LA3222

I dont think the pumps are the issue. When I completely shut upstairs down it had no effect. Just turned the buffer pump off and no effect other than to reduce the flows slightly - so worse. The key thing for me is the effect that opening the bypass has - I may be reading this wrong but the flows shoot up and in my mind what's happening is that the flow coming through the hot inlet is crap, when I open the bypass it supplements this flow with recirculated cold and then the pump shoves all that round the loops. This kills the temp though. Not sure why insufficient hot would be going through the pump to the loops - a blockage in the manifold?

Anyone else get this drama? I only jbow it has happened when I open a door to take the trash out and it blows in at me. Clearly the ice is choking the intake and causing the house to depressurise as its not matching the outlet!

Three pumps. One on each manifold, one more to pull/push from the buffer to both manifolds. Plenty of pumps. Upstairs manifold is identical size/setup to ground floor manifold and works fine. The ground floor one don't seem to play ball🤷‍♂️

Right, I need to get back to trying to unpick what the issue is with the flow rates of my ground floor UFH. I can get the flow rates to increase to what I would expect, but at the expense of temperature – will explain further on. Whilst looking into this issue (or trying to online) I stumbled across a thread where I had made a comment about my flow rates being good – suggests this a relatively recent phenomena (not identified until the heating season kicked in) Both manifolds are Ivar Unimix C and there are no fault codes showing on the manifold pumps, seem to be working ok. Fault Finding There are two manifolds, approx. the same size – ground and first floor. The pipe run to the first floor is shorter than that to the ground so my initial test was to turn off the first floor manifold to confirm it was not stealing the flow. This made no difference to the ground floor flow rates. Next I turned up the pump between buffer/manifold and on the manifold itself to max – made very little difference to flow rates. Test Conditions for manifold behavioural comparison TMV removed so the flow temp was pretty much what the ASHP was heating the buffer to – approx. 31 degrees. Primary and secondary valves closed on both manifolds. First Floor Manifold Open secondary bypass fully: flow rate drops very slightly, flow temperature remains stable. Close secondary bypass fully: flow rates increases slightly, flow temperature remains stable. Open primary bypass fully: flow rate drops very slightly, flow temperature remains stable. Close primary bypass fully: flow rates increases slightly, flow temperature remains stable. Close primary/secondary bypass, re-fit TMV and leave fully open: flow rates and temp are good Close primary/secondary bypass, re-fit TMV and set to 30 degrees: flow rates drop slightly, temp ok Conclusion – the first floor manifold appears to function correctly. Ground Floor Manifold This is where things get strange: Open secondary bypass fully: flow rate shoots up, flow temperature tanks down to 25 degrees. Close secondary bypass fully: flow rates tanks, flow temperature goes up to 31 degrees. Open primary bypass fully: flow rate shoots up, flow temperature tanks down to 25 degrees. Close primary bypass fully: flow rates tanks, flow temperature goes up to 31 degrees. Close primary/secondary bypass, re-fit TMV and leave fully open: flow rates crap and temp is good Close primary/secondary bypass, re-fit TMV and set to 40 degrees: flow rates shoot up, temp drops to 25 degrees. Conclusion – the ground floor manifold is not quite right! Problem: It looks to me like the hot flow is being choked in the ground floor manifold affecting flow. There appears to be enough flow for the pump to keep working (no error codes), but not enough flow to get a good volume of warm water pumping around the UFH loops. This is supported by the fact that when either of the bypass valves on that manifold are opened the flow shoots up – however this kills the temperature of the flow as the hot feed is being heavily supplemented by the cold feed, killing the overall temperature. Is it normal for the hot side of the manifold to get choked/clogged? Could something else be going on? @Nickfromwales @PeterW, gents if you can shed some light it would be appreciated. Looks like I need to take it apart but that is in the PITA box at the minute!!

As @Bonnersays, send your plans to estimaters online and get them to break it all down/cost for you. You then have downloadable excel versions that you can tweak to your hearts content. What they produce is by no means perfect but it gives you a very useful starting point to adjust from.

