ALDI Stirling STR-TCLAC12 (Dec 2016, Dec 2017, Dec 2018)
VerifiedMPNs: 58841, 62555 and STR-TCLAC1210 reviews
Would not be without it – Value for money works very well would recommend to others. You will not be disappointed. All round good system. Show details
Cools well. Useless as a heater! – Was tempted to give 2 stars but to be fair it does cool very well. Unfortunately, the heating is dismal! On full power it blows luke warm air at best. Sincerely, our $15 Kmart heater heats our small bedroom better! We bought 2 units and 6 months after install one had to have a shrader valve replaced under warranty. Dealing with Tempo for the warranty claim was fine and went smoothly. From first contact to repair took a about a week. Show details
Concerns with regards to spare parts – I have 3 X Sterling A/C units, extremely happy with the units until a Gecko managed to short out the main PCB in the condenser unit. I have tried locating the part but to no vail, looks like I may need to buy a new A/C unit
Great Air-Con – I had this installed almost three years ago. It's quiet and reliable. The remote is a bit useless as the keys are grey. They are hard to read. Otherwise, it's a good unit. It cools rather well and the heating function is equally as good. As a bonus, when the outside air stunk of burnt forest during the recent bush fires, I closed all doors and… Read more
windows resulting in a sweat box. My son encouraged me to turn the air con on anyway. Sure enough, the air filter filtered out the smoke/stink etc. so that we could breathe again. Stirling is apparently a brand that is re-branded under many other names. I don't care about that as long as it works.
On another note, I have read a few bad reviews. I am assuming that the error messages are due to poor installation (I am not an air-con expert!). I am lucky that my installer did a very god job and he'll fix it if his work is responsible for a defect. Then again, the alleged apathy from Stirling noted by other reviewers is unacceptable. It is difficult for most people to tell whether the installation was shonky and led to failure or whether the units are just crap. Fair Trade may be the way to go for those people who have had unsatisfactory results.
In my case, the unit works really well. Fingers crossed.
Aircon does the job – 1. This site conditioner works well and hats up house when left on during the day. 2. It's easy to navigate the controls for it, although the timer controls can be a bit temperamental at times. 3. So far or air conditions had keep us seasonally warm/ cool. We have a larger than recommended area that it's covering and its doing a good job all things considered. Written it was very hot it kept us cool so we love it. Show details
Stirling Split System pathetic – I bought the Stirling 3.8 Split system at Aldi in Dec 2017 and the heating component does not work at all. I have had to call Stirling seven times who have given me the run around. I eventually spoke to an electrician from Stirling who said this is a common problem would order me the parts if they are not on back order. A month later and nothing. Will never buy anything from Aldi. Show details
Another great Aldi product – Generally speaking, my family has found Aldi products to be of good quality. This air conditioner is no different. We purchased it for our bedroom, to replace an ageing unit installed years ago. We bought it mainly because it was an Inverter design, and one of the few units available that featured a 4.5-star cooling and 4-star heating rating.… Read more
Also, it came with a 5 year 'in-home' warranty - which is hard to beat! The unit is quiet, easy to operate, and has a digital read-out built into the cover. For our (average) bedroom size, it is brilliant so far - and certainly seems to be more economical (and much quieter) than our old unit. This was also considerably cheaper than other similarly-sized A/C's available. We're happy with our purchase and would recommend Aldi A/C's.
Chilling good. Worth the money. Only minor design-improvement suggestions – I bought a 3300W-cooling air-conditioner from Aldi (Stirling STR-TCLAC12), additional to the two 2300W-cooling units from Aldi (Stirling STR-23RSJAIF), which I bought 2 month earlier. Thus, I will compare the two a little bit. Happy with both. Only minor design-improvements ALDI should take on board. The unit is quiet and even quieter in… Read more
sleep mode.
I did detailed measurements with a power-meter:
Standby mode: 9W! :(
Switching on in A/C-cooling mode:
In contrast to the way the 2300W-cooling unit from Aldi works, where for the first 3 minutes the power consumption sits at 36W for the internal fan only, before the outside compressor start up, here, on this 3300W-cooling unit the outside compressor starts up pretty much immediately. The power consumption starts at about 500W but ramps up in the next six minutes to its target, which depends on the outside temperature. The target would be on a hot to very hot day be between 1300 and 1500W. Just for the record: I checked the power consumption now in cooling mode, while the outside temperature is only 21 degrees. The power consumption is now only 700W. But that would be a temperature, where one would not normally use the A/C at all.
