Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 9 minutes ago, jack said: Interesting. We still have the temporary 1.5 bar PRV on our incoming main. Our plumber installed it as a failsafe, to ensure if building control decided to test anything, there'd be no chance of it failing. Of course, since we've delayed so long, we've been stuck with this for ages. We do find that the shower pressure noticeably drops during a water softener recharge cycle, or if someone turns on a tap full bore, but that's hardly surprising at this pressure. I was going to install a 2.5 bar unit, but it looks like maybe a variable one would make more sense, so we can tweak it to the setting that gives us the best results. I'm pretty sure I have a spare adjustable, 22mm fitting, PRedV in my may come in handy box. We had it fitted originally to reduce the pressure to 3.5 bar when we were running the thermal store (which had a 3.5 bar limit). We took it out when we fitted the Sunamp, and also reduced the pump system pressure to 3.5 bar. If I can find it I'll chuck it in the back of the car and you can grab it when we meet up in a couple of weeks time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 You're too kind Jeremy! Honestly, I don't mind buying one - I'm sure you'll find a use for yours at some stage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 3 hours ago, jack said: You're too kind Jeremy! Honestly, I don't mind buying one - I'm sure you'll find a use for yours at some stage. Too late, I've just been up in the loft and found it, and it's now in the back of my car! I have no need of it, as our pressure is now set by the pressure regulation system for the borehole supply. It's a Caleffi, adjustable one, that was notionally set to 3 bar, but has been adjusted down, IIRC. They are easy to adjust, there is a screwdriver slot in the top. The model seems to be this one: https://www.ondemandsupplies.co.uk/22mm-caleffi-pressure-reducing-valve-ca-533651/ The instructions are here: https://www.caleffi.com/sites/default/files/file/581035.10.pdf 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Okay, thanks very much Jeremy. As mentioned in a recent pm, lunch is on me at some point in the near future. At this rate it'll have to be somewhere Michelin starred! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 (edited) IIRC the recommendation is that the house internal pressure should be limited to between 3 and 3½ bar. Our issue is that where we live is pretty flat, so Anglian use boost pumps to maintain the supply pressure, and they must set it so that the "top" of the village which is some 2m higher than we are is at 3 bar, so we are at a pretty steady 3.2 bar. This can drop by maybe ½bar during peek water demand in the early evening. The PRV itself takes around 0.2-0.5 bar off the head , so if we use one and set the target to 3 bar then this will take our pressure at the PRV closer to 2bar at peek use in the evenings. Not good. Hence we decided not to use a PRV at all, but I do monitor the pressure and will put one in if it looks as if Anglian increase the supply set point. Having a pressure transducer feeding into your HA system or even a visual pressure meter (as you can see in my system) or both is sensible, IMO. PS. @dogman, sorry for hijacking your thread, but at least I can plea in mitigation that you are going to interested in this anyway. Edited November 10, 2017 by TerryE Add PS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Our static pressure is very high - just short of 6 bar, from memory. Our plumbing design assumes a 3 bar PRedV. Given that one or two elements of the design have left us a little unhappy (eg, 45 seconds - admittedly at 1.5 bar - for warm water to reach the bathroom tap, while the shower in the same room takes 5 seconds to get up to full temperature), I suspect that the ability to tweak it a little higher or lower than that might be useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 14 minutes ago, jack said: eg, 45 seconds - admittedly at 1.5 bar - for warm water to reach the bathroom tap, while the shower in the same room takes 5 seconds to get up to full temperature Does the basin tap pipe run go next door and back first? Why the difference? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 The basin in the adjacent ensuite takes a while to heat up as well, but I don't think it takes as long as the basin in the main bathroom. From memory, if you've had one of them warm, the other one runs warm almost immediately, so you might be onto something. Even so, I can't see why there's ~40 seconds difference between the shower and basin in the same room. They're both almost directly on top of the plant room where the UVC is. Even if the pipe did loop next door first, it's a couple of extra metres at worst. One thing on my list is to get hold of a schematic from the plumber so I have a reference in case it's need in future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 Never trust a plumber to design the pipe runs (off to get my tin hat) My plumber friend when he designed his house, he put the thermal store in the diametrically opposite corner of the house to the kitchen......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 49 minutes ago, ProDave said: Never trust a plumber to design the pipe runs (off to get my tin hat) My plumber friend when he designed his house, he put the thermal store in the diametrically opposite corner of the house to the kitchen......... Where was this advice three years ago! Who else would you get to design pipe runs? We made sure when we designed the house that everything was as compact as possible. The bathroom and two ensuites are all in compact row directly above the utility room and plant room (which are adjacent each other). The kitchen is literally the only tap that's any distance at all from the plant room where the UVC is. I don't understand what sort of route the basin tap must take if it takes over 8 times as long for hot water to get to it as to the shower literally two metres (in plan) away. Even the kitchen tap gets water faster than the basin, and it's miles away! