balance the various features and design of both systems against your personal/family needs and, of course, cost. I should also qualify my comments about my own experience of Daikin by saying that we had a Daikin installed in 2004 and the Actron in 2008. The current Daikin systems may well be very much improved since then. Having said that, we had a Daikin 18kW 7-zone system, and now have an Actron 18kW 7-zone system so the comparison of performance should be fairly even. Okay, as I see it, the main advantage Actron gives you is its use of digital scroll technology (which is featured in Actron ESP, ESP Plus & Ultima). In essence that means that the outdoor unit can operate at anything between 10% and 110% of its rated capacity, which, in theory, means substantial energy savings. The theory is that it puts out the minimum amount of air required to maintain set temperatures, therefore using less power than other systems. I'm personally not convinced that this translates into major energy differences between Actron and other inverter type systems, but where it does shine is that the digital scroll, combined with Actron's internal units and their use of high quality GE fans/dampers capable of operating in a range from zero to full allows Actron to discard the idea of both 'common' zones and 'spill' zones. That does save power because it allows you to have just one zone on, e.g., a master bedroom at night or the family room during the day. AFAIK the Daikin ducting units are still designed in the 'traditional' way, i.e., they require both an 'always on' common zone and a 'spill' zone to dump excess cold air. That common zone is generally a living area. When we had a Daikin system what that meant was that even at night when we really only needed to cool one bedroom the common zone was on. It used to infuriate me that a large area of the house that was not being used was being cooled, and eating power, while we were sleeping. And that waste cold air was being 'dumped'. The other thing I hated about the design of the Daikin system was the variance in temperatures between zones. This may be different now but with our Daikin system, because the temperature is set/measured at just one point, usually in the common zone, that area would reach the set temp long before the other zones. Which meant that the bedrooms for example were always 2 or 3 (sometimes more) degrees warmer than the actual set temp. I guess with Daikin et al you get around that by having more than one sensor. None of that happens with Actron because you have no common zone and there's no 'waste' air -- it produces only the amount of cold (or hot) air needed to cool the individual zones that are on at any one time. And, in our experience, it does that with great accuracy. We have found this to be the one of the biggest advantages by far of Actron. We rarely have the whole system on. At any one time we usually have no more than one or two zones operating, and, as each room is its own zone, we are obviously using less energy that way. IMO the Actron is also much more efficient than Daikin in reaching set temps. It may be that's because we're usually only asking it to cool one or two zones but, as an example, if outside temps are around 38 degrees we have found the Actron can drop the temperature to 24 degrees in one zone within 10 minutes or so. The Daikin always took quite a lot longer. We found both the Daikin external and internal (attic) units noiser than Actron. Not much, they're both actually pretty quiet but we live in the country and, with the Daikin, we found that at night you could hear a rumble through the walls, and a whistle from the return air. We've not had that experience with Actron; it's very quiet, especially once it's got everything to the set temperature and dropped to its 'low' maintenance level. The Actron is only 3 metres from a bedroom window but we've never heard it from inside the house. We also find the return air and the outlets on the Actron much quieter, although that may have just been the installation of the Daikin. For us though, the absolute best thing about Actron is the ability to not only have just the one or two zones operating but the ability to set different temperatures in each zone. That's a biggie for us because we think that each room needs different temperatures to be truly comfortable. In our setup we have two master controllers, one in the foyer and one in the master bedroom, but we also have individual controllers in every room. These allow us to switch rooms on and off individually without going near the master controllers, which means you tend to not forget to switch a zone off when leaving a room. More importantly, they let us adjust the temperature in each room (zone) to whatever is the most comfortable. You set the base temp at the master (say 23 degrees) and then each room can be controlled individually within a range of +/- 3 degrees -- so a bedroom might be 20 degrees while a media room might be at 25 degrees. We really only ever use the master controller(s) to switch the system on or off, or use the timers. Each room controller has its own little sensor and they're remarkably accurate. The room controllers allow you to see what the actual temperature in the room is and, in our experience, the different zone temps are always within 0.3 degrees of the set temps. We've confirmed that with separate thermometers. It's really accurate in maintaining the temperature you want. This feature is only available on the ESP Ultima but it's surprisingly cheap to install, about $120 each for the room controllers in our case. We also like the 'fan' mode, which is a sort of fresh air system. Open all the windows and switch the AC to fan and it just circulates fresh air through the system. But that's probably pretty standard on all systems. Cost? I understand the Actron is more expensive but in fact we paid around the same for ours as we did for the Daikin, although that's probably just because ducted AC in general had come done between 2004 and 2008, when we bought the Actron. Energy cost? Hard to say, there are too many variables (different houses, different power suppliers, increases in power costs etc) to make a genuinely accurate comparison. But there's no doubt that we're using less energy with the Actron, about 20% less I think. That's not the "up to 35%" Actron claim but it's not to be sneezed at in these days of climbing power costs. Clearly, I'm a fan of Actron. Whether it's right for you only you can say. IMHO, if you are going to pay $15k plus for ducted air conditioning in a large home then you might as well pay to get the highest level of convenience, flexibility and comfort available. