zoothorn

@PeterW but thats the way they told me its designed.. you come in 5.30pm & using the rotary dial, wing it up in 2 secs from 18* to 22*. The rotary dial is specifically designed to use the system like this. Thats all i know. Now im confused..! Cant understand the last line, why would i need to adjust the set temps (and what does this mean) for these specific times you mention?

Ok I was just wondering if I leave it on 24/7.. do I therefore -not- now have setback setting? or another way of asking it, am I sort of creating my own setback by keeping it on 24/7 & it dialing down to 16*, before bed for overnight 10pm-7am? The temp's dropping badly- 7pm I had leccy blanket on full, small fan heater on @ 2/3rds, big rad on fairly hot, in the new top bedroom.. & I still felt cold lying on bed with a hat & scarf on (16.1* room temp, heating on all day). So I gotta do the hatch + loft jobs now asap. unbelievable.

@PeterW ok thats a good idea I'll give it a go. When you say the 'setback', Im not quite sure whether this might mean as I have it now a moon symbol.. no heating on at night (meant to be totally inactive).. or.. can you do your 'own' setback, by simply leaving heating on (so a sun symbol, 24/7) and dialing it down to 10* at 10 pm or so-? if so, is this the way people run them overnight?? Does this arbitrary word 'setback' (like 'standby', sort of meaningless) only apply to this moon-symbol overnight system setting?

@Declan52 if I were to try your idea, 30* on permenantly, compressor will innevitably be 'active' constantly 24/7 heating rads. I am getting a silencer on it I keep forgetting this gesture addition tbh, so might be feasable for a test. Would it tho be designed to be on like this, in any situation-? I dont know you see what the "usual" no. of times this heat compressor is meant to be 'active' (in a normal house). Id be worried on constantly it'd be waaay outside its normal mode (like revving a car 24/7) & burnt out. Im willing to try anything within reason, if the silencer is effective enough. But getting an idea of how it usually works, say in your house (or a normal house- not this) is needed so I dont just ruin it, tho I do have a guarantee of course. thanks zH

Declan, the heating compressor alone makes intrusive noise (intrusive enough alone to prevent me turning it on overnight). Surely running it like your suggesting is hugely prohibitively costly too. What I dont understand, is how other people use theirs, what heat curve, what flow temp. How do they put up with heating on overnight, do they keep it on 24/7 & just dial in different temps during 24 hr period, like before bed get used to dialing it down, or do they set it in a 'set back' period (like I do, but it doesnt seem to be designed to work like this). Nothing is explained as to how to use it basically/ optimally/ how its designed to be, in any manual here, online, or by installers.

If this noise cant be rid, it certainly isn't fit for purpose. If it can be rid, no it doesn't warm the place.. but I wasnt expecting it to, just the 2 new rooms.. but you cant blame it for this. You could blame the surveyor perhaps who shouldve said 'this house has no insulation.. it'll be useless, you need an oil thing' (no extention even started when he came). But then I had no idea this system wouldnt be able to heat this house. I suspected it couldnt though, I suspect none in the realms of 'normally sized' could as I said. I was never expecting it to either. But, once Id put the 2 new rooms up, u-values blah blah and told put in this huge thick insulation etc, I certainly (& only) suspected it would heat these 2 rooms, only these; but it can't -not- because its unable to or that its not fit for purpose (the toasty lower room shows it can) but bc the top room construction isn't fit for purpose instead. I wasnt expecting -this-. As I had a forest of super dry fallen wood, I used this > to feed the log burner like a train, only mostly successfully, often giving up & hunkering down with a mite of residual heat from it having gone upstairs (old bedroom directly above, youd think would benefit greatly from stove below.. but no way hosay, far too much cold entering this room/ won every time). But no forest anymore.. & no reliable log source to buy, ridiculous as that sounds in the wild west/ its only green you get mostly told its 2 yrs dried (usual bllx), so Ive had 3 fires only so far this autumn.. gotta look after my dwindling reserve you see for winter. This is where the new top room was meant to fill the gap: a hunker down day + night modern warm room. That was 50% of the whole design criteria spending £33k. So a huge dissapointment is an understatement.

