Climate Master Tranquility 30 TE064

I'm blaming the product because I think the system is unreasonably fickle. It works as long as I'm babysitting it and spending hours and hours learning how to be an HVAC contractor. Again, how do I sell this house? Do I give the new owner 2 weeks of hvac training? Do I tell them welcome to the house. If you don't handle the hvac yourself, expect to have 20 calls/year to the hvac guys? In this last case the incoming water was 52/53 and never went below that. The valve apparently doesn't adjust quickly enough or properly enough and as a result it sucks too much heat out. Or maybe the Lt2 thermister is whacky. I'd still say that proves my point that the systems is too fickle to be practical. Maybe I'll have much better luck now that I'm not using the modulating valve configuration.

 

Is 5 tons too large/small for our house do you think?

Btw everyone, thanks very much for the comments. Obviously I'm at a high frustration point. I'd say I've called the installers 20 times since it was installed. That doesn't include the maybe 50 hours I have into reading forums, reading Tech sheets on the ClimateMaster, the Johnson Control unit, the Hybrid water tank, figuring out what Detla T is and what it means when a thermister is freezing. My point is that I don't think it's reasonable for a homeowner to have to spend that much time and energy coming up to speed on the hvac world. Or perhaps put another way, if I had known that this system would require this much time and babysitting, and maybe that should be expected, but it's not something I would have signed up for. I'm away on business and the system freezes up. Now I have to try to explain to my wife what to do, how to enter into service mode, which circuit breakers to flip to reset the system, how to switch over from detla T to fixed valve. Crazy. I suspect ClimateMaster is continuing to evolve the product. Maybe they can get it to a point where it better watches out for itself and one doesn't have to do what I do. I'm just unfortunately stuck with what I have.

 

Got it. I thought you exchanged the valve to a open/close one, not using the same modulating valve to the fixed setting. You apparently had flow issues, increasing your flow should mitigate them.

 

I agree, you should not have to. But you changed certain settings on the valve, and the last lockout was likely a flow issue, which was most likely created by you.
But I agree with you that Climatemaster added complexity to it which is unnecessary. We used to also install CM, but this is one of the reasons we don't use it anymore.

 

Our mantra has been choose installer over brand/price, if you desire a good out come. Most of our CM's work very well and yes we have had frustrations like Doc that made us consider a change. I also have to consider who I buy from RE support and other equipment in my AO offers me less support......to better serve my customers.
...and yes based on your size of house I would not expect you would need 5 tons. That said, there is a lot of information I'm not privy to.

Any of us can also tell you that every brand has had growing pains from nuisance lock-outs like yours to small fires.....as has virtually every furnace manufacturer. The up shot is no CO in your house. The obvious downside is first cost.

 

I didn't read that before, sorry for the late reply.

I have exactly the same situation here. Open loop, constant LT1 lockout... We spent hundreds of hours to troubleshoot and babysitting the machine to understand.

Our conclusion is that in open loop, the mod valve has to be set in fixed mode. I will try to explain why:
When the machine starts after being off for a while, the water entering the machine is colder than usual in winter. With the previous % of opening, you will not get your DeltaT of 7, maybe only 4. What the machine do in this situation, it closes the valve to increase the DeltaT to the 7 target. Closing the valve when the water is colder is stupid, but the machine is just a program and the program looks at the DeltaT only, not at the LT1 droping like crazy when you close the valve with colder water.

After hours of babysitting, we know every percentage of valve opening required and we just set like that. There is no more problem.

Note that you can set the valve in fixed mode only with ver 3.3 and above of the DXM2. I had to change my DXM2 after noticing another machine could do it but not mine.

Hope your problems are resolved since then.

My conclusion is that ClimateMaster did not do good testing for open loop systems. We are really operating on the boundaries of their limits even when they do not make much sense. I agree the system is not super reliable and we were nervous to be out of the house for days in winter because too scared of the LT1 that never recovers... Not what you expect of a machine that price!

 

Hi llforest - Thanks for your thoughts. I just went through another "session" of freeze outs. I've posted a link to the thread below. If you start from the beginning you'll see what I tried (again) and how I resolved it. In the end, I've learned to consider the Delta T to represent how well the water is flowing. If the water is flowing as it should, then it works as it should. I get EXACTLY the delta T that I have it set on. When the delta T starts to get larger than the delta T setting, the only thing that can be happening is that the water flow is slowing down. So... It's ok if the incoming water temp gets down to 46 or so. It will only drop down to 41 with delta T at 5 and LT1 stays in the mid 30's. The secret, at least for me, is to keep my sediment filter clean. Now I understand I can look at the Delta T and use it as an indicator for how clean my filter is!

https://www.geoexchange.org/forum/threads/climatemaster-valve-configuration-question.7391/

Thanks again for sharing your observations!

Russ

 

llforest - One more thing. What is your incoming water temp when you get your freeze outs on Lt1? thanks

 

I'm in trouble when the water temp goes to 40-41 when the machine starts...

I'm 45deg latitude North. Here the water is 47 deg year long. So if the valve closes in top of that I'm dead...

 

Ah. I'm in Maryland/USA around 39.5. Ground temperature is around 52/53. In winter because of my system it can drop down to 46ish. As long as we are turning the water over typical low is 47-48. Right now around 50. Thanks!

 

Yeah I have two wells, so temp never changes even when our two houses are heating... We could not afford it!

Cheers!

 

Here is some good information on LT1 lockouts when using modulating valve on the TE30 - specifically page 47:

http://www.climatemaster.com/geothe...g-guide-residential-geothermal-heat-pumps.pdf

It appears that you want to install a 30 PSI regulator on the incoming side. The modulating valve will not close below 50% at that PSI setting. According to the documentation, the GPM flow is erratic or hard to regulate below 50% closing. The manual also states that LT1 and some other inputs are disregarded for the first 120 seconds of compressor operating, so warm/cold water in your holding tank should have no effect on lockouts.

I am having a TE30 quoted this week. I currently have a 17 year old WF Premier and with the tax credits I am leaning towards replacing it now since we are remodeling also. Also plan on a constant pressure pump upgrade and will install the pressure regulator as well. Even my WF could benefit from the pressure reducing valve since the Taco valves are noisy above 50 PSI or so anyway.