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I was thinking of having an early night, but this is getting as good as the real Apollo 13 mission . https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/AS13_CM.PDF

If someone has a stat outside the boiler room that controls the temperature of the cylinder, then that is 100% a cock-stat. Sorry, but thats just a fact.

65oC target, you say 7 more to go from 43oC, which means youve already been AT the Voddy Try 23 lol.

Yep, all good, they all click at about 30. And I didn't need to open the back door and freeze to death .......

Had a BIG barney with the missus years ago and punched a door in frustration. Even bigger row ensued! Still fuming off I went to Wickes to get a replacement. I took the front passenger seat headrest off to get the cheap sapele door in the back of the car. Driving too fast I took a sharp left hand turn and the door slid across, pinning me against the driver's window by the neck. I couldn't steer so carried on into the hedge!

Doesn't look like a softener to me, it looks like a pair of water filters. One may be a fine filter, probably 5µ, the other may be something like a carbon block filter, to take out chlorine and any other things that might taint the water. The only way to tell is to isolate them, switch to bypass (which they may already be switched to anyway) and unscrew the filter case (may need a big plastic hollow spanner that should have been supplied with the filters) and see what's in them. If one is a carbon filter it will be well out of date, so will have to be replaced (they have a life of around 6 months between replacements, mainly driven by their tendency to grow bugs inside the filter after that period of time). Once we know what's in there I can advise further, on what to fit by way of replacement cartridges.

Yeh Lizzie, I know. Hello, am I here, do I exist????

TBH I am not at all precious about being called things like girl, darling, love etc. The same people would probably call a chap mate or something like that. But, hey, I was a designer in the footwear industry in the eighties & nineties and a regular visitor to the Lancashire shoe mills. I think that was where my sensitive, feminist nerve was cauterised for all time. A different time on a different planet. What really irks me is when 'girl' or similar is taken to equate to stupid. I am a novice at this self building lark & I love to learn & get free advice. I am quite capable of understanding things and even sometimes asking intelligent questions. I just hate being talked down to.

Is 'girls' acceptable in post femamist era discourse when referring to women? Perhaps or perhaps not. Interesting article HERE.

There was a rather sobering item on BBC last week about the rise in incidence of non smoking lung cancer. Air pollution is suspected to be one contributor, but as a disease it gets much less research than others as lung cancer is still seen as essentially self inflicted. I would not be surprised if in years to come, as smoking rates continue to decline but lung cancer remains prevalent, focus will switch to even tighter controls of pollution to accompany the drive to reduce car emissions etc. Question is therefore whether investing in a WBS now is a good longer term move? Could end up being an expensive ornament.

Re the High Ze thing. That is the suppliers responsibility to correct at their expense. It should not normally exceed 0.35 for the type of supply that you have. The high value of Ze you have is directly responsible for one of the fails on the EICR that they had to get around by changing a circuit breaker.