Good point Declan. I'll bea4 this in mind, be nice not firm with them is my approach. What I do admit fully, is not really knowing how these are meant to be operated, optimally. No one tells you, the manual doesnt, so id expect noone runs them as they should, esp having prolly had old skool ch it replaced. Another failing of manual info imo. It occurred to me yesterday you see, i concluded the wretched noise does - seem- to stop with the coming on of the heating, or rather, the heating compressor coming on. And also, turning whole fkn thing off at mains ( as im doing overnight to sleep now), and when i turn it on at 7am or so the noise starts immediately.... but if i press Reset..... heating starts, as expected, and overrides the wretched noise. So noise is the pump ramping up to highest level 3 lets call it. It does it on mains turn on, in ' heating prerun' mode (only found this displayed afte4 going to the 'live indicator' when i heard it on mains turn on at 6.30am today). And it does it coinciding with temp dropping to 4*, or sometimes 3.5*, sometimes 3*.. usually overnight. SO. If the heating coming on makes it stop.... then i might be able to keep it at bay, by leaving heating on overnight, plus if i then were to manually drop the desired temp down to 12* say 11 pm.................. maybe just maybe i can keep the noise at bay, overnight. But im still in tenterhooks waiting, expecting, hardly relaxing. Speak of the devil... wretched noise jus5 started, 3 pm, coinciding with 3.5* on controller. Now i just dialed in a degree up, to get the heating compressor to engage/ come on... and this has stopped it. So i can now conclude, that the wretched noise will - still- come on overnight, whenever it wants to... unless... the heating compressor is active at the same time. Ie the compressor - has- to be on, murmuring away, in active mode, in order to override the wretched pump noise. If the compressor gets room up to desired temp, and trips off.. I'm always at the mercy of the wretched noise starting. So its impossible to live with, having the system on at the mains, overnight, so i will always be cold in the morning. Unless vaillant can establish what the wretched noise actually is, and bloody stop it tmrw. Which ive no confidence, after 2 engineers coming here specifically to make it stop and failing to already.

Ok appreciate thoughts. Stove isnt a small one, its 7kw iirc. Nestor martin,efel.. so no china cheapie. I can get the main big room warm with it, but running it i think too high as a rule. But that shows just how much cold is mainly coming U P from under carpet in here. With utmost respect, I just dont think its not correct.. i just think this house is too much of a asswip£ to heat with it. Anyone surveying can do numbers and stuff, in july, but until you spend time here when its cold numbers are meaningless i tell thee. All im blaming the ch for, is being noisy.. and not getting rads into 4 th gear until ages, that i just need it to asap, due to A) the house being a tw* t, and B) due to the noise im not able ( or want it to, tbh) to run it 'always ready to go into 4 th gear' overninght. Nothing else tho.

Hi Peter, but I taped both rooms exactly same. Lower room is far from a sealed bag: has the cheapest pine door, its frame a piddling bit of wood between inside & outside: I did put some 25mm PIR in between door's back diagonal braces (but cant be doing much). The door isn't even airtight either, and, often open/ closed (during the day) I go in/out alot often leaving door open 5mins. But, its still beautifully evenly warm in here even so. Had another awful night, woke 5.30am by cold, spine back thing: so I put leccy blanket on full, then hot bath.. but I could still feel it in back & legs, even now just 'there' still a dull ache. Ive never known anything like it even camping, Im even concerned about pneumonia so deep it is in my back. Never even in adjacent terribly cold bedroom, seeing my breath sleeping in deep winter (so must have been maybe 3* or lower), same mattress, same thick duvet.. I never had this. It was 12.5* in here at 5.30am too (outside 5*). Makes no sense. I'm wondering if its partly a wet-cold thing. What I mean is, Ive noticed in this house if its wet outside & temp say 3* it feels colder than if its a dry period and 0*. I wonder if my two bad nights so far, coincide with fairly-low-but-wet outside conditions. How the physics of this might work, if I'm right Ive no idea. Its defo not a psycho-sematic thing (or wtf the word is), Im not thinking it. I'm warm in bed with thick duvet lying on my back, so Im all warm.. but lying on a cold surface, so my back's cold same time. Put leccy blanket on full pelt & I can feel the heat of course, but feel my back remains cold at same time bc its so deeply set in. Its peculiar, & leaves me with an ache for a few days.