Right, I have a little puzzle going on which some on here who know more about UFH than I do can shed some light on. The manifold for downstairs - when I close the thermostatic mixing valve the flow rates through the loops increases but when I do that the flow temp drops. So I want to open it up to increase the temp to around 30 degrees but it strangles the flow - what the hell is going on? The upstairs manifold - when I open the thermostatic valve up the flow rate increases ..... the opposite effect to downstairs. What is it that the pump doesn't like on the downstairs manifold?

I installed my preplumbed cylinder myself then had to pay a plumber £300 to spend half an hour checking it and telling me it's fine. No certificate, I filled out the installation checklist which comes with the ecodan and then he put his name and G3 cert no. on it. Gave that to BC and that was fine.

I let WUNDA do the design and then I just installed it to how they drew it - easy enough.

I installed myself, it's easy enough to be fair. I had to pay to get it commissioned as BC moaned - cost about £300. I look at it from the POV that only spending £300 still saved loads on the labour and it was actually worth doing I think - watching him wandering tweaking the valves and checking flow seemed like a PITA that I'm glad I didn't have to do.

Sorry, that was just the fix side. It's still quite a stretch to get up to £21.50. Have you priced up hiw much the materials would cost if sourcing yourself?

I paid £9.50 in 2021 - supply and demand inevitably sees prices go up, not sure about £21.50 though🧐🤨

🤣 random typo there!!

Strange....I got my SAP done very early on as it allowed me to get the 0.5% discount with Ecology. Why is an Air Test early in the build once the structure is ready for boarding not acceptable?

I still think it's ridiculous. At the end of the build everything is covered over so what are you going to do if it is still crap? Nothing. So what is the point of knowing its crap - will not change the price of fish one iota. The time for an air test is before boarding and finishing as at least you can rectify then. If you have issues then you should be rectifying and then getting another air test before boarding over to ensure the remedial work carried out did the trick. Getting it done at the end is pointless. As an aside, my air test came in at 0.24ACH - what is the point of pumping another couple hundred quid at another test at the end of the build. The only way I'd have had another test is if the first was crap. I'd have gone round fixing and then tested again before making things permanent by boarding over. £250 is peanuts at the start of the build, see how you feel about £250 towards the end when you're skint - ask me how I know. Work is grinding to a halt now and I'm conscious of every tenner I spend now.

I had someone ring me up the other day trying to flog more compriband, asking if had any projects coming up where I need some - suggests things are slowing down.

Can't you juat edit the date or summat...ridiculous paying twice. I juat submitted the one I did early on...no questions asked.

I did the calculator that @Nickfromwales linked too and nothing asked. I measured the tap rates with a wig and stopwatch, got the washing machine etc from the destructions....half hour work....pita...but cost nowt but my time.

I used one to find some ufh pipes in my house. Not an industrial/professional bit of kit but definitely works and has its uses.

I did spot this bud and it looks good in the images but I think the tilt might not look great. This seems ideal if the transition is to another material rather than the depth of carpet/underlay to nothing. May Park thos issue while I sort a few other bits out.

Yeah, I'm thinking along those lines with easy bind type stuff. Handrail - got a spiral staircase ordered with a balustrade to suit.

Sod all I bet but I may just be cynical!

Skimmed and painted. I naively assumed some kind if flexible trim would be available, now I'm looking at some easy bind rope type stuff.

It's just a circular hole bud that the spiral staircase will come up though. Trying to work out how the carpet is finished where it hits the hole. Hard flooring seems to have flexible trim available and flexible tile to carpet strips are out there - bit puzzled when it comes to a flexible edging strip.

Random question, does anyone know what kind of carpet trim or edging strip you would use to hide the raw edge around a circular stairwell opening?

I agree with a lot of what you say, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. This is a self locking lollipop now...energy is smashing inflation, smashing consumers on everything, pay rises and striking feeding into it...inflation is well out of control...the BoE do the only thing they can which is smash interest rates up which feeds the beast- repossessions, bankruptcy, companies going bust, people.losing jobs....we are past the point now imo where looking at energy costs in isolation is going to do anything...it will barely move the needle