Joule Ireland Bewertungen 45

I moved in to a 2 bedroom flat in March 2023 which has a Joule Victorum Exhaust Air Heat Pump. I had previously been in a flat with storage and convector electric heaters, and was so excited to have something more modern that I thought would be better. Ha, jokes on me. I didn't know then that this Victorum Joule Exhaust Air System would be a lot worse than my previous set up of storage and convector heaters. Even though I am in a well-insulated house (new build, triple glazing, A2 rated) I am colder than in my previous flat, and constantly playing a game of trying to stop the heating from coming on (see below) as it is too expensive to use (except maybe at night-rate).

After a shock electric winter bill last winter I started to look into how to work it more efficiently. I thought the settings were wrong or something, initially, as it was more expensive to run than normal air to water systems in much bigger semi-detached houses. This is what I learned. Basically, abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

1. The system is essentially under-powered and runs off the immersion a lot of the time. I am in an A2 rated, well insulated, flat, not putting the heat up high, but it is still very expensive.

2. The system causes over-ventilation leading to a feeling of draftiness in the house. This is probably the worst problem and I can't see a solution to it. The system pulls warm air from the room (via a ventilation system) to heat the radiators to heat the room (yes, this is as stupid as it sounds). This 'ventilation' happens at a rate higher than you would need for normal ventilation. The removal of air from the room causes cold air to be sucked into the room from outside.

So if you are shivering when the heating is on, this is why. This was worst for me in my kitchen/living room as I had both the ventilation system and a vent in that room. To make matters worse my vent was positioned behind my couch so I had basically a wind tunnell where I sat (the positioning of the vent to outside is mostly likely the fault of the engineers or builders rather than Joule, but it is only part of the problem).

It got so bad I ended up putting bubble-wrap into the vent in my main room as I was shivering when I had the heating on.

Some Exhaust Air Heat Pumps (including from Joule) have an extra duct where it takes in air from outside and these might work a lot better and should not cause the over-ventilation issue.

3. The settings make it very difficult or impossible to stop the system from coming on by itself even when you put the heating in the off position on the control panel. The lowest set-point for the room is at 17 degrees and can't go any lower. There is a frost protection mode which was set to come on if the system went to or under 17 degrees (not sure if it had to go under 17). This would come on even if the heating was in the off position. On top of this there is a cold-start mode that comes on if the room temperature falls to 15 degrees and it is set (as per manufacturer instructions) to raise the room temperature 5 degrees if it goes into cold-start mode.

So I am now playing a game of cat and mouse to try to stop the heating from coming on, especially at peak times. I have done little things like put thermal lining on curtains, and I bought some electric heaters and mostly use them instead of the 'heat pump' system. I am going to try bubble wrap on the windows as well, though apparently this doesn't help if you already have tripple glazing.

I noticed on my BER report that the heating system is classified as very good even though it is terrible. This is really the fault of the SEAI who have allowed these awful, heavy on electricity, heating systems to be classified as very good. So my next stop is to contact them to try to do something about it. This won't help me but might limit the number of future victims.

Edit: to the 'wear an extra jumper' comment above. If that was directed at me, I wear a good few layers in winter (usually 2 vests, 1-2 t-shirts, heavy jumper and an oodie, also thermal tights and thermal leggings/jeans. I can't physically wear more clothes and be able to move around. I already mentioned the thermal lining on curtains. These do not fix the problem with the system running off the immerson, coming on by itself when it went under 17 degrees, and the worst thing, the over-ventilation). Some people will have a better Joule system than ours. I'd just recommend avoiding ours. I lived in an all electrically heated older, less insulated, flat before this one and the heating was better and cheaper and nicer sense of heat in the house (we had storage heaters and convector heaters)

8th time in 6 years heating system has failed .
Joule have been impossible to get support from , and after the second failure told us to use Smart Heating as they did not have resources to fix the amount of issues they had at the time . Our entire estate has them and not a single house has been trouble free , you can see a smart engineer pretty much every second day in our area fixing the latest failure .
Air and Heat is great when it works but the Joule system should be avoided.

Our heating stopped working on the coldest day of the year. We called the customer support at 8am to organise an engineer to come and fix it. We we were told we would get a call from the engineer when they are on the way. Lunchtime comes around and no word from the engineer so we called back. We were then told that no one could come out until at least tomorrow. The next day I noticed a Joule service van outside one of my neighbours house. I knew they were also having issues with their heating. I also know that they contacted Joule after us but somehow an engineer was with them before us. When the engineer left their house we called Joule again to be told that no one could come out until next week. This is after telling Joule from the first contact that we have 2 small kids in the house with colds and coughs. To be left with no heating for the best part of a week is an absolute disgrace. Horrible company, sub par products.

Company has a product (heat pump) which seems does not support solar pv system. Although, if someone has heat pump, it will more likely install solar panel. Company provides zero support or shows understanding of its own product.