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This is not a symptom we are experiencing. Everything works well. The only issue we have is that we don’t always keep tabs of unusually high use, such that when somebody has unusually high use, they don’t top up the cylinder. That’s why I wanted to investigate automating it. I think I should have just got a mixergy.

So just to understand this a bit better: what is the typical stratification of a cylinder? Is it linear such that the 39 degree delta between the top and the bottom here means that if the cylinder is 156cm tall (39 x4) every 4cm there is a change in temperature of 1 degree?

Yes, this is already in hand. The pump only comes on when certain PIR sensors are triggered, and even then it only comes on for 30seconds. The worst heat loss will be when someone is washing up, as the PIR sensor above the kitchen sink will trigger continuously, though maybe there is a clever setting on the Shelly app that can stop that.

Yes, it’s possible. Though one would have thought that a 35kw boiler can heat 300L of water pretty quickly. The Telford Tempest technical details says: 1) it takes 40min to heat all 300L (actually 294L) from 10C to 60C. My thermostat is set around 5C cooler than that, and I run it for 45min in the morning and again for 40min in the early evening. Plus weekends we run a bit extra midday. 2) standing loss is 92 watts, though this doesn’t factor in my poorly insulated recirculating pipe for instant HW.

yes, as mentioned above it does has a thermostat. I use this to choose the water temp. The thermostat is a bit difficult to read, but it’s about 55C. I time it for two reasons: 1) I can control the periods of heat loss to when it doesn’t matter (eg when we are asleep) 2) in winter I can heat the cylinder at the same time as running the central heating, to get better efficiency from the boiler. Questionable whether this makes a difference though, given the Veissman boiler is very efficient and modulates to 1/17th of its max output.

I see. In fact I think this is something the plumber recommended, but I overruled that suggestion on the basis that I didn’t think it would be an efficient use of gas. For example, it’s virtually certain that we don’t need hot water between 11:30am and 7am, so heat loss during those hours is not a problem.

Not sure what I’m looking for, but the technical drawing does suggest it has one (but only one, as far as I can see): https://www.cylinders2go.co.uk/shop/stainless-steel-unvented-cylinders/indirect-unvented-stainless-steel-cylinders/telford-tempest-300-litre-stainless-steel-indirect-unvented-cylinder/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAzc2tBhA6EiwArv-i6ehM54AtIU2QajESJZ6Ts6pHqEvo7VlvFlGqaVifpNb62SsLV2rqFhoCtD0QAvD_BwE

My house isn’t a new build. It’s almost 100 years old! But I’ve modernised it by gutting it, adding EWI, making it airtight and then adding MVHR (as well as a couple of extensions). For various reasons including that there is a limit to how much insulation you can add to a 1930s semi before it looks silly and it starts to develop interstitial condensation issues), ASHP wasn’t going to give us a great outcome. I have however laid oversized UFH pipes so that we can reconsider this in 12 - 15 years time in case the technology improves.

How do you do this without causing leaks in the UVC?

we do this already. It is set up for priority domestic HW and when the boiler fires, it heats the cylinder pretty quickly. But I would like to automate the topping up when there is a surprise exhaustion of the HW, or if that’s not possible, an early warning system that warns me we’re about to run out. But I don’t see how your suggestion fixes my issue. We already have the system boiler cylinder fire up for about 45 min in the morning and 40 min in the evening. At weekends we also have it come on for 20min in the middle of the day, as we tend to use more HW on weekends. There of course is a thermostat on the cylinder set to a specific temperature, I can’t remember which one, something like 55C. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s a fancy Veissman one, but it does the job in that it tells the boiler to stop firing when it reaches temperature. Is that what you mean by sensor? Do I need more than one thermostat? Where is the right place for it? No idea which one was installed. I can take a picture, but I didn’t specify or discuss thermostats with the installer, I just assumed a thermostat for a cylinder was a standard piece of kit. What’s special about something like this? https://viessmanndirect.co.uk/Catalogue/Accessories/Vitodens/Vitodens-100-W-System-Boiler-Up-o-35kW/DHW-Cylinder-Sensor-7179114