Right then, here we go...... Order of events :- ( chapter one lol ). Electric boiler which is sealed and pressurised. Thats the reason why the pressure needs topping up occasionally. It should run at around 1.5 bar- 2 bar, rising when hot, falling when cool. Vertically mounted rectangular white box to the left of the boiler, and silver pump to the left of that : White box is a PHE ( Plate Heat Exchanger ), required to hydraulically separate the sealed and pressurised body of water in the boiler from the open pipe 'gravity' fed body of water in the TS ( thermal store ). Silver pump is the pump required to circulate the water in the TS through the PHE so it can be heated by the PHE, the other side of the PHE is heated by the boiler. The black plastic tank in the cupboard is the F&E ( Feed and Expansion ) tank which keeps the TS topped up without the need to pressurise that too, eg a bit less maintenance intensive that way. Needs no attention other than to top up with inhibitor perhaps. Silver pump lower left TS. That pump circulates the water in the TS through another PHE, the one in a silver / metal box affixed to the side of the tank with the pipe going to the upper of the TS side. That heats the DHW ( domestic hot water ( what comes out of your hot taps )) in the same way the boiler PHE heats the TS. Under that pump is a thermo head which regulates the flow temp through that circuit. A naff idea as the DHW is serviced by a TMV ( thermostatic mixing valve ) anyway, thus giving you control over your maximum DHW delivery temp. A TMV is necessary with a TS as you can have very high / near scalding temperature DHW without it I assume that either runs off a Hot Water time clock setting, or is operated by a flow switch that senses you opening a tap and fires that particular pump up for the duration the tap is open. Anyone's guess without being there.....and poking @MikeSharp01's fingers in the corresponding pump connections and then opening the taps to see if he screams and when / how long etc The other two green pumps and their corresponding red - topped TMV's are space ( central ) heating flows. eg one ( the upper hotter coil ) could be going to 1st floor heating radiators, so would be set to around 55-65oC, and the other ( the lower cooler coil ) could be going to the UFH manifolds, so set at 35-40oC, hence the lack of pump and blending valve on the UFH manifolds. The water that is pumped to the UFH has already been cooled down to the correct temp by the dedicated TMV before going into the UFH loops. IMO an inherently flawed design, but it'll work if set up correctly. At the top of the TS you have the Quenching Coil, ONLY NEEDED WITH A SOLID FUEL HEAT SOURCE As you have stated that you don't have / were never having a WBS ( wood burning stove ) then fitting that was a waste of time and money. The PRedV ( with the gauge thats showing 6.5 bar, which I missed because I'm blind ) is there to limit the pressure and flow that arrives at the Quenching Coil control valve so it can operate smoothly and accurately. That valve is opened by a capillary probe that heats up and the hydraulic fluid inside expands with heat. That fluid expands and opens the control valve according to how hot the TS is, eg slightly over temp, a trickle of cold mains water, way over temp, a high flow of cold water. A good system in principle, and used on many good quality sealed and pressurised WBS's, but has no place in your house as its function is redundant. My recommendation is to remove all that and bin it, capping the cold feed to the PRedV as its knackered anyway ( it would be showing around 3 bar if functioning properly ). The black circular bit halfway up is the backup 3Kw ( assumed ) immersion heater. That should be turned on by a switch on the wall for emergency use only. Follow the cable and ensure that the switch ( usually a white switch the size of a light switch with a red neon light on it ) is off. The white rectangular thermostats ( cylinder stats ) x3, from the top down so highest is 1: 1) Summer setting - The boiler is controlled by this stat ONLY, when space heating is not required. That allows the boiler to only heat the upper portion of the TS so you can get DHW only without heating the entire TS and wasting energy unnecessarily. 2) and 3) Winter setting - Stat 1 gets ignored and 2 & 3 come into play. I have no idea why 2 stats would be so close together but tbh I think they ( technical ) may have given me duff info and its actually 1 & 2 that govern summer setting with 3 doing the winter 'full heat' of the TS. If its not, thats how I'd set it up, but id also simplify by ditching the middle stat ( stat 2 ) as I really see no need for the third one. The wires that disappear into unions on the TS are ( assumed ) the temperature probes for the ST ( solar thermal ) system, so I dont see the other rotary cylinder stats doing any of the ST referencing AFAIC. Principle of operation ( as advised from technical support ) : You should have a two-channel time-clock for toggling between summer and winter 'mode' which you will have to do manually as required. You may also have another time-clock for DHW production, depending on how its been configured. If it has a flow switch after the DHW PHE output then you might not have a DHW time-clock. Anyones guess at the moment tbh. Selecting winter mode kicks all the space heating controls into action and starts the various pumps and faff to work accordingly. Simple eh ?!? What to do next : 1) Roll your sleeves up and shout very loudly at your boiler and TS for approximately 3 minutes, only stopping to breathe in again. That'll reset everything and show it that you mean business, probably. When done, read all the above again which will allow your blood pressure to return to normal again. You'll feel better then. 2) Turn off the big chunky switch to the boiler so it goes dead. 3) Turn off all the time-clocks and turn down all the ROOM / HOUSE stats. 4) Turn the 3 TS cylinder stats to their lowest positions, marking first with a pencil their current setting. 5) Wait for the TS to go cold. 6) Switch the boiler back on, report what it does for the first 15 mins. It should cycle for maybe 2 minutes and then go into standby, whilst it does a self-diagnostic, or simply do nothing at all. It should not run and heat up the white PHE, and the silver pump for the white PHE should not run. The system should now simply be sitting in standby aka 'holiday mode'. 7) Assuming the above went accordingly ( lol ), turn on all the heating time controls you can find, but leave all ROOM / HOUSE stats set to mimimum, including the one some cock has fitted in a cupboard. Do NOT switch the black immersion heater on. 8) Turn TS cylinder stat 3 to 65oC. Report what happens for the first 5 minutes. The boiler should kick in, the pump and PHE adjacent should run and all get hot and the TS should then proceed to heat up entirely until the cylinder stat tells the boiler to switch off again, maybe an hour or so, maybe a bit less / more. This is the critical bit which will identify if the wiring is in order or not. The boiler should, at this point, be receiving instruction to heat until stat 3 tells it otherwise. If not the most recent pipe butcher has fecked something up whilst charging you for the pleasure. 9) If the boiler does not kick in within the 5 min period, turn up the stat in the cupboard and see if that has been put in line with the other controls, making sure its partnered time-clock is deffo on too. 10) If the boiler still doesn't kick in, turn up TS stat 2 to 65oC. 11) If the boiler still doesn't kick in, turn up TS stat 3 to 65oC. 12) If the boiler still doesn't kick in, turn the ROOM / HOUSE stats back up and set things back to how you had them. 13) Note when the heating / whatever came on during the above and file your report here and we'll go from there. As Dave has said, you need to try and make heating on / consumption coincide with each other to maximise efficiency. Its not ideal tbh as the TS will go cold very quickly ( so you'll soon run out of DHW between heating intervals ). The only problem is is that the system has been designed around a busy full household and its just yourself ( IIRC ) there, so basically its like driving a double-decker bus with only one passenger on board. Also, heating the TS for 3 x 2 hour bursts / 24hrs won't even scratch the surface. Whenever heating is on, the boiler needs to be on. Whenever DHW is wanted, likewise. I think id have designed it differently but I also think I would have chosen different lottery numbers last week too as I didn't win....hindsight being a wonderful thing and all that. Chapter two to follow after some feedback.