Note that the power-consumption goes up to 1530W, while I see it most often in the rage between 1400 and 1500W – which is in contrast to the information given in the manual, where 1050W is listed for cooling. I assume this is a typo, as I never expected this to be correct: If the 2300W-cooling-A/C from Aldi has a listed (and measured) max. Power consumption of 1000W, one would expect 1500W for the 3300W-cooling-A/C...
In case your wonder: "3300W cooling, but only 1500W consumption (of both units (indoor and outdoor) together):
In the old days the cooling power was given in HP. I think 3300W is just a conversion for the cooling HP, and one should simply not try to see a connection between the 3300W and the 1500W. It would make more sense to give BTU instead of cooling-W...
Each time one starts the unit, one has to adjust the desired deflector-position again. It's actually a bit more annoying on this unit compared to the smaller model, because the deflectors move slower in swing mode on this bigger model, and thus finding the target position takes longer on the 3300-cooling-A/C. Recommendation to Aldi: Add a defector-memory-function!
The remote-control offers the option of switching the illuminated display off... - well that is: all the symbols on the display, which make sense. However, this main power symbol, which is illuminated regardless, if unit is switched on or off (and thus does not make sense at all), can not be switched off. THIS is the major negative I have to mention about this unit, and a very loud shout at ALDI: Do something about this on the next model - people complain about this since years! As I do not use this A/C in my bedroom, I can live with it, but on the smaller version in my bedroom I had to take drastic actions to get rid of the unwanted bright night-light. Read about that in my other review, if you want.
About the 9W drawn in stand-by mode:
This is just wrong, Aldi! I know you can do better. The 2300W-cooling-A/C requires only 2W in standby and there is no reason as to why this bigger model should use more in standby mode. The bad news is that one can’t even flick the power-outlet-wall-switch, as this bigger model is normally wired straight from the meter-box to the outer-unit (while the smaller unit is wired from the meter-box to the inner unit via 16A-plug in the wall. Thus regarding this bigger unit, normally, you can only flick the circuit-breaker in the meterbox, if you don’t use the A/C for an extended time. Mind you, I designed my own solution for this.
Also, before you kill the power to the unit (via wall switch or circuit breaker, make sure that at least 1 minute has passed since you switched off the A/C via remote-control, because the A/C still needs about 1 minute of electricity for a proper shut-down procedure.
Anyway, about the 9W in stand-by mode: 9 pointlessly wasted Watts over one year at the unit-price of 40 cents/kWh means: AU$31.50 pointlessly wasted per year (AU$7 for 2W would be acceptable).
If you intend to remove the power-rating sticker from the unit (because it’s simply ugly), I recommend to use a hairdryer to do this and the sticker comes off easy. I removed the sticker from the front and placed it on the side. Hey, Aldi: You should do this to start with. Nobody thinks the power-rating-sticker is a Piccasso!
About the copper-pipes, which one needs to buy: Caution: Do not use water-copper-pipes. They do not do the job. But even for A/C-copper pipes there are different versions: One seems to bend only with difficulty (they come in straight length of 6m), while the real good ones are made of soft copper. My local plumber shop sold it only as 18m coil (I think it was), the pipes in a coil come already with insulation around. That sure is expensive (18m!).. - but I was lucky to find ONE (only one of many) friendly A/C-installer, who sold me what I needed (3m) as cut-off for a really fair price.
I bought the required tools from ebay and made some myself.
If your read the manual well, you will find that 3m is the max. length of copper-pipe, which can be installed without additional regasing. And since you are in Australia and not in the US: Good luck finding a way to buy a can of R400A...: It's not being sold here to normal mortals.
I welded 3 extremely strong Metal-constructions to fix the outdoor units (of my 3 A/Cs) to the brick wall, one as low as 1.5m above ground, the other 3.5m above ground (requires 2 ladders and 2 people to get the unit up there).
The timer function is also very good and easy to use. When I go to sleep, I type everything into the remote with closed eyes.
The remotes of the smaller and bigger unit look identical, but are not compatible, except for the ON/OFF button.
Giving a m2 (square-meter) size of a room, for which the A/C is good is pretty pointless, Aldi! Required is a Cubic-meter-size, which this A/C-unit can cool without probs.
Also: I installed the bigger unit (3300W-cooling) in my extremely huge split-level-living room (again: m2 size does not make sense in a split-level room). The room is approx. 4 times bigger than the unit is good for, but: It does it's job the way I expected. Obviously the 1st-floor remains boiling hot, while the sofa at which the deflectors are aimed is a very cosy-cool place to sit in summer.
