Heating defective due to ammonia from the channel

Hello,

we built an Okal house before 2017 with a Tecalor 404 eco. This year, 2019, the first service by Tecalor (maintenance contract) was due in April. As chance would have it, our heating system repeatedly reported faults with the refrigerant about 2 weeks before the maintenance appointment.

When the Tecalor technician was here at the end of April, he found damage to the heating system caused by ammonia flowing back from the duct. (Statement from the Tecalor employee). This ammonia got into the house connection room through dried-out funnel traps and a missing trap and attacked the copper pipes and motors.

After a few weeks, when we inquired at Tecalor about when the repair would take place, we received an email from Tecalor stating that a repair was not possible and therefore a paid full replacement of the heat pump was necessary.

We passed this on to DFH and after a few weeks, as we are unfortunately used to from DFH (Okal), we got the answer that the system broke down due to our own fault because we had failed to regularly fill the funnel traps with water (this was not mentioned to us at the house handover). The missing trap was not addressed at all.

Now I would like to ask the users of this forum:

Has anyone had similar experiences with their heating system?
Which of you homeowners have to regularly fill the funnel traps in the HAR so that your heating system does not break?

On the other hand, I would be interested to know if anyone can tell me whether this system was connected correctly at all?
A funnel trap was connected to the expansion tank, a funnel trap under an Optiline filling valve, but the condensate drain of the Tecalor heat pump was connected directly to the sewage line without a trap.

In my opinion as a layman, I would say that a trap directly on the floor above the floor inlet of the sewage line would have sufficed, and that this should have been filled with water from both the expansion tank, the Optiline filling valve, and the condensate drain of the heating system.

I am also attaching a few photos of the installation by the company Fehl und Sohn (subcontractors of DFH).

I am grateful for your opinions on this topic and hope they will help us decide how to proceed.

Since the heating no longer heats, it probably will not be warm in our house from September. And for reasons of securing evidence, I cannot and may not change anything about the current installation.

However, I am not willing to have a new heat pump installed at our own expense, which will cost about 25,000 euros.

Well, this is clearly a case for the lawyer. How is anyone supposed to be able to assess the connection of your heating system here. For me, for example, it is not clear why and what is even connected to the wastewater (except for the third picture for the drinking water). A heating system should be a closed system - but the flow temperature is different with you, or not professionally done - who knows.

Thank you very much for your response.

In the fourth picture, one of the funnel traps attached to the overpressure tank can be seen.
Pictures one and two show the connection of this trap to the wastewater pipe, which runs behind our heating system.
Picture three shows the condensate drain of the heating system, which was directly connected to the wastewater pipe.
Pictures five and six show the trap hanging under the automatic filling valve and how it is connected to the wastewater.

I do not want to make any statements here, but rather share experiences and opinions. Perhaps someone has already encountered a similar problem, although my internet search has so far been unsuccessful. Or maybe other homeowners have been informed that their funnel traps must be regularly filled (whatever that is supposed to mean / undefined time period).

That the system broke down due to our own fault, as we failed to regularly fill the funnel siphons with water (this was not told to us during the handover of the house).

Here, statement meets statement. A case for the lawyer.
But generally speaking: does one have to be pointed out this during the handover of the house at all? What do the technical operating manuals say? When buying a car (or something else), I am not told how to maintain it either.

Thank you very much for your response.

The question is whether it is reasonable to expect a layperson like me to maintain a heating system such as a heat pump?
When buying a car, it has always been the case for me that I received an introduction to the vehicle. At least to the operation and the special features of the respective model.

That is why one of the questions was: Is there anyone who still has to "regularly" fill their heating system’s funnel siphon? All relatives, friends, and acquaintances answered no to that.

Sorry, I meant the 4th picture. That one is for the hot water (that’s what it looks like in the picture) and it should (automatically without your intervention) always be full. The other one from the refill station is more prone to drying out. But the idea that something flows out of the dry siphon into the room, and in such a high concentration that it damages the devices, is pretty absurd. Does it really smell bad in the room? Don’t you have a ventilation system? We have a siphon on the ventilation system, which is actually almost always dry.. sometimes when I remember (1-2 times a year) I pour something in, but the idea that something would break from the dry siphon on my side is nonsense.