We have an unvented 300L HW cylinder, heated by a system boiler. We are usually quite good at working out how much we use, so that we can plan the timer accordingly, but occasionally we miscalculate, or somebody will have an unforeseen need and not think to run the boiler for an extra 20 min to compensate, and then we run out of HW. I recall coveting a mixergy cylinder because of the smart tech that came with it which monitored usage and had clever algorithms that could help with topping up the HW automatically. But it was expensive and we couldn’t really make it fit into our pump room, so just went with a traditional copper cylinder. I’m aware plenty of companies make clever temperature sensors and I wonder how I might be able to rig something up that might alert me when, say, I only have 45L of HW left. At the moment, the only thing I can think of is to put a pipe mounted sensor on our HW return loop, capture a week’s worth of data from that and analyse it to see what patterns we can spot as it gets closer to running cold. Our HW return loop provides virtually nstantaneous HW to three of our most used taps in the house. The bloody installer did not insulate it very well (it is insulated, but the insulation is cheap and thin) and so we were losing quite a lot of heat from the cylinder via this pipe. We fixed that by rigging up a Shelley PIR system above the relevant taps so that the pump only comes on when you are near the tap. But the heat loss still happens, just at a fraction of the amount of happened before. So maybe a sensor on the pipe could produce some useful info. Any nerds see something up like this and then managed to to use something like IFTTT to solve it?

I think this is not much more than a comfort. The rules aren’t always clear on this, and I wouldn’t want to rely on it. There are plenty of banks where you can open accounts. I seem to remember that Investec, RBI and Shawbrook can all be opened online fairly quickly. They usually have reasonable rates.

@MBT6 not wishing to undermine the seriousness of the housing crisis, but I was confused by the idea that short lets don’t result in money going into the local economy. Surely those renting short term are more likely to be tourists or people visiting on a short to medium term work assignment. All their expenditure will be pumped into the local economy. What am I misunderstanding here?

Thanks. That’s a good suggestion.

Hmmm, I fear you might be right. This is what the UDR screen was displaying after I restored the system data and configurations: but logging in now, it is still showing 3.2.9. Very annoying.

Ok, I’ve done that and it appears to be doing something good: I will report back once I know if it’s worked. Thank you @Thorfun

@Thorfun when you say connect with a web browser, do you mean by plugging a laptop directly into the UDR and then going to the UdR IP address, or do you mean logging in to my Ubiquiti account from a web browser without a a physical Ethernet connection?

Okay, I will try and connect from a web browser, because doing it through the app late last night was a somewhat confusing experience. I got this, which I thought was positive: I thought this was saying that it was loading the backup from 8 Jan, in that I don’t see logically how I can create a backup with that date two weeks later. But after it finished doing this, the version was still showing 3.2.9.

I’ve been tinkering in the app, and I thought I’d done it, but no. Still showing new update as the current OS version.

Probably. Presumably this is something I can do from the unifi app?

When I set up my Ubiquiti Dream Router, the first thing I did, before even plugging in the thing was to access the settings of my ISP’s router, and change it to run in broadband modem only mode. Did you do that before plugging in the UDR?

I have a Ubiquiti Dream Router (not a Dream Machine). This is connected to a Virgin Media router that is running in modem only mode. I then have 2 Poe access points connected via Ethernet to the router. The set up has been the same since we installed it about 20 months ago. It has generally worked flawlessly and I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the first 19.5 months, in total, I think I only had to reboot the VM “modem” and UDR 3 or 4 times. This was, I assumed, a problem with the unreliability of Virgin Media, in that although they have market leading speeds, their reliability isn’t great. In the last 4 or so days, I’ve come home almost every night to a house with no internet. Restarting both the VM “modem” and the UDR fixes the problem… until it breaks the following day. Today, as an experiment, I just restarted the VM “modem”, but this didn’t fix the issue. Then I restarted the UDR and that did fix the issue. I notice from my UDR’s system logs that it auto upgraded to 3.2.9 at 3am on the 17th Jan. I think the problems started around the 18th Jan late afternoon, but I can’t be sure. Hope would you go about testing things to get to the bottom of whether it is a Virgin issue or a UDR issue? When I run VM’s online tests on my VM hub, it tells me it’s all fine, but sometimes it cuts out and says sobering like“unable to run this test right now” so who knows. The UDR regularly reports issues with the ISP, usually high latency or packet loss. This happens once or twice a week, but has never seemed to impact real world performance so I never investigated it. I mention it but it may be a red herring.

This is a controversial topic. F and B make certain finishes which aren’t really matchable. The colour might be the same, but the way the light reflects off the surface won’t be, especially with the estate emulsion, modern emulsion and dead flat finishes. So in different lights it could look rather different.

Really? Hardly felt it down here.

I agree with all of this. Only thing I would add is that the other advantage of gas is that it continues to heat the pan when you lift it up. E.g. if you’re wanting to toss something or make an omelette/pancake spread out a bit. But, a huge advantage of induction is that it requires a much lower safe zone above it, which means you don’t need a really ugly cut out in a row of wall cupboards if your job is installed along that wall. Looks better in my view, as well as useful storage directly above your cooking area.