what is the best split system aircon?
value for money and will do a kitchen/loungeroom in anaverage size house?
which of the big retailers do install.
any help on this or past experience would be epic.

Just built myself a new house( yes I built it), r6.5 in the ceilings,aircell cavity wrap and r 2 in the walls, veridian glass , used my noggin on eave overhangs and winter sun/ summer sun projection , no aircon in the house, we need to get out of this press the aircon button approach,
The house performs amazingly in summer and winter

Measure up the area you want to condition in m2, measure ceiling heights and note orientation of external windows etc. I.e. West facing windows. Also take note of building construction, wall type, celing cavity, insulation etc. take all this to a reputable dealer and they will be able to work out what size you need.

Mitsabishi and Daikin are both good, hard to recommend anyone as your profile does not include location.

I cant kill sharks and i cant get aircon..........its one or the other and i need aircon.
i got solar first so surely im allowed an aircon, i want a split system

I have Aussie made 26kw ducted but will not reccomend ( ActronAir)
Great , quiet and powerfull and freeze the boiling hot home in a minutes.
But luck of that precises control that then provide you comfort in life.

Mechanically excellent , and quiet but due to lack of that sensible control I have either boiler room or freezer at home.
But that is ducted , so with split could be easier because you have this temperature sensor for every unit ( not like me one for whole home )I guess company is skimping couple hundred dollars on additional temperature sensor, rendering whole project senseless

so my advice - look for one that have good temperature control in the place you want

I don't know much about other brands. However, both of my rental properties have Daikin, and none of the tenants complained about them, or reported any failure since they were installed some 10 years ago. A friend of mine who installs air conditioners reckons Daikin is one of the best.

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Smithy said...
Measure up the area you want to condition in m2, measure ceiling heights and note orientation of external windows etc. I.e. West facing windows. Also take note of building construction, wall type, celing cavity, insulation etc. take all this to a reputable dealer and they will be able to work out what size you need.

Mitsabishi and Daikin are both good, hard to recommend anyone as your profile does not include location.

cheers smithy, will do this before i go shopping, i didnt really think about it. was going to get a 5 or7kw unit but i better do some maths first.
And daikin seems to get good reviews...I was thinking fujitsu cause you seem to get more kw for your money...

I agree with Cauncy.

Hard to say much more without knowing location and more details.

As far as brands go, you can't go wrong with a daikin.

Clarence

We've got two old Fujitsu wall mount clunkers that are now 20yo and going strong (but they are the old hum & rattle type with very basic controls). So based on their longevity we installed 3x small Fujitsu splits - one for each bedroom. They are now 5yo and have had no problems. The Quiet mode is very good at night when sleeping.

When I was doing my research Daikin also came up - but was more expensive from memory.

I have a Daikin at home and a Fujitsu in a shack and hard to fault either but I do like the home leave function on the Daikin.
Just one button to turn it to the temp you want when you leave or go to bed they are both around 8.2 kw.
We mainly use for heating.

Hey Razz, Fujitsu or Daikin are the go and Fujitsu run cash back offers sometimes so look out for that. Keep away from the cheapies.

Also if you are located near beach where the outdoor unit will be exposed to salt air, ask what options the unit has for harsh environment. I live next to beach and the Daikin unit we have has a treated condenser coil. 10 years on the unit has no sign of corrosion on the coil and only minor rust on the enclosure.

Macroscien your ducted unit should have better temperature control than any split if set up correctly. If they cut corners when it was installed you can still correct at any time and make it work better. I am assuming at 23 kW the units has some variable control over the cooling output, if not you have been dudded with a commercial unit designed for a constant fixed load...

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Smithy said..
I am assuming at 23 kW the units has some variable control over the cooling output, if not you have been dudded with a commercial unit designed for a constant fixed load...

yes there is smart variable control to the compressor but one or two sensor for 485m2 home not good enough. If sensor is one in the corridor on each level. Air need to recirculate whole home , equalize to reach the sensor. Which mean the if I do setup 22 Celsius, In may bedroom could be 18 - 16 before sensor kick in.Beside a bit of discomfort that is also reason for tremendous power bill on such big unit.
I imagine that simple thing like portable temperature sensor could do the trick. Instead of that one sensor glued permanently to the wall it could be one like our TV remote ( or air con remote) with sensor. If I take it to my bedroom for night it will take care about my bedroom ,and nothing else. If sensor need more power could be even plug in to the nearest power socket.
Obviously system has 6 zones but with one sensor, doesn't make much sens. Company offer now some option for temperature control in rooms but at already one of the most expensive quotation that will double the price again.

At some stage I think about installing then additional small split unit , one for bedroom , one for office. Cheaper then any upgrade to existing monster, but clogging the view a bit.

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Macroscien said..

and quiet but due to lack of that sensible control I have either boiler room or freezer at home.

I have similar "problem" with Daikin ducted A/C,

One low tech solution, if you can, is try adjusting the air flow in to the rooms, that are too hot/cold. Our air outlets can be adjusted to let more or less air in.One of our rooms was too cold (smaller room, but same size ducting and outlet) so I manually closed the outlet to reduce the amount of air coming in. You could also experiment with closing doors to restrict air flow between the room and return air intake. May not solve it but could make some difference.

Our outlets look similar to this: www.holyoake.com/product-details/ECO-M_item.html?ref_cat_id=ECO-Diffusers



Razzonater: there are online calculators to determine the size of the A/C for given space. Few links on this page: www.google.com.au/search?q=what+size+air+conditioner+do+I+need&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-AU:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&gfe_rd=cr&ei=uJJGVpPlH8nu8wfwnIGwCw&gws_rd=ssl

At least you will have an idea before walking into a store

For our previous house I bought Panasonic Split inverter, 7 kWh at Harvey Norman few years ago (during a heat wave, when our evap unit couldn't cope). They had a special on with free install, bought it on Sunday, was installed Tuesday. Free install includes back to back only, e.g. no extra pipes etc. So keep that in mind to keep cost down. We used the unit for about 2 years (cooling & heating, with no issues).
In the current house we have ducted Daikin, which is about 12 years old, runs fine.