Thanks alot chaps btw. Reading & taking in all the info. Yes Peter I can see your point clearly: i -can- in fact get the big old main room warm, & some heat radiates onwards to kitchen, even upstairs some goes too.. but with such enormous effort on the log burner front (I mean constantly for many hours @ 380* to 400* if I can get it to, IE stuffing it to its gills) Ive actually bent some bits inside from needing running it so high, so contuinually. Quite exhausting re. logs as I'm gathering/ chopping.. so I often just go to bed 9pm in deep winter/ hunker down. So yes I could whack in 3x stoves & get the place very warm. What I meant was, a normally large enough (not some huge behemoth excessive thing) ch system, alone without the log burner aiding it.. will not be able to heat this house. Never. I promise you. The insulation or total lack of it (plus my anomally new room which seems worse, unfathomably, even than adjacent bedroom) is just FAR too much.

Well after your thoughts on the ceiliing loft fluff.. no im not confident its well insulated, ceiling feels the problem like you suggest. I was saying this as i just assumed the bco having told builder what to put in above me here, would equate to a well insulated room. Evidently not so.. & alarmingly by a country mile no doubt about it. Surely its the job of the bco to put the things in place materialwise to mean it -is- a well insulated room. He seemed ott obsessed with big u values etc, thick pir, muttering away if asked him could i go less in the lower floor.. & known for being a stickler on this front too. How do i do a u value reading in these two rooms?

Peter but i know why im not getting warm rooms, the house is stupid cold. My bathroom reading 14.6 when thermostat room reads 22* can never be blamed on the ch system if the rads hot, constantly for 4 hours, & it cant ge5 any warmer. What do you think the ape would say on friday if i were to sort of blame the ashp for this low figure? The majority of the house too.. freezing cold. I knew this. I knew any ch system wouldnt heat It. So, discount the majority of the house to guage the effectiveness of the system. The only way to guage effectiveness of the ashp, if it gets the rads hot, is not how well it heats a room as you cant expect it to be responsible for the rooms u values. It can only be responsible for the heat put into the room, not then on how well its contained. So, I only need to figure out this huge disparity between two new near identical rooms. One below is 21.8*, the one above it is 16.8*, with a radiator twice the size above, the lowe4 room below providing some level of warmth underfoot for the room above ( surely a bit). It just makes no sense to have such a huge difference. One rooms super toasty, never cold.. the other you can barely feel any warmth in, often very cold. Ive no need to wonder about the surveyor, the installation (apart from the damn leak which im told is their responsibility), the choice of size, theres nothing suggesting its underpowered. The only thing Im wondering about, is how the BCO comes to the decision that the loft fluff ive got in (being the only different insulation factor between the two new rooms one ontop the other) is sufficient.. esp if he seems obsessed with ultra good u values etc etc asking me for 140 mm wall pir & 100mm pir under the lower room floor.. i persusded him for 50mm under lower room floor (bc build 1 foot too low so im desperate for roomH).. and the rooms super toasty. It should have been 140mm rockwool -minimum- in the loft, at a guess, plus the orange fluff ontop too ( tho afaict this stuff is useless). Now ive got to build a hatch, spend £500 and a week of work redoing it, in a very tricky area ive no experience of. Builder could have added this in a few hours. Im not happy about this at all tbh. Its got to be this the main reason as PeterS said, & just seems must be it to me: heats going up, just like kitchen and bathroom, above rad.. & dissapearing, not being radiated back down and contained in the room by a ( properly) insulated ceiling. I could be wrong after £500 and a hard week.. but ffs i hope not cos i cant do anything else in here.

