Midea heat Pumps
Cafferatak2
| Posted in Mechanicals on
Hi Folks
Anyone have any experience with Midea heat pumps? One of the best offers I’ve seen so far is for a Midea unit. The heat output specifications and cold weather performance all seem quite good. I found some earlier discussion on them from 2021 on this site, but no-one seemed to have much direct experience with them. I’m looking at the 24,000 BTU/hr or smaller units.
Any issues with reliability?
Their noise raitings at 62 dB, which seems higher than Mitsubishi or Fujitsu’s offering. Any experience to share on that front?
Thank you!
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I have a set of Midas, ducted ones in a rental and a wall mount for the cottage. So far they are working great, I'm impressed with the wall mount as even in -25C weather it blows very warm air.
As far a reliability, mostly comes down to install. Make sure the installer does both a pressure check with nitrogen and vacuum decay to make sure there are no leaks.
Noise wise they are about the same as the rest. Essentially no sound in warmer weather but you can hear the compressor when at full tilt in the winter. Make sure to mount the outdoor unit onto solid masonry or ground only and away from bedroom windows.
P.S. The turndown on the larger units is not great, so make sure it is correctly sized for the load.
Ok, good the hear there is not much to report on the reliability front. I’ve asked Midea for clarification about whether the noise rating is at the source or 1 m away. When my Strata drafted up our bylaws, folks really wanted to preserve the soundscape (it’s pretty quiet here), so the max noise at 1m was set to 55dB.
Strata means condo and most likely BC. Condos already have very low heat load and in a mild climate like that, even lower.
Since most likely you are on resistance heat, I would run through the math here based on your last winter heating bill and figure out what your actual heat loss is:
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/replacing-a-furnace-or-boiler
The conversion for BTU=kWh*3414. The rest of the math is the same.
Once you have this, you can at least see if the 2 ton is correct (my rough guess is that it will 2x oversized). This means you can go with a smaller unit which might also be cheaper and quieter.
Thanks, I used the gas bill method Dana described. It correlated well with the gas usage I saw when it averaged -6C for 5 days. I also measured all the gas usage in our complex just to have some confidence that it wasn't a weird meter issue. It wasn't, there was a lot of variation, but I'm guessing the bigger swings were due to the gas heated hot water use.
Sadly I've run into a well meaning, but inovation stifling city hall. They demand a TECA calculation. That results in a heavily padded model for which fitting to your particular situation and experience is not a consideration. Gas usage says I need 16,000 BTU/hr, best TECA calc I can get says 25,000 BTU/hr. In a sane world they would let me use my gas fireplace heat output to suppliment. But the building code says they can only be condsidered decorative, despite it being plate rated for 20,000BTU/hr and having practical experience of it heating the whole home. Never been a small government guy, but the rigidity of government sure can be frustrating at times.
My understanding -- I don't have a cite, I probably read it here -- is that Midea is the world's largest manufacturer of heat pumps, but they've only started selling in the US under their own name. Many other common brands are rebadged Midea units.
I've read that as well. There were some Reddit threads where someone cautioned that they do tune to some producers specifications. Anyways, I haven't been able to find any major red flags so far. I've got a question into them about their sound readings, whether the 62 dB is at the source or at 1m. I'll post if they get back to me.
Sad to report that Midea has confirmed that the 62 dB is measured 1m from the source.
It is too bad, the pricing was really good. But having been part of the whole project to draft up bylaws, noise was pretty important to people, so I don't see a path forward with Midea. Midea support was great, I used a generic email on their website and got an informed response within 3 days.