ProDave

Oh dear. As I feared this might get messy. This is the response I have had (edited to preserve anonimity) How would you respond to that?

Is that done by just turning the pump on and off on a timer? I notice the Graff units do that on a roughly 50% duty cycle. It seems you could probably do that to any air blower treatment plant.

It would be neater if you extended he hoses and put it in the chicken shed.

Missus just wants it FINISHED

+1 to get a plasterer. Even I, who has been doing most jobs myself got a spread in to do it for me, and he did a damned good job. He used multi finish. One interesting thing he said (would be interested to hear if this is true or not) was you need to get it skimmed soon after fixing the board. He swears if you leave ordinary grey board 6 months before skimming it will have trouble adhering. Truth or wives tale?

Use some telephone or cat5 cable instead. The colours will be different but as long as the same cable ends up in the same place that won't matter.

Get out on that boat. Been some fantastic sailing weather of late.

I forgot to come back and say we chose engineered Oak in the end for the whole room. In fact I collected it earlier in the week, all 700Kg of it a full trailer and car load but done in one trip. Room is plastered and painted, UFH to go down soon, then we start flooring.

Building regs normally stipulate the size of tank depending on the number of bedrooms. Is is a forula something like 2 people for the first bedroom then one person for each additional bedroom (but check that is the correct formula) In any event for our 3 bedroom house the "correct" size was the 1-6 person treatment plant, so I would not be fitting anything bigger than that.

Let us know if it fits. Are you going to do a trial removal of the mixer cartridge? if so photograph it.

Just to be clear, th treatment plant will not "dry out" If the objective is to stop the pond drying out, then run the rainwater to it, but you will need a mechanism to stop the pond over filling which may be as simple as a weir that allows the pond water to run off somewhere else if the level gets too high, though it would be better to divert the rainwater away from the pond in that situation.

Are you going to buy it and donate it to the forum tool loan stock?

I doubt you would get a socket big enough for the central thermostatic cartridge and if you did, it's outside diameter would probably make the hole needed larger than the faceplate. Instead you would need a box spanner, or more likely a home made tool fashioned from a bit of steel tube with 4 "screwdriver fingers" to engage with the 4 slots around the cartridge. If ever it needs changing, I will be asking on the forum if anyone has a suitable tool, and if not, making one.

There is no plasterboard behind, the "wet wall" panels go straight onto the suds. No I didn't join the holes, I figured I can do that in situ with the multitool when the need arises.

I will keep you posted. Just to be clear the supplier and brand name it was sold under has not yet been mentioned on this thread I don't want that information to inhibit what I may or may not say. I have a copy of the receipt giving the sale date and estimated delivery date and my point of (if necessary) sending a recorded delivery claim was to establish the fact the issue was identified before the 1 year warranty had expired. It was brought from ebay I have just looked and the ebay listing is still there though the pictures have gone. I will take a print our of that in case it goes offline. In the ebay listing is a "full description" link ans when you click that, this little snippet is at the top of the description: UK Design, UK Manufactured, for the British climate Highest quality construction with corrosion protected evaporator coil 7 year warranty full parts and labour warranty as standard All components wire back to internal auxiliary box, ensuring that internal to external cabling is kept to an absolute minimum I will keep a print out of that in case they start trying to wriggle out of a warranty claim. Sorry the quote has messed up and I can't edit it. [fixed by mod]

Not so good news, no mention of them on ebac.com, not even the fact they started developing them in 2011. So it looks like they have stopped making them and erased it from even their history.

So this is what I have, a re badged EBAC heat pump http://www.pmcoppack.com/products/heat-pumps/ebac-air-source-heat-pump-5kw-suitable-for-up-to-3-bedrooms/0011933.html Just to be clear that is NOT the company I bought mine from, just the first link showing it that I found. Mine is identical in appearance, dimensions, weight, and specification, it just has a different name on the outside, but EBAC stickers on the inside. So hopefully it is using EBAC controls just with a slightly customised diagnostic interface just with a different "manufacturer" name shown. Even their description of the user interface and inbuilt wifi is the same. So hopefully if I need spares, EBAC might be able to support it.