Hey folks, I just wanted to express my admiration to all of you part of this community. It's good to know that there is a place where you can find honest and professional advice. About me - the typical housewife, trying convince my stubborn husband I'm right , even when it's about man's job.

Yeah, I just turn the white dials up to 70 (but they do feck all anyway), put the cock clock and cock pump clock back on the timer, and set the room thermostat(s) back on I guess. Thanks so much for all your help, and others who contributed. Collective genius in action. I am in awe

100%

If one pair of 22mm flow and return pipes, travelling through a TMV, and circulated by one single half dead pump, no bloody wonder lol. Each UFH manifold should have its own pump so there is the full potential of a dedicated pump to force the water in the ufh loops around, and they should do nowt else. The pump at the TS and the TMV that services it should only be circulating the heated water PAST the manifolds and the manifolds should just be drawing whatever heat they require at any one given time, eg when the floors are up to temp there is only a little heat required. Im pretty much sewn up here tbh, as I now know what needs doing to sort this mess out.......just got to find a way of breaking it to you gently. Go get some more voddy.

Sorry but you have to go to college for 4 years before you can say that !

Right I can tell you why when the UFH is on, the tank empties in 20 mins. Those red valves supply the manifolds for the UFH - they should blend the floor supply water to 38-42c in a standard setting (not a super insulated house is it ..?) and not supply it to the floor at 65c..! I’ll let @Nickfromwales continue on his TS / boiler quest then I may have a quick look at the UFH as I think we can do something there too.

Try not to burn yourself whilst im away

What happening is your boiler is chucking out heat at 100mph. Its getting to the PHE and that'll only allow say 75mph of the heat to travel through it, as its a heat exchanger so won't convey 100% of the energy from one side to the other. The boiler fired first at 24kw, but has then had some of the hot water its produced sent back via the return pipe, so the boiler has adjusted to compensate for the heat that it can get RID of, rather than what it can produce. There is no reason that the TS shouldn't get to 65oC, just it'll take a while longer to get there vs if the boiler was circulating direct through the TS instead of going via the PHE.

Tea? I need voddy, and anyway we're already at 43 degrees so only 7 degrees to go .......... Guesstimates for ETA?

Snob!

Is that everybody following this compelling post?

Go have a cup of tea

Still got 'em in Lidl!

Corded then for sure. And only the fein if your minted. Id go DeWalt or Bosch but deffo Quick-change.

I have all heatmiser in mine. All the stats are linked to a control unit which is then linked to the valves on each loop on the manifold.

Welcome! Down here in deepest darkest Devon girls are referred to as ‘maids’ and it’s most definitely a term of endearment and very much the accepted norm. In these parts you ignore a maid at your peril, it’s been known to lead to disembowelment They breed em tough down ere!

I've been drawing up things like wiring and pipework diagrams, laminating them in plastic and either putting them in the house folder or, in the case of our water treatment plant room, sticking them on to the inside of the door. That way anyone should be able to work out how things are wired and plumbed. The other thing I've done is put proper printed labels on everything, from stating the fuse rating on every switched fused outlet, through labelling every single circuit breaker to adding labels on all the pipes, the various bits of plumbing kit etc, together with the normal operating range marked on all gauges with red and green tape pointers.

I started out making the systems in our house like this, with custom microcontrollers looking after stuff. A year or so later, I realised that if I wasn't around, no one would be able to work out how on earth anything worked. I spent a lot of time converting everything back to standard off the shelf parts and drawing up complete manuals for everything that wasn't covered by a product manual. I still have the temptation to add more sophisticated and complex controls, but I rein it in. I'm gradually coming around to the old aircraft designers motto "Simplificate and add lightness"...............

Everything off to start so we can find out if the cylinder stats ( 1,2 & 3 ) are doing what they're supposed to do. If the UFH will cool it down faster then knock the big boiler switch off and run the UFH until the TS gets to around 20oC. Then start the tests. ?

