-rick-
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Everything posted by -rick-
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Without knowing about the extent of the pipework you are worried about leaking this would be my strong preference. Getting rid of shower pumps, cold water tank, etc, and if the pipework is fragile enough to break under mains pressure then chances it fails anyway at some point? (replace with point to point plastic with no joins if access isn't too bad?) Obviously, need to worry about the G3 stuff so you have less scope for DIY but overall I think you end up with less to go wrong in future.
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Failing that, can you temporarily store it over winter and get rid of it after it drys out (potentially leaving time to co-ordinate removal to happen on a lorry that was coming to site to deliver something)? Double handling might make this a non-starter. But if you are doing the moving with your own equipment then maybe makes sense.
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Looks like the party is over....
-rick- replied to Beelbeebub's topic in Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
Saw something the other day. The BBC has cut its news budget by 40% in real terms in recent years. Given the big names command high salaries it seems likely that they are consuming a greater and greater amount of the budget with back ground research/beat journalists getting massively cut. Papers are similar. Their business model is crippled by social media and the lack of money in adverts these days. -
Theres another benefit to starting now, even if you initially see minimal gain. It chips away at a bigger project, getting you closer to the goal. Once this is up and running, your list of things to do will be less daunting and more approachable. Plus theres always the chance that once the inverter is generating it provides you the data to justify more upgrades.
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Some areas worse than others but yes. My feeling is they copied a lot of their workings from other flats that have 1-2m2 windows and applied it to my flat which has those windows replaced with sliding doors that occupy most of the external wall, then on top of that late in the design they changed the sizes of the rooms making one in particular 6+m2 bigger. The change in design for my flat means that they have got some other thermal bridging details wrong. The concrete floor extends without break onto the balcony for example.
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Not sure the manufacturer but the current ones are along the lines of these: https://www.stelrad.com/radiators/designer-radiators/white-radiators/flat/ £166 for K1 600x800, white £250 for K2 600x800, white If you upgraded to K2 600x1200, white, then £350 Existing are powder coated colour matched. Finding that option adds a lot to the price (looked at various brands all similar) Type 22 800x1200 white Flomasta is £58 from Screwfix https://www.screwfix.com/p/flomasta-600mm-x-1200mm-6998btu-white-type-22-convector-radiator/612xp#product_additional_details_container
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Yep, lots of options, but I doubt I could manipulate the tails easily to do that and adjusting things behind the plasterboard would be the better looking option. I expect to repaint before selling anyway. New option occurred to me last night. I could replace all the radiators with Flomasta ones for not much more than the price of one new one matching existing and maybe even get some of my money back selling the old ones (though that seems questionable). It's a lot of work though and more than I signed up for when buying the wiser. Might meet payback though (especially if I can sell the existing rads). Still not sure if the style downgrade makes sense, but it's an easier sell if everything is consistent. Every room is different and it's good to have options!
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'Smart' heater vs heater with wifi controller?
-rick- replied to Crofter's topic in Electrics - Other
Be funny if me linking to something that didn't do what I initially thought ends up being something you use! I do like the idea of using this in parallel to the Shelly, rather than programming the Shelly to do the boost itself, as you get the redunancy. But I'm pretty sure you could do with all within the Shelly and wiring a retractive switch to it. -
If I decided I wanted to target full low temp system (ie, support low temps year round) I expect I would look to install wider radiators rather than go to triples. Triples will eat into the room in a negative way, longer rads not so much. But would involve redoing the pipework around the rads (and breaking into the plasterboard to do it). Having said that at this stage I think it's very unlikely I'd go that route. Sounds like a recipe for harmony!
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They have put bigger radiators in the kitchen area which also has high heat loss. I suspect it's more of a screw up than deliberate undersizing. When I bought there was a big delay because the plans on the lease didn't reflect reality so had to be amended. So I think the design of my flat was changed at a rather late stage and I'd guess heating not reviewed after. Yeh, I don't think I'm going to be making the changes necessary to run at low temp all the time. If I change the rads I'd be aiming for it to be enough for low temp heating a large chunk of the time but require high temps during the coldest. 800 wide, 600 tall.