That is always a worry. As far as I can tell the refrigeration unit is made by EBAC (that is not the name on the heat pump) but I suspect the controls are not.

The instructions for my free standing bath said to use a flexi waste. I detested the idea of that. Instead I used a fixed waste, connecting the trap and a short bit of pipe to the bath then lowering it into it's surround, them making the connection from below. It means if I ever have to remove the bath, I will have to cut a trap in the ceiling of the utility room below, but that is preferable to a flexi waste. And to try and avoid the need to ever need to service the bath I used a top access waste, not a remote control one (with bits under the bath to go wrong) and a floor standing bath filler.

If it has a leak, I think it is a gross leak as I am 99% sure now it had no gas when I received it, I don't think it has slowly leaked out over the intervening 11 months. So hopefully that wold be obvious on re gassing. I am convinced, for various reasons, that this unit was previously used as some form of in house training or development. If that theory is right, regular de gassing and re gassing might be something they did to it and forgot to fill it again. Well you can live in hope.

I have done some more looking around. What I find is the company that sold this unit to me are no longer selling this particular brand of heat pump (I won't mention the company or make of the heat pump in case it gets messy) That probably explains it's sale at a low price as selling off stock of a discontinued model. It was sold to me as "new" on 23rd June 2017. So I am very close to the 1 year guarantee expiring. Given my lack of reply from the company yesterday, I have now sent an email, and if no response is received on Monday I will follow up with a recorded delivery letter, making it clear I am making a warranty claim to rectify the problem with this unit. I will let you know how it proceeds. Perhaps a cautionary tale about buying cheap bargains in advance of when you are ready for them. Hopefully the fact I discovered and reported the issue before 1 year was up will be okay.

Looks like you can buy the gas in bulk (as I would expect a refrigeration engineer to do) for about £29 per Kg https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/R410A-Refridgeration-Gas-Air-Con-Virgin-Bottle-11-35kg-Unlimited-Quantity-s/302759201166?hash=item467ddac98e:g:MbAAAOSw3UZbA9zh

Given the history., I am hoping it is not a leak, but was supplied to me with no or low gas. When I first got it, I tried to run it up, but with no water connected. I expected the input to the PHE to start getting very hot very quickly and I would have then shut it off. but it didn't. it behaved as it is now, the compressor ran for a couple of minutes and nothing got hot. I didn't do any more then as I thought it was shutting down because of no water flow. And to be clear I didn't just run it and cook the thing, it honestly did not get hot. So if it's got no gas, that is how I received it. EDIT Just looked back at the event log for 10 months ago and it is logging water flow AND low pressure as faults so it was low on gas then, it has not just leaked out over the last 10 months.

So the gas cost I was quoted is about right, I need to work on getting someone cheaper for the labour. I will let you know how the conversation goes on Monday when I suggest the supplier pays for the re gassing. As I say when you run it, it is ONLY the output from the compressor that gets at all warm. That warmth never makes it anywhere near far enough around the circuit so at the drier and check valve both input and output pipes to both are stone cold. As the gas is so expensive, is is possible to fill the system say with compressed air to check for leaks first (obviously without trying to run it like that) and if the pressure holds, vent the air and fill with gas? Can I make any pressure tests at either of the Schrader valves? what sort of pressure would we expect at each?

Just to clarify it was sold to me as "new" 11 months ago, but I found out when I got it it was not actually "new". It looks in new condition i.e. it has not been installed anywhere outside, but the paper labels on all the connectors on the wiring loom suggest it might have been used as a training or demo unit. Anyway I have just found the "event log" and that confirms it is tripping on a "low pressure" fault so I think that confirms it either has a leak, or was supplied to me with no refrigerant. Monday's phone call could be "interesting" I did a quick search for refrigeration engineers up here and only one answered the phone this late on a Friday. He estimated £160 for the labour to re gas it and a similar amount for the gas. That sounds like a piss take to me. I can't think it's more than an hour to re gas it, and how much does 1.8Kg of R410A actually cost? Can you ask your mate what a proper re gassing cost would be? And to be clear it's a monoblock unit.