The green thing is the solar thermal circulator ( aka pump ) which pulls the hot water down from the panels and sends the cool water back up.

@newhome I am not sure if you have posted them but there a couple of relavant posts on your blog from 2010. Boiler with cover off http://bordershousenewbuild.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/march-2010-we-have-front-door.html#comment-form About UFH. Includes piccies of a couple of manifolds. http://bordershousenewbuild.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/february-2010-underfloor-heating-oh-and.html F

It happens a lot, I recently heard of a company client rep, who happened to be a lady, being effectively ignored by a male client. Shocked me to hear it, even as a bloke, but then my father was hopeless at anything practical, and it was my mother that always did all the repairs and decorating, even overseeing building work on the house. I still clearly remember her giving me lessons on everything from how to prepare a surface for painting and applying paint though to how to wire a plug or replace a fuse in the fuse box. My father never even learned to drive, she did, and did all the car maintenance as well.

Is there any chance that things have scaled up, do you have a proper water softener? And is there a chance that water is thermo-syphoning through the solar system and losing heat though that? I am thoroughly enjoying this thread and looking forward to a positive conclusion later.

If they're giving the girls a choice of different coloured wands they certainly do

You took the words right out of my fingers...

There may be space to fit it inside the case, as the case etc is the same as the other Carrier units. The pump in mine is at the bottom right hand corner of the case, you may find there is a space there in yours where the pump could be fitted. The internal command board is the same for the Kingspan units as it is on mine, and that has a connection to drive an internal pump. It's marked as 1PS on this diagram and looks to be easy enough to wire up to the board:

My chippy mate is raving about the DeWalt 18V one he's just bought. Like I always tell him, the big problem with DeWalt is that it's YELLOW!

I found what I think is the spec of the thermal store:

@newhome If it only the electrical cert, then print out, put a square of paper over the address, and photograph :-). Or screen shot and use an image editor to draw a rectangle. There are apps out there that will screenshot a full document bigger that the display window. Ferdinand

Having often considered this issue myself and having loaded the car up with large items only to be terrified that they puncture the headliner or scrape the boot, causing a repair that might run to hundreds of pounds I came to the conclusion that it is probably better to pay for delivery or rent a van. Nowadays you can rent a van cheaply for a few hours and don't have to worry about damaging your car. Assuming that the need to require this kind of item is rare, this might be the better solution.

Just a shame that most estate cars/small vans are not designed from the start to take a pile of 8 by 4 sheets in the back.

Surprisingly few cars will take a 2m load behind the front seats. As @gravelld says the Skoda superb is a great combination of value and space, Google suggests a 2.13m load length. They also have an enormous amount of space for 2nd row passengers and a nice interior. An A6 doesn't offer much extra luxury for a lot more money. E-Class has lots of space but personally i would be put off by most being rear wheel drive. Also I think the Skoda is a bit tougher if you plan to lug loads. A people carrier like a Ford S-Max also makes an effective van with all the seats down, but Google suggests only 1.97m load length. The 5m long A6 still lists the boot as 1.97m it appears, same as a Mondeo estate. The Skoda is a bit more compact than some of these as it is based on the more space efficient Golf platform.

When I looked at this, the largest estates were Skoda's Superb (Octavia also large for the class) a Mercedes (can't remember the model) and an Audi (ditto).

Steptoe, have you ever thought of having a Dagenham Dustbin scrap yard as you already got the stock.

BUT, check that the car you own, or intend to buy, can legally be fitted with a tow hitch! I speak from (expensive) experience, when I purchased a Mercedes SLK a few years ago. I'd bought the car, and was waiting for delivery, when I thought to ask the dealer for the price for a tow hitch, as I couldn't find any after market ones. Sadly, like a fair few cars nowadays, the dealer told me that it cannot be fitted with a tow hitch, so that left me unable to tow either my aircraft or boat trailers. The solution was to buy a second car, an old, but very good condition, Daihatsu Fourtrak. Cost me £2,000, but came fitted with a tow ball and wiring. I kept that car for years, only ever doing a few hundred miles a year with it, and never spent anything on it other than fuel, tax and MOT. In the end I decided to get rid of it when I was buying my second Prius, when I chopped it in under the scrappage scheme and got back the £2000 I'd paid 8 years earlier for it. Shame really, as it was still in great condition when I scrapped it, but it just wasn't worth £2,000, so scrapping it made more sense financially.

Buy a trailer. Go on, you know you want to.

Least of it's worries! Got two new sills to go on so it's SORNed at the mo!

I doubt if any car salesman has ever heard a customer walk in and say "it needs to carry doors" I think you need to hire a van for a day, and drive something that suits your day to day needs best, or get the chippy to pick them up in his van and chuck him £50 for his time and trouble.