My reasoning behind buying a clearly undersized unit for the room:
I have 5kW Solar panels on the roof. The 3300W-cooling unit consumes 1.5kW Power, my own generated powered, while other appliances can still be powered at the same time, even if there is no full sun, i.e. a bit less then 5kW.... The room would probably require a unit which consumes 6-8kW to cool it completely, but then I would cool the upstairs area, where I do not sit and pay a fortune in power, which I then would have to buy, instead of using the free power from the sun...
Installation cost:
Keep in mind that a licensed A/C-specialist and a licensed electrician are normally payed bu the hour. Thus, if you are really handy and you know what you are doing, you could discuss with the A/C-guy and the electrician what you yourself are allowed to do before they arrive. However, if you don't 100% know what you are doing, you will have to pay a big bill in the end.
Wrong advise in the ALDI installation manual:
The manual reads in short: The connection of the pipes is following by bleeding (=create a vacuum with a vacuum pump in the refrigerant circuit), the then release with a 1/4 turn refrigerant (which is stored in the outdoor unit) into the circuit for 10 sec., And only then start looking for leaks... Well, that is wrong. It you use the refrigerant to find a leak, and you indeed find a leak, which might be substantial and not be fixable by tightening the union-nuts (=flare nuts). In fact, if the union nuts have been tightened with excessive tightening torque they could have damaged the flared ends, i.e. everything needs to be dismantled again at that location and re-flared. Which means: All the so far released refrigerant will disappear into the atmosphere and be lost for the function of the A/C unit. ALDI needs to revise the installation manual.
The proper way of installation is: Pressure test of the connected pipes via service port with (ideally) Nitrogen. ALDI needs to specify the pressure of the Nitrogen. Probably somewhere in the region of 250-450 psi. Test with leak-detector and/or soap-water (bubbles). Only thereafter: Vacuum & R410A release into the circuit. And: Test again!
Why the correct handling of the refrigerant R450A is important:
The outdoor-unit is pre-loaded with 1340g refrigerant R410A.
While R410A is heaps better than the refrigerants of the old days, which had ozone depletion potential, R410A is said not to have that.
However, as GWP for R410A I found (on two web-sites) numbers of 1725 and 2088 (latter on a German web-site) - this Global Warming Potential (GWP) means: R410A is 1725 or 2088 times as bad for global warming as CO2, i.e. (going with 2088): The amount of R410A in this A/C-unit is (if released) as bad as 2.8 Tons of CO2.
Amendment (to understand, what equals 2.8 tons of CO2):
LPG produces 1.51kg/l of CO2
LPG produces 2.32kg/l of CO2, which means in layman terms:
A car, which consumes 17.5 Liter of LPG/100km (1.51x17.5=26.425 / 2800/26.425=106), has produced 2.8 tons of CO2 after driving 10600 km.
A car, which consumes 12 Liter of petrol/100km (2.32x12=27.84 / 2800/27.84=100.6), has produced 2.8 tons of CO2 after driving 10060 km.
Oh, and one last thing: I will have to improve on the design:
1. Close all unnecessary drill-holes in the outdoor unit with white sticky-tape (to avoid breeding mud-wasps)
and for the same reason:
2. Protect the air-intake and air-exhaust surfaces with aluminium fly-mesh. Since the fly-mesh itself reduces the usable surface, the fly-mesh needs to be bent like a box, so that the air has the original surface to pass through. The "depth" of that construction needs to be about 9cm according to my calculation.
..and I will also protect the outdoor units from rain, keeping in mind that the airflow is not being limited....
3. ...while Aldi needs to improve on: The mounting plate for the indoor unit - it is "not fun to deal with". Very frustrating, challenging and exhausting, until the indoor-unit can finally be attached to it. Mind you that the joggling-act of attaching the unit includes inserting the in-/outgoing pipes at the same time. Design improvement required!
Would pay more a branded unit – The ac unit was very noisy and took a long time to start. And when it did it would start off very loud and then come back to normal. The thermostat was really fiddly and woukd often switch off. No memory function on the directiinal swing would need to adjust it evertime. The airflow wasnt great. And overall wouldnt recommwnd it. Show details
Possibly should of spent more money and purchased a better one – I am a first time purchaser of an air conditioning unit .My partner did a lot of looking around and said this one would suit . We purchased 1 for upstairs lounge /dinning and 1 for downstairs in the main bedroom. I am happy with the one downstairs except for the bright standby lights .I have had to put a sheet over it at night cause the… Read more
light is so bright .
The one upstairs had to be re gased as the gas leaked out prior to installing.
I find this one is not at all suitable but that is not Aldi's fault.
The units are very quite . And the remote is easy to use .
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