Vaillant ashp (my battle with).

[zoothorn]

@-rick- Many thanks again for your suggestions:
 

All taken on board/ redoing the upstairs plasterboard especially etc. Understood. A big job I can't quite plunge into right now, February etc. But food for thought!
 

And @Big Jimbo for the holes / foam idea: this is the most feasable idea, for me, & as I don't neccessarily need these bedrooms warm, only priority is improving the big room below.
 

I'll put a line under this thread, having been a conclusion to my Vaillant battle, now me drifting way off topic.
 

Fantastic help, as per usual.

 

Zoothorn

 

 

 

 

[-rick-]

Been a bit busy today, just looked at the earlier posts. Sorry I clearly got the build up of the upstairs rooms wrong. If it's plasterboard on dabs on dodgy cavity wall then the plasterboard tent point is even more valid.

 

One of the reasons I suggest dealing with those rooms first is if cold air is getting into the structure from there it's going to make heating the downstairs harder. Loads of houses have cold concrete floors and while they may not be the most comfortable they can generally be heated which makes me think that dealing with the floor should be lower down on the priority list until you have the ability to heat better than now.

 

Whatever you do, if the heating system is running off a thermostat located in a warm room or it continues only operating for a few hours a day your house wont be warm unless you do an awful lot of work (bringing the house to modern standards). But, if basic air sealing is done and plasterboard tent possibilities are eliminated then what you have should be able to warm the space if the actually running (ie, the thermostat and timer are all saying 'provide heat'). Can you confirm where the thermostat is? If it needs moving you should start thinking about that and also put some time into working out how to change the schedule.

 

Wish you the best of luck dealing with this.

 

[zoothorn]

19 hours ago, -rick- said:

Been a bit busy today, just looked at the earlier posts. Sorry I clearly got the build up of the upstairs rooms wrong. If it's plasterboard on dabs on dodgy cavity wall then the plasterboard tent point is even more valid.

 

One of the reasons I suggest dealing with those rooms first is if cold air is getting into the structure from there it's going to make heating the downstairs harder. Loads of houses have cold concrete floors and while they may not be the most comfortable they can generally be heated which makes me think that dealing with the floor should be lower down on the priority list until you have the ability to heat better than now.

 

Whatever you do, if the heating system is running off a thermostat located in a warm room or it continues only operating for a few hours a day your house wont be warm unless you do an awful lot of work (bringing the house to modern standards). But, if basic air sealing is done and plasterboard tent possibilities are eliminated then what you have should be able to warm the space if the actually running (ie, the thermostat and timer are all saying 'provide heat'). Can you confirm where the thermostat is? If it needs moving you should start thinking about that and also put some time into working out how to change the schedule.

 

Wish you the best of luck dealing with this.

 

Hi Rick,

 

very valid points- all taken into consideration. If I -could- just block the perimeter loft air from hitting the main room ceiling edges, by injecting foam.. I'd think that's a logical 1st step. Evaluate. If no difference felt, then the whole hog wall renovation of the 2 bedrooms needs to be considered.

 

The tent analogy.. still eludes me! Nevermind. I'll put a line under this cold ingress problem, for now. Nearing winter's end anyway.

 

-----

 

Back to Vaillant success. Or not..

Erm.. spanner in the works: new Monobloc (Arotherm Plus is the exact wording description I'm informed today by them) system faulty already. 3 weeks that took.
 

No HW last evening, no HW this morning. Otherwise rads working as normal. Engineer visit booked Monday. No fault code showing up on little Thermostat controller screen, nor on the 'Interface' box between cylinder & outside HPump box.

 

These things, are SO fallible, you need a lifetime warranty to be able to live normally-reassured with them. I have only a 2 year warranty.. & I'm panicking about the cost of engineer fix visits after the 2 year mark, already now just 3 weeks in.

 

Zoot

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by zoothorn

[-rick-]

1 hour ago, zoothorn said:

very valid points- all taken into consideration. If I -could- just block the perimeter loft air from hitting the main room ceiling edges, by injecting foam.. I'd think that's a logical 1st step. Evaluate. If no difference felt, then the whole hog wall renovation of the 2 bedrooms needs to be considered.

 

I'm no expert on any of this and I know you've been back and forth over this in the past with others who know more than so I doubt I'm saying anything new but my thought is that you need to think hollistically. Trying to warm the sitting room up when the other rooms are cold is a losing proposition. Your loft insulation is above the bedrooms not above the sitting room. If the bedrooms are cold the heat from the sitting room will rise and get lost in the cold bedroom. To put it another way think about stopping the loft air from getting behind the bedroom walls, not just at the junction to the sitting room.

 

2 hours ago, zoothorn said:

The tent analogy.. still eludes me! Nevermind. I'll put a line under this cold ingress problem, for now. Nearing winter's end anyway.