@PeterW that's such a great post- appreciated Peter. Lordy if I could hire you.. what I plan to do is be pretty firm saying Im working and then f-off, avoid any them vs me (innevitable tho).. so long as noise has been fixed I'll say/ its under guarantee so will have to be fixed eventually I'll say putting that point flat & nothing needs saying more than its been fixed yes? at the end. Bye. Trouble is it won't have been. No-one knows what its doing. No-one knows how to tweak it to stop. Or add anything to stop it. Theyre only coming to give me a token gesture, unrelated addition to solving it: you can tell. Snr and next-snr UK engineers, bristol & york theyre both coming from. 2nd time, each. I mean ffs. I cant seem to be ungrateful, but I will be if the noise hasn't been fixed: I'll be a bit depressed & anxious as to what next, knowing they've decided this as final 'token-gesture' visit/ last gasp. Then I have to get bboy pants out. I cant do it with these guys tho: big f-off bristol baldie told me off last time in my own house! (I was getting a bit stressed having had no sleep, again, so with good reason), not good at all tbh, but I took it on the chin & apologised to the ape. Snr guy like a schoolmaster. Me vs these two spieling tech excuses at me-? no chance, even with my biggest, badass bboy pants on gleaming white from your Vanish dual action skidmark remover. Urgh dreading it.

@SteamyTea the white stuff is pipe insulation: inside is like 12mm HD copper pipe. It is correctly sized, that's been established, nothing to suggest it isn't afaict. If I turn off 3x rads anyway, then its actually oversized if anything. They went slightly over anyway, they said to be safe, & with the 2 extra rads (survey took before extention went up, so a whole new wing had appeared on install day!) it'll mean ~spot-on size.

Yes thanks ST. The Vaillant engineer did the same analogy.. & got it to sink in & mulled it over. It seems counter-intuititve to go 24/7, from an eco & cost pov, but I can appreciate it a bit more: the only thing I dont get is running rads at night: still dont understand this, not used to, I like a cold (bit of air) room with huge duvet.. feels healthy to me, having rads on & opening windows.. well that is wasteful isn't it. So cant quite get the full picture yet with this approach. But look I am prohibited from running like this anyway, because it'll keep me awake all night. If it was quiet.. then I could try. But its not.. so I can only run it as I am > meaning cold rads am/ cold house. This is my second reason, I say it is unfit for purpose. First reason: the overnight (other) noise unrelated to the heating/ rads.

I understand. Its very tricky knowing how to deal with this noise issue (overnight box unit thing noise: the house cold can be put aside for now, this is MASSIVELY more the pressing issue) with installers not answering/ refusing contact, & my only option Vaillant.. whom thank GOD I know I have a guarantee with, hence going to them, and hence the numerous visits. If we can put aside the house cold factor, and if the sole emphasis could please be on the possible reason for this wretched box unit thing coming active overnight.. I just feel Ive got one last chance/ one last visit friday to try tackle it, & even a token gesture of a completely unrelated 'easy fix' noise issue they're gonna go with to appease me., then its drawbridge up from Vaillant. I just know it. I cannot/ will not accept this as any 'solution'. I just want the overnight box unit coming on.. to stop. Nothing else right now. Its such a small ask, but means a huge ammount. Ive emailed them exactly this reply, basically, but pretty firmly.

But i have done, it just never gets warm, i let it run all day more than once, set to 23*, but neve4 gets warm, just remains feeling like it does now 16* or so. I have to wear hat and scarf, all the time in day. Down below i can take hat off fine, scarf far too hot.. great toasty room, exactly as expected too.. bang on what i thought.

Sorry, the vrc700 is the wee controller. This is tied to a box unit thing, with pump in, pipes galore coming in/ out from.. the cause of all my woes. They didnt leave me a manual for this wretched thing. No numbers on it, so I dont know what it is, or what model no. it is. The system kis arotherm split 7.5kW. Its not the fan unit outside, its not the cylionder, its not the wee controller. Its a suitcase size box thing.