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If I was happy running as things are now (with associated bills and short cycling) then I think the comfort issue is mostly addressed. Even with the issues Wiser maintains the temp to within 0.2C and heating the whole flat feels much more comfortable than leaving some rooms unregulated. With my previous setup, the room I spend my time was kept at a reasonable temp but the heatloss to the cold room next door, and through the screeded floor meant that there was quite a temp gradiant which is not particularly comfortable (cold feet). Floor ~19-20C, desk height 23C. I could swap one 800x500 with one 800x600, without changing pipe positions. Doesn't seem worth it given I think the its the coldest room with the 800x500 rads (2) and I think it's heat loss is well over 2kw (vs current spec rads rated at 1100W total at dT-air 50). My best bet, if I do anything, is replacing the two 800x500 in the cold room with 800x600 T22 or 800x700 T22. I don't think that gets me to true low temp heating but I think it might by the boiler enough room to run sensibly (thinking running 50% duty cycle, lowest modulation = 3kw output). Replacing the 1000x600 in the kitchen with a T22 might be needed too. But so far all the other rads seem to be maintaining temp in their areas while being barely on. Having said that, given I'm selling as soon as I can, I can't justify the cost of matching existing and I'm really worried that replacing these rads with something obviously different (and cheaper) will raise issues when selling. I've already lost 6 figures off the value of this place due to cladding issues and people in the building are getting to the point of selling at firesale prices (not much more than they paid in 2006) because they can't get BTL mortgages and no-one wants to buy after 100+ viewings. It's not quite the same. It's moving from running the heating an hour at a time when I'm cold in one room, and not worrying about the temp in the other rooms, to regulating the temp in all rooms. So the increase is more than just running longer, its also heating a much bigger area. Gas bill this month prior to this experimentation was ~£60 so not a huge amount compared to some.
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I think I covered this already, that sensor (reported as 'Wiser Heating Channel 1' for me) is on all the time (except during a short window after the temp exceeded set point due to cooking). On the graph in the post out quoted that sensor is shown just above where I snipped the screenshot. A few days ago I limited the boiler max temp to 50C and during that time it wasn't enough to heat the flat so the wiser heating demand was above steady state. In that condition, the boiler attempted to heat and cycled according to the limitations of my CH systems ability to transmit heat and the minimum modulation of the boiler. That cycling was very orderly with consistent on/off times and about 6.5 cycles per hour. Since then, I've upped the boiler max temp which has allowed wiser to reach setpoint ang obtain tight control (varying the boiler setpoint via opentherm). However, this seems to have lead to a significant increase in cycling, especially very short ones as explained above. Fundamentally, I think the cause is that my CH system is badly sized and can't handle steady temp running. But equally, Wiser could likely be designed to handle this sort of system more gracefully.
