Jde00

Hi, I have an ASHP system from NIBE in my property. The only temperature controls are inside a service cupboard. It would be useful for us to have a thermostat/controller elsewhere in the property. Does anyone have experience with smart thermostat such as those using IFTTTT that I could use with my unit? Nest looked best but they dropped IFTTTT a while back. Cheers.

Sorry to sequester the topic but I’d like to move my nibe F2040 further down the garden. Would Moving the ASHP 7-8m down the garden be a big headache?

Ah thanks for that, you aren't the first one to mention the manifold aren't probably much use for an UFH system. I checked with the developers and the floor downstairs is actually block and beam with insulation and screed. They are going back to the architect drawings to see how deep is the screed.

Hi we have an air source heat pump in our recently purchased home. The house has a manifold feeding all radiators. Would the fact this plumbing is in place make retrofitting UFH any easier? we have LVT on concrete slab downstairs and LVT upstairs cheers!

It's a small development, with only 4 houses like mine and all 4 have different values for air tightness. However I understand your point and I will be doing one as soon as the builder finishes up some stuff. For example the back of the toilets have not been finsihed by the decorator so there are quite big gaps where air can get through.Lots of mastic left to correct too...

Should you seal around spotlights ? My house is full of them. I think I have close yo 100 spotlights. And the ceiling is like a cheese grill. You can clearly feel air coming out of the fittings

Yes traditional block and brick. so having a current value of 5.8 is it worth exploring improving it?

Hi, My new build has a reported tested air tightness of 5.8 m³/h.m²in the EPC. I don't see any obvious sources of draughts other than perhaps the back of toilets which will be addressed shortly. How else can this figure be improved? I quite like the idea of retrofitting a MVHR system at some point in the future. Cheers!

and I just noticed I should have posted this in the MVHR forum

there's no way I'm doing myself I have a good builder who's the husband of a colleague and he doesn't know it yet but I have him in mind for a long list of jobs in the house Going back to one of my original questions. I assume that since you have continuous air flow, you don't need to open any windows but if you were to open one, can you pause the system to avoid wasting energy? We are bit peculiar and do like sleeping with the window open.. Crazy European things...

Ha! I have no idea what I-joists are. I can ask the builder but doubt they'll even reply. I think assuming we can fit the main unit where our water tank is, most rooms are easily accesible. Not all though. This utility closet is in the first floor, within a couple of meters of two bedrooms and family bathroom. Right over the kitchen. Master bedroom and en-suite right above. We have a walk in wardrobe too. The hardest pleace to reach in my opinion is the living room. I suppose I could try to insert a camera through one of the spotlights and see what the ceiling looks like in terms of joists

The thing is that we think the passive trickle vents is not the best option for an ASHP system that relies on slow flow temp. Whenever we open the vents we get draught and it feels cold, as a consequence the ASHP kicks more often than really needed. This a house built by a small developer, it wasn't self-built.

Hi, I live in a recently built 3-storey home, this house is fairly well insulated (floors could perhaps improve as we have vinyl on concrete slab downstairs) and has a air tightness score of 5.8 m³/h.m² The windows are equipped with the usual trickle vents. The utility room and 3 bathrooms are equiped with timed extractor fans which are quite noisy and not very useful. We have an open plan kitchen/siting area and the hob extractor fan doesn't seem to cope well with smells as the entire sitting area usually smells of food and stale air. as I said the house is well insulated with good air tightness values. We have ASHP for central heating and hot water and really love the system. I hear a lot of people talk about MVHR systems, and I quite like the idea of having fresh air renovating in the property. I do have some questions. My main objective would be to renovate air in the house, I'm not necessarily looking to improve energy efficiency as it's already quite good. Can this be retrofit into a fairly decent new build? How would it be installed? If hte unit goes in the 1st floor I can see how the ducts could easily go into the ground floor ceiling and throughout the first floor, but we have our master bedroom and en-suite bathroom on the second floor so not sure how the ducts would go up there. Is the system less efficient if we keep a window ajar during the night? that's how we currently keep fresh air in the bedroom, but perhaps with a MHVR system we won't have to? Are the systems noisy? I understand the system would take air from the wet areas (kitchen and toilets) filter, heat exchange into fresh air from outside, and distribute that air to the rooms. But would the system distribute fresh air into the kitchen area as well? I'm in Cambridge.. any recommendations who I can ask?

Very good point, I'd agree with that observation on the lockshielf valve based on the temperature achieved. As I said my sweet spot was very very small. Probably worth installing TRVs even though the heat pump manufacturer doesn't recommend them.

I think I got it !!! Changed the heating curve to a -1 degree offset. Shut off the studio radiator off completely and restricted the guest bedroom and the landing radiators to as low as I could get it without the rads making the hissing noice. Set the heating temperature aim in the ASHP to 21 degrees. Voila! downstairs is 21 degrees, floors aren't stone cold anymore, upstairs is decently warm 21-22 degrees, office is slightly colder to 20 when unoccupied but as soon as I close the work and get to work it goes up to 22-23 which I can deal with by opening the window a tiny bit. I realise the temperature right now is not as cold as previous days but it feels as though the heating has stabilised somewhat and I'm not loosing heat by reducing the temperature aim to silly low levels. I've also looked at the degree minute graph and it looks much more stable in the last 2 days or so. Let's see how long it lasts!!