There are tons of posts on exactly the same topic (what's good, what's not good etc) here: forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/138?&g=222

I hope this help...

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gs12 said..

Macroscien said..

and quiet but due to lack of that sensible control I have either boiler room or freezer at home.

I have similar "problem" with Daikin ducted A/C,

One low tech solution, if you can, is try adjusting the air flow in to the rooms, that are too hot/cold. Our air outlets can be adjusted to let more or less air in.One of our rooms was too cold (smaller room, but same size ducting and outlet) so I manually closed the outlet to reduce the amount of air coming in. You could also experiment with closing doors to restrict air flow between the room and return air intake. May not solve it but could make some difference.

A ducted system should not just be designed around placing a bunch of outlets around the building. The system should be designed around an air flow for quantity for each outlet based on the utilisation and load in the zone. When installed the unit should be fully commissioned to ensure the air distribution is corrected and the air flow actually balanced to each outlet. If they did not perform an air balance they did not commission you system properly.

when you start adjusting outlets the air is redistributed between the other outlets, like water the air will take the easiest path, you can end up chasing your tale and just shift the problem from one place to another.

if the units has 6 zones it should have enough sensors to match. It could also have included motoised dampers in the ducts to close off unused zones, reduce the amount of supply air and cooling energy and big bucks. It should have at least been zoned for a night time mode to only supply air to bedrooms, usually with a controlling sensor in the master.

A lot of folk get confused that split units control to the location of the remote. This is not correct, the controlling temperature sensor is in the return air path of the indoor unit.

I have a ducted Actron and I could not recommend it enough. It sounds to me like Macro has a dud installation...only one sensor for a large house???...definitely a problem there....

Mine has digital scroll and individual sensors and zone controls in each room. You can have one small room or the entire house going and the compressor just scales to suit. Every room can have a different temp no problems...

For the record our house is also heavily insulated and is designed with lots of cross flow breezes, which we utilize to good effect....but sometimes no amount of natural ventilation will counter the Queensland heat and humidity...

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Smithy said..


A ducted system should not just be designed around placing a bunch of outlets around the building. The system should be designed around an air flow for quantity for each outlet based on the utilisation and load in the zone. When installed the unit should be fully commissioned to ensure the air distribution is corrected and the air flow actually balanced to each outlet. If they did not perform an air balance they did not commission you system properly.

when you start adjusting outlets the air is redistributed between the other outlets, like water the air will take the easiest path, you can end up chasing your tale and just shift the problem from one place to another.

if the units has 6 zones it should have enough sensors to match. It could also have included motoised dampers in the ducts to close off unused zones, reduce the amount of supply air and cooling energy and big bucks. It should have at least been zoned for a night time mode to only supply air to bedrooms, usually with a controlling sensor in the master.

A lot of folk get confused that split units control to the location of the remote. This is not correct, the controlling temperature sensor is in the return air path of the indoor unit.

Sorry for the off topic posts.

I don't disagree with anything you've said, but the reality (for me) is that even though our AC system is zoned, the zoning is done manually and dampers are simple on/off type. As far as I can tell the same size ducts lead to all rooms so obviously the smaller rooms get much colder...
So as you mentioned above: I can manually reduce air flow in to small rooms, which will increase air flow to large rooms. Seems to work for me and the temperature is more even now.

BTW the unit was already here when we bought the place.

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Paradox said..

Mine has digital scroll and individual sensors and zone controls in each room.

sorry. I check this again. 8 zones not 6 and two control panels ( one on each home level), one sensor.

I can run AC for a single zone, but doesn't help because sensor could be 50 m away, so I will freeze in office, and sensor will still receive hot boing air pumped throught whole home.
In fact what I care is only one or two rooms at the time, hardly needs to equailize whole home.

I wish the upgrade to your controller could be possible one day....

So I am sure about one thing - for smaller home -few smaller split units may works much better then one big ducted.I had this in previous home and each kid could setup whatever they liked in their bedrooms , no consensus needed like now with ducted - constant fight.

Just fitted a single room Fujitsu to main bedroom. Have whole of house system, but running this unit at night was a pain, as its size meant I had to run two zones at all times because of internal fan and heat exchanger, and expensive. Was even more annoyed when installer advised that Hitachi are no longer in Australia, and if it fails, I could be up for a complete compressor unit and not be able to repair.?
Got a good deal on the Fujitsu unit.
First impressions are the external unit is reasonably quite and not intrusive if you are a light sleeper. Cooling is excellent and only have needed to run it on"slow" fan speed. House has elevated ceilings in all rooms.
Company houses we built in North West we found to be more efficient cost wise, by installing multiple single units, instead of one main system. I would install a few single units next time if I had option.

Built our house in NQ 8 years ago, got Daikin splits throughout - never had a problem yet.

I put a Fujitsu in the main lounge last summer (10mx5m - 13f ceilings) and and it chills that down in 5 mins easy and then seems to run pretty quietly to maintain. Put a cheaper Mitsubishi in our bedroom (6mx5m - 13f) and it seems to take some time to get it cool, maybe 15 mins, but then runs basically silently.

Haven't had issues with either but if I was out shopping for one today, I'd probably lean towards the Mitsubishi as it runs like you don't know it's there and was considerably cheaper. In saying that, it may struggle if it was in the room the size of what the Fuji has to deal with.

Hitachi are really well priced at the moment in WA and quality wise up there with Daikin, Mitsi, panasonic.