Yes but there's just 0.5* difference between a freezing cold see-your-breath-sleeping-in uninsulated room, with no rad on.. to a brand new well insulated room, with a huge rad on. That sums this room up. Its rubbish. O.5*C. I mean its hardly worth putting the damn rad on is it.

Are you talking about a possible reason for the thing coming alive 2am here? You see its -only- the inside trv700 box unit thing that comes on, within a 15*C room at 2am (connected by pipes to cylinder). The outside stuff, in 4*C, doesn't come active. No heating comes on for eg. So why anything comes on, inside, when its perfectly warm enough @15*.. is the nub of the mystery (to me). Frost, defrost, are utterly n/a. So the Q is stuck at 'what the f**k is it doing, going on/off/on at 2am??' as there seems NO reason for it to. If this could be answered, the solution could maybe be found. So chaps if anyone has any ideas, please just put them out here. Im so desperate to stop this. If I cant- it goes (at alot of money to me I just can't afford, as I have to replace it with something/ I have to have HW at least). thanks- zoot

Yes but you take that decision with experience. I have none, & have no other offer of a CH system than this (so, with a rotten old immersion tank & no CH at all.. can you blame me for biting their hand off?). So its just not a Q of my having chosen it. But it was chosen, as being 'great/ you'll be really warm' by the surveyor (& I am warm.. in one small room only w'very low ceiling & insulation in: actually I'm rather proud of this result, even if room above, the priority room, & rest of house goes without saying, has never felt warm). No CH system will heat this house, so I'm not complaining in general about the cold (altho yes dissapointed/ hoping better).. but, I am complaining about the -new room- so just one newly built room, which has fallen far short of expectations never feeling warm even with its huge rad on, fairly hot, for all of 3 hours.. & 120mm kigspan in walls etc.

@PeterStarck or anyone/ @PeterW ? temp figures, daytime. 6* outside, 18* in thermostat room (desired temp 18*). All taken within last 2 hours, 6* temp not changed.. & tbh feels quite mild tbh. Workshop 17.6* New bedroom above 15.8* Adjacent old bedroom to ^ (with rad turned off) 15.3* Kitchen 14* Main big old room (one rad on, one off) 14.3* Bathroom 12* Nose (in kitchen) 14.6*

I certainly will Declan. I'll try anything. But if its going on 4.45pm now it does mean the idea is n/a.

I don't understand you- I desperately want this solved. I dont have the choice of taking it away, if its foc & therefore if I were to, Id have to spend £5k putting in a replacement MJN. Im already lumbered with it. Even if it works crap, which it does for me so far, I still dont have an option to just get rid of it. This is why the panic is on, before friday visit, what do I say? I get distinct impression someone at the top's said 'this guys a pita, just offer him to quel the compressor noise a bit, yes do your best to see if vrc700 noise can be rid by settings, but if not/ so be it- & we're done with him'. The only avenue I can see.. if I cant get rid of this fkn overnight noise.. is to try & persuade installers Co (yeah right, who wont even answer a call or email to fix the ongoing leak/ pressure issue Im also stuck with) to re-put the problem vrc700 outside. That is, is I build a weatherproof enclosure for it 1st. Then site the cylinder nearby, inside, in my UT room. Maybe squeeze this in + wm.. but likely not: so I have to weigh up if I can do without a whole UT room Id planned to renovate with basin & worktop next to wm. This option sucks (and where it should've been if I knew it was going to be noisy in the 1st place!!). I'll still get intrusive overnight noise into the house via pipes > cylinder > onwards to rads even so. Or more likely I have to spend £3k on doing this.. so its n/a. Or turn whole thing off at mains each night > turn back on 1st thing, freezing house.

@PeterStarck 2nd reading. In adjacent bedroom to new room (so the one I emigrated from, no insulation, built the new room to keep warm in as this one so damn cold), no radiator on.. 15.3*