Here are the details of a retrofit TKS installation by Air Touring Ltd who were the UK agent for Socata and who went bust about 10 years ago.
The main installation:
The baggage bay and TKS refill point installation:
The little control panel at the bottom of the instrument panel:
Finished:
The system should be on and the wings wet before entering icing conditions. If not, the ice will stick and be more difficult to clear.
“Bridging” can occur – i.e. the ice can form over a gap so that the fluid can’t clear it.
In anti-ice mode the fluid flow is quite low but in de-ice mode the rate of fluid flow is alarmingly high – probably more than a 10th of a gallon a minute but full tanks should last a couple of hours.
I tend not to fill up the tanks unless I am going on an extended break where I think it will be required. Half tanks is enough to cater for most normal circumstances and it will keep the weight down.
The fluid itself is quite expensive about £25/gallon I think so full tanks is about £150 or so but at least you don’t use as much as avgas!
The system has a separate pump for the windscreen but I’ve never had to use it. You get quite enough fluid coming off the prop.
The switch mechanism is not that robust and pretty cheap plastic. I have a problem where the switch can be on and the light is on but the pump doesn’t work. And you can’t tell when the engine is running! The gauge is also pretty unreliable and tends to under-read.
It’s important to run the pump every month or so, whether you need to or not, to stop it drying out. Another TB owner had to get a new pump as it failed through insufficient use. I try and run it when I fly though rain as it helps to wash it off afterwards. Once the system has been run, there will still be pressure I the system and you can get fluid leaking out once on the ground for a shot while afterwards.
I’ve not notice much impact on performance but can get a wing drop in the stall now which I didn’t before. I’m not sure that the panels themselves have an impact on airspeed. I think that the TB airspeed is quite dependent on weight and notice that airspeed will increase over the duration of a long flight as fuel burns off. So in this respect, the extra 100lb or so that the system weighs will have a small impact on airspeed. I doubt it is the 7 kts figure mentioned elsewhere. I get close to book speeds and generally fly at about 150kts on airways but only about 140kts low down at 65% power.
I must admit that if I wanted this today, I wouldn’t go down this route but instead look for an aircraft with it already installed.
Having said that, I am happy enough with the system and provides a good “get out of jail” card. I.e. It’s good enough to fly in icing conditions while searching for a better layer but you don’t want to stay in icing conditions for any amount of time.
Nice report, thanks! I looked into adding this system to my aircraft (TR182) and it would cost 40k€ a few years ago. There is only one company in Germany that does it. Apart from the price tag, it would also eat up a good portion of the baggage compartment (“hat rack”). I would probably have designed my own (illegal) fluid tank and put that under the rear seat but decided against it, not the least because I neither had much confidence the manufacturer TKS nor their parter in Germany.
Today the Cirrus SR22T owns the market for high end 4 seater touring machines and this is what 90% of the pilots would buy. If I wanted ultimate weather capability in my current class, I would upgrade to the SR22T.
I tried to obtain the parts from CAV in the USA, both directly (they never replied to comms) and via a GA dealer contact out there (they told him they supply only to their own dealers/installers). There is a guy here (UK) who used to work at Air Touring and did some installations and he could have installed it for me, freelance. But one cannot get the parts.
I reckon CAV are under commercial pressure from Cirrus, to restrict supply to the retrofit market. This is a very common situation; I get the same in my business where I could sell certain products to anybody but the 1 or 2 big customers would pull their business.
I spoke to a CAV rep at EDNY and he was extremely vague about everything. He seemed to have been programmed to just stand there and say little.
In the TB20, the “gear” seems to fit mostly underneath the luggage compartment floor. There is a huge void there, as wide as the hull and something like 10-20cm deep, which is inaccessible unless rivets are removed (as I know only too well from trying to get some wires through it 
) Presumably access to the TKS stuff is provided from above, hence the large hole cut in the luggage compartment floor, visible in one of the pics above.
Does anyone know anything about the quality of work done by the German company at EDNY (Air Alliance)?
I reckon CAV are under commercial pressure from Cirrus, to restrict supply to the retrofit market. This is a very common situation; I get the same in my business where I could sell certain products to anybody but the 1 or 2 big customers would pull their business.
Do you mean to say that Cirrus would care much about three TB20s converted to TKS?
Edit:
If you were right, would they advertise the system on their site?
https://www.caviceprotection.com/products-services/ice-protection-systems/socata-trinidad
CAV are very non responsive, have an incredibly long lead time and generally appear like a company I prefer to not deal with. Based on selling 3 TKS kits as retrofits, they focus on their OEM customers but I assume they are not much better there either because they have zero competition.
A thread on this installation in a TB20 (same airframe for this purpose) is here
I purchased the parts direct from CAV and will be installing it by a freelance A&P/IA, with my assistance.
The sole agency for Europe for CAV, a firm in Germany, were not interested.