Thanks Yes, the radiators are bled and have no trapped air. I will try if letting the hiss stops when the radiator is hot.

Hi all, Reporting back from testing for a couple of days. I seem to have no margin of action with these radiators. I begin by closing the lockshield valve entirely, let the radiator cool down. Then I open in 1/4 increments, and the first two quarter turns I hear a hissing noise which I assume is the heating medium flowing through. I can continue to 3 quarters and the hissing noise stops, let the radiator stabilise but it gets hot, almost as hot as if the lockshield valve was fully open. I can't find a sweet spot where the radiator is functional but slightly colder without making a loud hissing noise. I'm really puzzled with all of this. I'm thinking of calling a ASHP installer to seek advice on the whole ASHP+radiator central heating system. Could it be that the rooms that are cold have undersized radiators and that's why they are cooler to the touch to begin with, rather than a problem with balancing? I suppose I could take temperature readings of the water coming in rather than of the radiator top.

To be absolutely honest I have no freaking idea where the maniford is. I would guess that it is either under the studio floor or by the cupboard where the SMO and water tank are. I've asked the builders and plumbers and no one could tell me.

Thanks - I'm going to try this out. I'll go one room a day. Funnily enough, I completely closed down the radiator in the study and the temperature is still 22-23°C. The room is right next door to the water tank and I believe is surrounded by all pipes (the ones going to the ASHP outside) and the manifold that distributes the water to all radiators. I'll follow this but it could be I don't need a radiator here at all! I can't really mess anything up as I can just return to the way it was before by opening up all valves. I assume installing TRVs require me calling a plumber?

thanks - my understanding was that balancing only really applies to radiators connected on a circuit... by balancing the first one in the series you allow more or less flow rate into the second one and so on. With these radiators all connected to a manifold, each radiator effectively acts like its own circuit so whether one is fully open or close should have no effect on every other radiator. My that's my understanding, I'm quite possibly wrong as my background is in human circulation, rather than home central heating systems

Hi I have a NIBE F2040 ASHP in a new build. The house is very well insulated and air tight. The ASHP finally works really well. We do have issues with inconsistent heating. The current set up is as follows: the 3-storey house is set up as a single heating circuit. Each room has a low-temperature radiator sized according to the BTUs needed for that room. Most radiators are sized correctly except three (see below). The radiators are connected to a multibore plumbing system whereby a manifold distributes the heating medium to all radiators (i.e. as I understand this, they aren't connected in a serial circuit like most heating systems I know). These radiators don't have TRV and instead of two lockshield valves, one in and one out. All radiators were set up with these valves fully open. The only temperature sensor in the house is located in the hall downstairs, between the kitchen and the front door. Arguably this is the coldest corner in the house, even in the summer. Now, the issue we have: * Downstairs is consistently colder than upstairs, while upstairs is almost always way hotter than it needs to be. Our compromise is to have the ASHP climate set at 19°C which means downstairs is roughly 20°C and upstairs is roughly 22°C. * The problem though is that 3 rooms in the house are consistently extreme - Entrance hall and living room are consistently colder. I don't think it's an issue with the radiator size as the temperature, taken with an infrared thermometer, is a couple of degrees colder than the other radiators - Small studio room is always consistently way way hotter than it needs to be. Sometimes if I'm inside the temperature gets to 25°C. this doesn't seem a balancing issue as my understanding is that all radiators should get the same flow rate independently of each other. Thoughts? cheers!!

Hi i have a NIBE F2040 in my newbuild. I have a thermostat sensor in the ground floor. The problem I have from the beginning is that the temperature I set in my SMO 20 controller never matches the temperature readout in the ground floor. For example the sensor now detects 21C but the climate temperature is set to 18C. If I increase it to 19-20, then the temperature in the ground floor goes to 22-23. It seems there's always a discrepancy and I don't fully understand why. Any ideas? Thanks

I'm not sure what pump it is to be honest, when I activate the lux mode it sounds like a different pump turns on which is ever so slightly louder. However what is clear is that the water tank gets full of hot water after a cycle and then slowly over the course of the day the tank seems to run out of hot water. AFAIK the hot water should last much longer than 5 hours when not in use.

I don't understand it either ! Compressor isn't running. Heating is set to 18degrees (also tried 5 earlier) and radiators are cold. The compressor kicked in this mornign for hot water but I noticed a while ago that after stopping, the nibe controller still showed only 1 out of 3 marks for hot water (the 3 step level next to the water drop). I can hear water in two pipes coming out of one of the small buffer tanks, but didn't check whether they were hot or not. I'll check later. For now what I'm trying is to activate lux mode for hot water to see if the 3 levels get full. then stop and see whether hot water is lost without anyone actually using hotwater.

Seems like the heat pump issues were sorted. There were a whole bunch of things not properly installed. Hot water works as expected, only one or two cycles per day to top up the tank. However it seems the external heat medium pump is running almost continuously (with compressor off) and the climate set to 18 degrees (indoors temp 22, outdoors 14). Is this normal behaviour for these systems or have they messed up with something else by fixing the compressor? lol thanks!