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 13Aug 16, 2009 3:12 pm They way Ancient Mariner described the Actron advantages is pretty much what our rep explained to us. We were already designing a fairly energy efficient house and our predominant conditioning requirement was heating and only some cooling. This would be different from where Chatterbox and AM live. Our climate could be described as cool temperate. Currently we are using 1/5th of the energy to heat our house compared to our previous one (which is was 1/3rd smaller). The 20-35% 'energy advantage' of the Actron unit would have brought a smaller absolute benefit. I didn't think it would justify paying another $1500-2000 for the system but I appreciate its advantages. The absolute savings would be higher the higher your active heating or cooling requirements are. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 14Aug 16, 2009 3:30 pm That's a very good point. We use ours predominantly for cooling and I had never considered that you are going to get a higher level of energy efficiency when heating. In absolute terms if you were using the Actron for 50/50 heating/cooling you might well achieve an overall 35% saving. And for primarily heating, other systems like Daikin might well provide similar savings. We do have a reasonably energy efficient house and I've been just a little disappointed that we have not achieved as much of a saving in power as I had hoped the Actron would provide. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 15Aug 16, 2009 3:51 pm Ancient Mariner That's a very good point. We use ours predominantly for cooling and I had never considered that you are going to get a higher level of energy efficiency when heating. In absolute terms if you were using the Actron for 50/50 heating/cooling you might well achieve an overall 35% saving. And for primarily heating, other systems like Daikin might well provide similar savings. We do have a reasonably energy efficient house and I've been just a little disappointed that we have not achieved as much of a saving in power as I had hoped the Actron would provide. Depends on what you are comparing the Actron with. Is it with a off-the-shelf non-inverter, no-name or with a quality unit like Daikin (or even Mitsubishi or Panasonic). Theoretically, the perfect system would have multiple return air ducts so that you only recondition the air from the active zone. However, with any ducted system you end up pulling unconditioned area from another part of the house and pumping it into the active zone (which is also leaking air into the inactive zones). Effectively you are not really just conditioning one part part of the house but heating/cooling more air than you would actually need. PS I am pretty sure that Daikin also uses digital scroll but the Actron one is better. Late edit: sorry I checked, no they don't Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 16Aug 16, 2009 6:05 pm dymonite69 However, with any ducted system you end up pulling unconditioned area from another part of the house and pumping it into the active zone (which is also leaking air into the inactive zones). Effectively you are not really just conditioning one part part of the house but heating/cooling more air than you would actually need. This is something we've wrestled with for a year. With all this 'zone flexibility' we have, is it actually better (more efficient) to have just one or two zones on, or better to have the whole lot going? For example, if the two zones furthest from the return air are on then air has to travel back quite a way to reach the return. The answer from Actron and other experts has been that it is still more efficient (cheaper) to only have the zones you are using on. dymonite69 PS I am pretty sure that Daikin also uses digital scroll but the Actron one is better. Late edit: sorry I checked, no they don't No, but as I said earlier, I don't think that the digital scroll technology is in itself inherently more efficient than an inverter technology. It's the overall design of the system that really provides the efficiencies. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 17Aug 16, 2009 6:32 pm Ancient Mariner With all this 'zone flexibility' we have, is it actually better (more efficient) to have just one or two zones on, or better to have the whole lot going? The answer from Actron and other experts has been that it is still more efficient (cheaper) to only have the zones you are using on. I'm sure it is definitely more efficient but as much as you would expect if you were to just have single unit being operated solely for that room. Another thing I have found to help improve system efficiency is to close off (i.e. shut doors to) inactive areas near the return air grille. This reduces the volume of non-conditioned air entering into the system and improves the pressure gradient (and flow) from the zoned areas. You hit target temperatures faster which mean less work (and energy consumption) on the unit. Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 18Aug 16, 2009 7:35 pm iTalk We're going with ActronAir as well. I got pretty decent quote for their 23Kw ESP PLUS system for our 33sq home We might, however, opt for the 19Kw instead.. I could have got away with a the 15kw system but no ultima in that range, so no toys. Ups I went to the 17.5kw system for my 33.9sq home ’’Quondo Omni Flunkus Mortati ’’ If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Stila BK1 Build Thread The best place to talk about sport Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 19Aug 16, 2009 8:01 pm serge44 iTalk We're going with ActronAir as well. I got pretty decent quote for their 23Kw ESP PLUS system for our 33sq home We might, however, opt for the 19Kw instead.. I could have got away with a the 15kw system but no ultima in that range, so no toys. Ups I went to the 17.5kw system for my 33.9sq home We have 35 sq and the recomendation came in at 23Kw ?? maybe time for a second quote ? * Are we there yet ? Demolition has come and gone ! yippeeee..hang on that was months ago !! come on Mr Builder, dig a hole at least Finaly ! Hole Dug ! well done darren 20/06/2010. Slab is down ! Framing is complete 20/10/2010 we are progressing like a snail on heat - excited and determined but very very slow Steveo Re: DUCTED A/C.....ACTON or DAIKIN or..... 20Aug 16, 2009 8:24 pm Steveo serge44 iTalk We're going with ActronAir as well. I got pretty decent quote for their 23Kw ESP PLUS system for our 33sq home We might, however, opt for the 19Kw instead.. I could have got away with a the 15kw system but no ultima in that range, so no toys. Ups I went to the 17.5kw system for my 33.9sq home We have 35 sq and the recomendation came in at 23Kw ?? maybe time for a second quote ? Well, it depends on how many rooms you'll need your air-conditioner to cover ! If I wanted to turn on all the zones at the same time, then the 23Kw will be about right Hi all, sorting out the ducted air con for a 350sqm double story house. Does this placement sound reasonable to you? Also, I plan to have 6 zones I think. Living room… 0 0 Hi all, sorting out the ducted air con for a 350sqm double story house. I think i plan to have 6 zones I think. Living room (mainly for entertainment so not used often),… 0 0 0 6246 |