 

Understand, but do try and come back to it during the summer. Try to make this the last year you can see your breath inside during the winter.

 

1 hour ago, zoothorn said:

Erm.. spanner in the works: new Monobloc (Arotherm Plus is the exact wording description I'm informed today by them) system faulty already. 3 weeks that took.
 

No HW last evening, no HW this morning. Otherwise rads working as normal. Engineer visit booked Monday. No fault code showing up on little Thermostat controller screen, nor on the 'Interface' box between cylinder & outside HPump box.

 

Honestly, this sounds like a blessing in disguise. You were left with a system you didn't know how to control. While the engineer is there get them to show you how to adjust the system (temperature set point and the timer).

 

If there are no fault codes the issue is likely fairly simple.

 

1 hour ago, zoothorn said:

These things, are SO fallible, you need a lifetime warranty to be able to live normally-reassured with them. I have only a 2 year warranty.. & I'm panicking about the cost of engineer fix visits after the 2 year mark, already now just 3 weeks in.

 

I think the experience of people on here are that heatpumps are just as reliable if not more so than modern gas boilers (both full of electronics nowdays). Everything can get a fault, especially if something was missed around install, but once setup correctly and as long as serviced regularly it should be fine. My main concern is that if the system is running flat out and not getting any heat into the place then thats way outside it's design parameters and could cause excessive wear. So if you want the heat pump to last then this summer is definitely the time to put some effort into attacking the issues in the house.

 

 

[zoothorn]

2 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

I'm no expert on any of this and I know you've been back and forth over this in the past with others who know more than so I doubt I'm saying anything new but my thought is that you need to think hollistically. Trying to warm the sitting room up when the other rooms are cold is a losing proposition. Your loft insulation is above the bedrooms not above the sitting room. If the bedrooms are cold the heat from the sitting room will rise and get lost in the cold bedroom. To put it another way think about stopping the loft air from getting behind the bedroom walls, not just at the junction to the sitting room.

 

 

Understand, but do try and come back to it during the summer. Try to make this the last year you can see your breath inside during the winter.

 

 

Honestly, this sounds like a blessing in disguise. You were left with a system you didn't know how to control. While the engineer is there get them to show you how to adjust the system (temperature set point and the timer).

 

If there are no fault codes the issue is likely fairly simple.

 

 

I think the experience of people on here are that heatpumps are just as reliable if not more so than modern gas boilers (both full of electronics nowdays). Everything can get a fault, especially if something was missed around install, but once setup correctly and as long as serviced regularly it should be fine. My main concern is that if the system is running flat out and not getting any heat into the place then thats way outside it's design parameters and could cause excessive wear. So if you want the heat pump to last then this summer is definitely the time to put some effort into attacking the issues in the house.

 

 

That's another good point Rick. And another following that too.

 

Yup could be a summer project, to address the upstairs bedrooms. But my sense, that is you do simply get this from living here/ & a few exceptions houses are just 'impossibly cold'.. is the the vast majority of the cold ingress is UP & IN from the walls.
 

Like you point to, I will never be aiming to run the HP on flat out. The rads are hotter now, yes, but the installer (trained up by Vaillant, & used by Vaillant) said this Monobloc os just able to do this higher rads output. So I assume the rads are not running flat out, but just set "medium" currently.

 

I'll only ever be able to use two blocks of heat, 7-9am & 6-8pm. And the setback temp at 12*C. So that setting is surely on the 'easy HPump workload' side of operation, not straining it at all. Honestly, I just never expected, nor do I ever expect, this HeatPump (or any HP) to be able to warm this cottage. It's not designed for it. They wanted to pull out & not install it due to U calculations or whatever the thing's called, which they did here & found it so low as to be totally unsuitable for a HP.

 

But nevertheless, I do expect to be able to get hot water. In the morning, 2 hours after it's meant to have done it's 'HW create period' (as I call it as Ive no other way to describe what on earth to call this 1 hour HW period) of 1 hour 9-10 am. And this is exactly what I had for 3 weeks too & what Ive always had, producing very HW... until it failed to, today.

 

I find them unbelievably complicated. I can't understand a word the engineer, or installer gabbles on about. So damn fast. Not a word. All I can do, is ask the installer to "please just set it to medium/ all of it". And keep my fingers x'd it keeps working. But the number of callouts of the Vaillant engineers, to fix this, fix that, no HW, no water pressure, was so numerous & extensive on the last system (that's totally separate to the noise issue plaguing me).. that I'm just not surprised the new one's failed in 3 weeks.
 

As soon as the winter's out I will turn the damn thing off. I can live with no HW, having a shower (that works- & I installed that too!), & never using any hot tap ever. 
 

Thanks Zoot