ProDave

Good news for some at least. I believe the houses shown in that picture were a collaboration between Carbon Dynamic and Pat Munro.

I did say early on they are a compromise and not my choice of heating. Having the room toasty warm in the small hours is unavoidable and you might say a "waste" but that is an unavoidable consequence of the way they work. The top of the heater should not instantly get hot at midnight. The heater will gradually warm up between midnight and 7AM and by the morning the whole thing will be hot. If you are feeling a lot of heat coming out immediately after midnight then it is not working correctly. In the longer term you might want to think about a completely different heating system.

No it's failing to STORE any of that heat that is going in over night.

No the opposite. It shows the power has been on at the time it should have been, and that should have heated up the bricks. The fact it is not heating up, could be either the boost flap is stuck open, the bricks are missing (clutching at straws) or perhaps all but one of the heating elements are dud.

You can't "reverse the dial" That is the whole point of off peak electricity. You get it cheaper at night to use for STORAGE heating. The electricity supply company own the timer and set the times at which the cheap rate comes on.

The only thing that "gets the rad warm" in the daytime is the fact it has spent a whole night heating up, Inside it is filled with a load of high density bricks that are heated very hot and store that heat for the next day. Yours does not seem to do that. One possibility is the boost flap is broken or stuck open, so the heat just passes through and the bricks barely get hot at all so go cold very quickly when the electricity goes off in the morning.

I suspect the heater is faulty and the boost flap mechanism is stuck open. You could either replace it or have a go at repairing it.

Right I suspect the thermal mixer cartridge has died. Either mess about trying to find one for that particular mixer, or just replace the whole bar.

I don't know how to make it simpler. Leave the BOOST at minimum and only ever turn it up very late in the day. Set the INPUT control according to the weather. The colder the weather the higher the input control needs to be. If it is running out of heat by early afternoon then the input control needs to be HIGHER. Once you change it, nothing will alter immediately but hopefully it will be better tomorrow. You do NEED to look at the weather forecast and set the input control to match what the weather will be TOMORROW.

Even more confused. This is obviously not a new install. Did it EVER work? or did it stop working when you messed with the pipework for the new downstairs bathroom? (if so you have not had a shower for a while )

I asked before but never got a proper answer? Once started, was it regulating temperature? If so it was all fitted the correct way round.

Most have a little heater right under the boost flap mechanism that closes the boost flap during charging. For commercial use e.g heating an office, it is okay to leave the boost turned up as it does not matter if it has run out of heat by 5pm. But I still wonder if you are reading the controls wrong? perhaps even labelled wrong to confuse you? when you turn the boost control, if you peer through the vents you will see a mechanical flap opening and closing, this will confirm you are really turning the boost control. That is the one that should be kept turned down most of the time. When you turn the input control, that is a mechanical thermostat, you should hear it go click at some point as you turn it. Storage heaters can work well in some houses but they are best suited to reasonably well insulated houses. I had them in a 1930's house and that was so poorly insulated and so leaky, that on their own they were completely inadequate as anything other than background heat.

Make and model of the heater or a picture please? The vast majority, the left hand dial is input so perhaps this is the first one I have seen the other way around. Does this heater have TWO input cables? sometimes there is a convector heater strapped to the front, do you have one of those that is your "boost"?

The basics Economy 7 (off peak) comes on from about midnight to about 7AM. During that time only, the heater charges up with heat and teh temperature it charges to is set by the left hand "input" control. So first thing in the morning it will always be very hot as it has just charged up, Throughout the day it releases the stored heat into the room. If you need more heat in the evening, then turn up the right hand boost control, that opens a flap to allow heat out quicker. Don't open that too early in the day or you will run out of heat by the evening. No they are not a very good source of heat, not one I would have by choice now. They are what they are though.

I must be missing something? If the hot and cold was the wrong way round, it simply would not work and regulate a constant temperature. I thought the problem was having to put the shower head on the floor to get the pump to start, not lack of temperature regulation?

That is a usual symptom of getting the themostats and actuators mixed up, e,g living room thermostat controlling snug zone. One of them will overheat and the other will go cold.

Boiling water tap gets rid of the kettle. We just have toaster, and tea making stuff (tea, coffee, suger etc) Part of the kitchen is all open shelving (will eventually be enclosed to form a pantry) where all the rest of your stuff lives when not needed.

What's the full story? If your hot and cold are the wrong way round, then for it to work, your hose will have to come out of the top.

I am ground mounting my solar panels away from the house and expecting my DIY sourced and installed system to cost in the region of £1500, if it saves £250 of electrcity each year it will have a payback time of 6 years. I haven't looked at the figures but I am sure 4KW of solar PV is a lot more than 3 SAP points.

The average buyer will never see a full SAP report, just the "output" from that, the EPC certificate. I still wonder why buyers are generally not interested in an EPC certificate when buying a house, seeming to prefer "character" to practicality. About the only people that do read an EPC certificate are landlords, and only because you can no longer let houses with a very poor EPC.

Our last 2 have been Acer. SWMBO has the current one, and this is the old one resurected with a new HDD and ubuntu when the original HDD died.

Sadly that is sometimes the case.

A takeover would not surprise me, often happens to start ups with a good idea when someone big wants that technology. A few years ago I would have predicted Kingspan as the new owner.

Yes but how many customers would buy this when promised a "symbiotic relationship" compared to how many would buy it if they were just promised that by clever grid controls it would only use low or no carbon renewable energy to run the heating system? There was also some waffle about bolstering the grid which to me meant exporting power to the grid to cover short term shortages, but if my understanding is correct, please tell me how they do that from a Sun Amp?

It wasn't a question I could not afford it, see post above, none of the timber merchants I have yet tried could offer it, let alone shock me with the price.