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted November 10, 2017 Author Share Posted November 10, 2017 2 hours ago, TerryE said: PS. @dogman, sorry for hijacking your thread, but at least I can plea in mitigation that you are going to interested in this anyway. Edited 1 hour ago by No please continue looking at PRV anyway. We are on a borehole with a 500lt pressure vessel so I can control the range easily. It is planned to set it to between 4 and 6bar and the prv set to 3bar. The tank can go to 8 bar if needed Re the SunAmps I did look at two in parallel but we only have two bathrooms. I will be using a manifold system feed from the Sunamp so any pressure drop will be down to them. I went for a high flow watersoftener so that should not cause any drops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 We used a radial Hep2O approach and minimised the pipe runs by (i) having our DHW + CH service area manifolds centrally positioned, and (ii) taking a near-as-practical to direct route for the pipe runs. IMO, the only thing that we got wrong was not using 10mm pipe for the HW to the low flow taps -- these 10mm runs hold a ⅓ of the dead water than the 15mm ones. You can see my total lagged pipework in the two earlier photos. My building supplier was @RandAbuild who had a couple lengths left over and that was all I needed. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 2 minutes ago, dogman said: I went for a high flow watersoftener so that should not cause any drops. Ditto. The Harvey model that @JSHarris and I use is pretty much the top of their range, but it would still struggle with two showers and the kitchen tap running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted November 10, 2017 Author Share Posted November 10, 2017 i have gone for a monarch. it claims to be 78lpm max Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 3 hours ago, jack said: Okay, thanks very much Jeremy. As mentioned in a recent pm, lunch is on me at some point in the near future. At this rate it'll have to be somewhere Michelin starred! What goes around, comes around. My philosophy in life is that if you try to help others whenever the opportunity arises, then some of those people will go on to help others in a similar way, too, and gradually we'll get to a point where altruism trumps greed. 99% of the time it doesn't take much - like the 5 minutes It took me to dig out that PRedV. I know you will do things like this for others from time to time, and with luck they will go on to do the same for lots more people, so the virtual circle grows. All it takes is for more people to realise that money is not the be all and end all. It's one reason I also strongly support the Freecycle enterprise locally, and also why I'm so depressed by the way that the local recycling centre won't let you take anything away to re-purpose yourself. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeSharp01 Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 4 minutes ago, JSHarris said: the way that the local recycling centre won't let you take anything away to re-purpose yourself. Who us it run by? A few weeks back I was in a centre in Southampton and you could take away stuff they had selected and put in a specific area. People dropping stuff off could drop it directly there I think if they felt it could be re purposed. It was run by a big national group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 (edited) 3 hours ago, dogman said: No please continue looking at PRV anyway. We are on a borehole with a 500lt pressure vessel so I can control the range easily. It is planned to set it to between 4 and 6bar and the prv set to 3bar. The tank can go to 8 bar if needed Re the SunAmps I did look at two in parallel but we only have two bathrooms. I will be using a manifold system feed from the Sunamp so any pressure drop will be down to them. I went for a high flow watersoftener so that should not cause any drops. FWIW, I've found that setting our pump cut in pressure to 3.5 bar and cut off pressure to 4 bar seems optimal. 4 bar is within the pressure rating of both the Harvey softener and the Sunamp PV, and the half a bar pressure differential is not at all noticeable. We have two 300 litre pressure vessels on the pumps side, in parallel (this was just so that they fitted the available space) plus a 100 litre pressure vessel right before the water softener, but with an NRV between the treatment system and the 100 litre vessel. In total we have around 350 litres of stored and pressurised water, plus a bit in the filter tanks. The 300 litres in the two 300 litre pressure vessels is enough to run a backwash cycle on the filter (which is scheduled for between 2am and 3am every 4 days) whilst the 50 litres in the 100 litre pressure vessel provides local reinforcement a metre away from the input to the softener, in an attempt to minimise pressure drops. We also have a manifold system, and it works OK. Both bathrooms, the utility room and the downstairs WC all have a pretty fast hot water response time, maybe ten seconds or so. The greatest delay is the kitchen, which is the longest run, and that's around 20 seconds. Edited November 10, 2017 by JSHarris typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 1 minute ago, MikeSharp01 said: Who us it run by? A few weeks back I was in a centre in Southampton and you could take away stuff they had selected and put in a specific area. People dropping stuff off could drop it directly there I think if they felt it could be re purposed. It was run by a big national group. A contractor employed by the local authority, Hills, but they have just re-let the contract to a company called FCC Environment, and I've not been there since the change. The thing that annoys me is that there