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Somewhat, it's down the the interaction between the boiler and how it meets the opentherm setpoint (which is set by Wiser and changed constantly). When Wisers 'Heating Demand' measure started oscillating so did the boiler. I changed the set point then to force a long continuous burn and after I dropped the set point again we are now back to no oscillation and less cycling. Now I imagine there could easily be a feedback loop where the boiler cutting out due to insufficient modulation for my CH system triggers the oscillation. My comment earlier was that wiser doesn't offer a way to rate limit or filter this setting which makes cycling more likely. Opentherm also offers a way of turning the flame on and off remotely without using the relay. I don't know if wiser is using that ability or not. This is all somewhat off-topic for this thread though. I want to optimise what I have to the best extent possible physically, then explore wiser more. My plan is: 1. Complete tweaking balance, etc 2. See how wiser works if asked to just manage the temp in the warm part of the home. (it should be able to satisfy that with lower temps and the colder unregulated rooms will act as a bigger heatsink to prevent cycling). 3. See what difference these fan kits I've ordered make (GPT suggests they could double the heat output of the radiators at high flow temps but don't help that much at low flow temps). 4. By the time I've done this I will have had more time to think about radiators. Looks like I can replace the two vastly undersized ones for ones with 2.5x the output for about £150 if I don't mind sacrificing matching the existing. I can't justify the cost of matching existing but moving to the cheap ones might get payback (and if I keep the old ones I can always swap them back in if the new ones cause issues with buyers/valuation). 5. If I do upgrade radiators then I go through the above again 6. If still having problems talk to wiser Good news so far is that if I've done my sums right my gas usage is only about 50% more than normal heating the whole place vs what I was doing before. Given the heating is on for >14 hours a day vs maybe 6 before this doesn't seem to bad (more than I'd like long term though). This means I'm not in a huge rush to finalise this process and can take the time to try things out
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By the CH light do you mean the flame icon? I don't tend to look at the thermostat but rather the app, but it has a representation of the same. It doesn't appear to be directly connected to the opentherm requests. I've seen plenty of times when the boiler is active (and cycling) when the flame icon is off. I initially thought it was a bug (and my boiler was ignoring opentherm requests) but after a decent amount of observation I think the flame icon represents not matching the setpoint. ie, in a traditional on/off system, when the thermostat calls for heat. But with Opentherm it's trying to modulate the flow to maintain the set point to a much more precise degree (within 0.1C) and as long as it considers itself as successfully regulating that then the flame is off. The relay signal to the boiler has stayed on all day barring once around dinner time when cooking pushed the temp a fair bit above set point at which point the relay switched off. What I think is happening in my case is that Wiser adjusts the setpoint it wants from the boiler constantly based on the heating demand % supplied by the thermostat. Wiser wants the boiler on all the time to maintain the set point. The boiler is willing to exceed the set point by a certain amount but if it goes over that then it shuts off. I think there's more to it than this but feels like the main issue. I assume you mean since you moved to weather comp and not using opentherm at all. That's not really something I want to do (given the amount of disruption running the cable would involve) and I'm not sure weather compensation would help when the CH system can't dump out the heat from the boiler at minimum modulation.
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Since yesterday, I've opened up various valves, the two most distant radiators fully open, and opened the towel rails a bit. The system manages very long burns if allowed a higher temperature and it's not close to set point, but as it gets close to set point it drops the temperature and cycles more. By staring at the Home Assistant graphs, I'm still seeing some very short cycles but a lot of them I can connect to Wiser demand changing mid flow (which seems like a bad design from them). BTW I do have it set up as Oil boiler, which should limit things to 3 cycles per hour, but obviously getting a lot more than that.
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Measuring the pipes before the valves. I started with a thermal probe (admittedly designed for meat). Wasn't convinced I was getting accurate temps (I think I could do but it was frustrating and fiddly). So I bought a IR thermometer. After a bit of learning how to get good results from it (keep distance short, make sure sensor is in line with what you want to measure, black tape over exposed copper, etc) I think I'm getting good readings. They are broadly similar to those with the meat probes (good thing about them is they could measure both at same time). I am also reading the boiler flow/return temps via Opentherm using the Home Assistant Wiser integration, though these temps are not quite the same as those measured with the probes, the deltas are similar. All BBOE
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Sir, this thread is talking about connecting up a man-cave The EV-Ultra cable was suggested as an easy way to do it.
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Looks like the party is over....
-rick- replied to Beelbeebub's topic in Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
Making compensation fair (or even generous) would seem like it might make things go more smoothly. -
'Smart' heater vs heater with wifi controller?
-rick- replied to Crofter's topic in Electrics - Other
Sorry, Retractive. https://www.screwfix.com/c/electrical-lighting/switches/cat7320002?switchproducttype=retractive -
'Smart' heater vs heater with wifi controller?
-rick- replied to Crofter's topic in Electrics - Other
Wire the shelly to a retractable switch and program it to boost for 1 hour if the switch is pressed. -
'Smart' heater vs heater with wifi controller?
-rick- replied to Crofter's topic in Electrics - Other
Sorry, I actually misunderstood the features of that device. I was thinking of something that had a built in timer (that wasn't adjustable by the guest) with a boost button that they could press for extra heat.
