newhome

Sorry, what do you mean by 'heating controls'? I don't have any invoices at present unfortunately as I sent them all off to HMRC today but I can try to dig out some paperwork if I know what I'm looking for.

Thank you so much. I will try to answer the questions as best I can ....... House is circa 350 square metres I think. It's pretty well insulated (I think). It's built using Scotframe's Supawall. I've attached some photos of when the underfloor heating was installed showing the insulation used etc. It was all then covered in an anhydrite screed and the rooms either have tiles or engineered oak. Nope, the system has never worked properly . It was beyond hubby's skill level I think (he was an electrician rather than a heating engineer) and then when he got sick it got left. The boiler is on the Economy 2000 tariff from Scottish Power which has 2 meters; one 'normal' and the other for heating only which is a cheaper rate which you can only have if you have a thermal store I believe.

Here are the invoices I found which I assume list all the components of the heating system in case this is helpful.

It looks worse in the flesh believe me! Oh for my old house with a Potterton boiler and radiators ..........

The pipes going from the top of the thermal store appear in a cupboard in one of the bedrooms where they join up to this small water tank. I have no clue what this does. I've also shown a photo of one of the manifolds. As I said, the pipes are warm but the heat never seems to reach the right rooms upstairs unless I'm doing something wrong. The 3 boxes on the wall were installed by a plumber to allow me to control when the boiler and the underfloor heating pump come on. I have to keep them in sync otherwise I have no hot water. I can only get hot water from the taps when the pump is on, which isn't a massive deal when I'm here on my own but it's far from perfect.

Here is the bit that has most of them running for the hills. No one seems to have a clue about how this should work.

Here is the solar controller thing. There is this metal bottle next to it which I assume is something to do with it? The pressure dial next to it is set very low.

Here is the heating controller (and one of the thermostats). As you can see the temperatures are all set to ?. How can I fix this please? I'm scared to reset anything in case it loses all the settings. I don't seem to have a manual for this and can't find one online.

As suggested by @Nickfromwales I am starting a new topic to see if anyone can help me with my heating nightmare as no one local seems to be able to work out how to get it working properly. I can't believe I am the only person in the country to have this type of system however! I just about exist with heating 1 room at present as I can't work out how to get the upstairs working at all, and I just really heat the room I use downstairs now. I am totally without knowledge when it comes to heating etc so am only able to explain what I know from the scant paperwork I have here. There are a number of issues with it. From my limited knowledge, the system has an electric boiler (no gas in the village), a thermal store and evacuated tube solar panels which are all supposed to feed wet underfloor heating (in every room) and provide hot water. The issues I have with the system are: The solar no longer works. I can see when the column is heating and the metal round thing at the bottom gets warm / hot (not too hot to touch) but the water temperature never rises so I assume it's not working. It used to work! I had the guy out who installed it and he said that 'he doesn't install solar anymore' and that as it had been switched off for a period (as in the Delta Sol thing was switched off for ages) the solar panels were probably rendered useless as they may have 'turned to jelly' and were never designed to be ever switched off. Now if that's the case I guess I have to live with that (expensive white elephant on the roof mind ......) but would like to check as they would be quite handy in the summer months. He came on a cloudy day when the solar wasn't running, but promised to come back when the sun was out. I tried contacting him about half a dozen times after that but he never replied to phone messages or emails. I cannot get hot water unless the underfloor heating pump is on. The issue is that if that is left on all the time all of the hot water runs away under the floor somewhere (even if all of the heating in individual rooms is switched off) so unless I run the boiler 24 x 7 which isn't really practical the water is cold within about 20 minutes of the boiler going off. I have had a few people out to look at it but they look at the thermal store, scratch their heads, and go away again. A couple have apparently tried to obtain details from the company who the store was purchased from but they apparently say that they are no longer trading under that name or something. When the boiler is up to temperature (seems to be at 50 at present) I can just about have a single shower or half fill a bath until the hot water runs cold. One of the guys who came out said that the tank wasn't big enough but that's pretty hopeless in a house with 6 bathrooms / shower rooms TBH! There is a controller on the wall that shows as ?? against all rooms. Occasionally after a power cut it resets itself and shows the temperatures again but it doesn't take long before it goes back to ?? How can you tell if the underfloor is actually working in a specific room? There are 4 sets of manifolds round the house. The kitchen / family room has 2 circuits (I think!) and the underfloor in the family room seems to get warm but the kitchen underfloor doesn't seem to (in that the tiles in the kitchen never seem to get warm). It's all one big room so really needs both sides to be heating to make it more efficient I imagine. I've had the upstairs room thermostats set to a higher temperature than the existing temperature (which I assumed would start heating the room) but the rooms never seem to heat up so I assume that no heat is getting to them. When I touch the pipes at the manifolds they are warm so I assume the heat is getting there correctly. I don't want the heating on all the time, but I would like to be able to switch it on in other rooms when someone comes. One of the rooms is not connected up to the manifold. The pipes were all put in and hubby said it was ready to be connected up but I haven't found anyone who deals with underfloor heating to connect it up and I've no idea how to do it myself. The heating seems incredibly inefficient. When I have been away in the winter and the heating has been switched off it takes more than 24 hours, probably more like 36 hours, with the heating on full time to get the room back up to anything like a decent temperature. If it's off for too long during the day it also seems to take forever to heat back up again. Is that normal? I think those are the main issues anyway! I've had a few people out to look at the heating but mostly they've run away never to return. Most of them don't cover electric boilers, or underfloor heating, or solar, or any combination of those. Everyone in the local town where most of the tradesmen live has gas central heating with radiators. No one wants to work on a weird system, they are only interested in fitting new central heating systems which is where most of their money comes from I imagine. I've taken some photos of what I've got and will post them in the following posts. Thanks in advance for any help!