is often working, or easily repairable, stuff dumped there, yet they have a policy of refusing to allow anything to be taken off site. The really daft thing is that they actually de-gas freezers on site - I've seen the guys sucking the gas out into a storage tank, with rows of degassed freezers, with their pipes cut, just sat there. I went and asked if I could have the compressor from one and was told that I couldn't, as it was against council policy. A few months later our old freezer packed up, but the compressor was still OK, so I just cut the pipes, allowed it to de-gas and removed the compressor (I wanted it to make a vacuum pump to de-gas mixed resin and play around with vacuum impregnation moulding of some carbon fibre parts). They had no problem accepting my butchered old freezer for scrap, even though I'd allowed the refrigerant to escape to the atmosphere in order to remove the compressor.................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeSharp01 Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 47 minutes ago, JSHarris said: They had no problem accepting my butchered old freezer for scrap, even though I'd allowed the refrigerant to escape to the atmosphere in order to remove the compressor.................... Just let us know which HMP you are residing in and we will organise a visiting rota. Sorry maybe this Suffolk beer I am drinking is getting to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted November 10, 2017 Author Share Posted November 10, 2017 My borehole system is a lot simpler as water quality is good and all I need to do is filter chalk sediment out the supply. That said I have 3 high flow filters in parallel to maintain flow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 10, 2017 Share Posted November 10, 2017 5 hours ago, dogman said: We are on a borehole with a 500lt pressure vessel so I can control the range easily. 1 hour ago, dogman said: That said I have 3 high flow filters in parallel to maintain flow. Out of interest why didn't you just have one water softener between the water filters and the PV? Surely the purpose of the PV is that this acts as the primary accumulator to handle high demand so that the borehole pump can run at a (steady) low rate? There's nothing wrong with storing softened water in the PV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 (edited) 9 hours ago, TerryE said: Out of interest why didn't you just have one water softener between the water filters and the PV? Surely the purpose of the PV is that this acts as the primary accumulator to handle high demand so that the borehole pump can run at a (steady) low rate? There's nothing wrong with storing softened water in the PV. If it's like the Harvey, they it will seriously throw a wobbly if there is any backflow pressure. I did this to ours once, when I had the 100 litre PV on the outlet side and ended up with a house full of very salty water! For some reason, if there is the slightest pressure differential the wrong way across a Harvey, then it just doesn't flush out after a regen cycle and ends up pushing very salty water around the outlet pipework when regen stops. I only found this out when I made a cup of tea and it tasted foul, then checked and found that the water was salty. That's why I re-arranged our system to have all the PVs on the inlet side of the softener, so that no matter what, there would always be the right pressure differential across the Harvey, with the inlet pressure always being higher than the outlet. I have no idea why the Harvey does this, and I didn't bother to do any further checks, as it was pretty easy to just rearrange the pipes. My guess is that I may have been able to fix it with a NRV on the outlet side of the Harvey. As the Harvey works just like all the other water softeners, in terms of the way the valves on a single cylinder operate (they operate in exactly the same order as the ones on our sand/manganese dioxide iron filter - that actually has a water softener control head), then I suspect that the same effect may well occur with other softeners if a PV is fitted on the downstream side of one. Edited November 11, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted November 12, 2017 Author Share Posted November 12, 2017 I have a new toy for the weekend. managed too borrow a FLIR camera to check the walls and roof for areas of cold before i plasterboard Although it was not that cold last night i ran it over the whole of the inside surface looking for cold spots. Good news is that there aren't any and as i suspected (the guy who did our pumped insulation for MBC was spot on and very fussy ) The cold spots are where i suspected plus a few that i can address. The obvious. Unsealed conduit in the walls. MVHR duct Soil pipe The sliding patios are not good but i sort of knew it as they were messed up by the window company. the runner is aluminium and some 4 deg cooler Front doors. Not passive with a U value of 1.4 and outside a window from inside and outside my only concern. this is where the windows meet the timber frame and is the slight 1-2mm gap that we tried to seal with foam. Its an easy fix as the internal window cills need to be lifted up 20mm. so i will run 20mm insulation board along the joint to try and minimise a cold spot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dogman Posted November 12, 2017 Author Share Posted November 12, 2017 As a comparison a single glassed window in a flat next door Upstairs is triple glazed upvc downstairs Victorian single glazing i have left some heaters on tonight and it will be -2 overnight so will have another look tomorrow 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone West Posted November 13, 2017 Share Posted November 13, 2017 It would be interesting to have a repeat of those pictures in five years and maybe ten years time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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