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My Nightmare Heating System


newhome

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That's good as 'the runs' only means one thing to me :o and that's a bit crap xD.

 

Need to sleep as have to be up at 5 ugh. Thanks so much to everyone for the help so far. Will try to reply to anything else once I'm home from work tomorrow. 

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When you say picture of the boiler isn’t that in one of the first photos? Just a big white cover over all the working bits tho. 

 

Will take some more photos of anything else not in photos already and post tomorrow.  

 

 

 

 

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Adding a quick note to say that the guy who came out to fix the boiler in Nov when it stopped working turned the heating down to 50. It was at this point that there wasn’t enough hot water to fill a bath enough etc. It was always set at 60 before and at least provided enough hot water to take a decent bath. I don’t know how to turn it up though. 

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5 minutes ago, newhome said:

Adding a quick note to say that the guy who came out to fix the boiler in Nov when it stopped working turned the heating down to 50. It was at this point that there wasn’t enough hot water to fill a bath enough etc. It was always set at 60 before and at least provided enough hot water to take a decent bath. I don’t know how to turn it up though. 

Do you mean he turned the BOILER down? The HEATING would be turned down on the room thermostats. 

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If the boiler flow is set too low then here is the boiler manual which should show you how to raise the flow temperature back to 60 degrees. Personally id set it for at least 65. That way you should get much better hot water performance. If you check that and the boiler is already set higher than 50, then we need to look at the TS cylinder thermostat which will have a temperature setting on it. If your going to tweak anything on the cylinder, make a note of what it is set to before adjusting it, or better still, take a pic and ask before you tweak. 

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Adding bits as I find them, for the collective view. 

Some manufacturer website excerpts :

 

The protection system on the Xcel works on the basis that the heat can circulate from the wood burner to the Heat Bank naturally using thermo-syphon (gravity) circulation. The Xcel is fitted with a heat exchanger in the top, and if the temperature of the water in the store ever goes over 95°C then a mechanical valve opens up to allow cold mains water to pass through the heat exchanger and out to drain, cooling down the stored water as it does so.  The heat exchanger can extract over 12kW of heat and as such is suitable for all types of wood burner, and in many instances is the only way that the latest building regulations (now covering vented systems) can be met when using a wood burner.

 

So that explains why theres a lot of additional pipework at the upper portion of the TS. Im guessing that the stainless corrugated hose that brings that reference temp to the mechanical quenching valve. Strange that they specified such a cylinder when they knew it wouldn't be serviced by a woodburning stove :/ 

 

It is also worth pointing out that there are two other forms of overheat protection built into Xcel Heat Bank systems.  The first is an overheat thermostat that turns on the central heating when the store reaches 90°C. This protection is the normal day-to-day protection and requires power supplies to be on, and pumps to be functional.  The other form of protection is the system is open vented.  Whatever happens and if ever the system does boil, you have peace of mind that the vent pipe will protect the system from catastrophic failure.

 

So with the system being void of a woodburner, this function should never kick in. 

 

Still trawling to find a cylinder schematic that I can see when zoomed in. Lots available but none helping yet.

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I had the boiler switched up as high as it could go at one stage but the Electric Heating Company man told me that I was cooking it and to turn it down. No matter how high the boiler was turned up the temp on one of the dials on the thermal store never seemed to get above 50-60 tho. 

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8 minutes ago, newhome said:

I had the boiler switched up as high as it could go at one stage but the Electric Heating Company man told me that I was cooking it and to turn it down. No matter how high the boiler was turned up the temp on one of the dials on the thermal store never seemed to get above 50-60 tho. 

Strange as the boiler should be sufficient to heat that TS up to the flow (set) temp of the boiler. The pic shows the cylinder stat ( the creamy white box under the round black immersion heater ) set to over 75oC. 

IMG_0146.jpg

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That dial showing 50 never goes above 50 now. It always stops at 50 and never rises. When the water was hotter it used to stop at 60. I will try turning the boiler up and see if that has any effect. 

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@newhome

 

How big is the Thermal Store i.e. The big water tank? IF you do not know the model a measurement of the height and diameter will give us an idea since they are  listed here.

 

WHen we have helped you get the system at least talking to itself it would probably be useful to talk about things like the heat loss of your house. Just parking this question here for later:

 

The Electric Boiler is a Fusion 24kW model from the invoice. Is that big enough for a 350sqm house with 6 (I think I read) showers and bathrooms?

 

And a note to take care with eg posting your address or road in a picture of an invoice or similar inadvertently. IT is easy to do by mistake. They are easy to redact and we can point you at software if necessary to do it.

 

This is not my subject so I will be mainly keeping quiet.

 

Ferdinand

Edited by Ferdinand
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I think the thermal store is listed in one of the invoices I posted? 475l springs to mind. 

 

I thought that I had removed my address from everything? If I haven’t can you let me know what one it’s still showing in please and I’ll amend. I couldn’t find anything to redact easily so just scrubbed out my address pretty roughly using a tool not meant for that. 

 

My hubby didn’t design the system himself. I can’t remember what company came up with the original design, but he sourced the materials separately to get the best price. I think Wunderfloor designed the layouts for the UFH tracks and I seem to recall that we paid them a fee to do so. 

 

Before he died my hubby talked about sticking a second boiler in there for hot water, possibly a combi boiler, but didn’t get much further with it. Space would be a bit of an issue as the boiler room is pretty full. The electrics are all on the opposite wall, although that isn’t an external wall anyway, and the central vacuum unit is in the middle of the only other external wall. Not that I use that much anyway. I have a cordless Dyson that’s much easier to use ;). Hubby was gadget man and I just like plain and simple (and straightforward) things. 

Edited by newhome
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Just now, newhome said:

I think the thermal store is listed in one of the invoices I posted? 415l springs to mind. 

 

I thought that I had removed my address from everything? If I haven’t can you let me know what one it’s still showing in please and I’ll amend. I couldn’t find anything to redact easily so just scrubbed out my address pretty roughly using a tool not meant for that. 

 

My hubby didn’t design the system himself. I can’t remember what company came up with the original design, but he sourced the materials separately to get the best price. I think Wunderfloor designed the layouts for the UFH tracks and I seem to recall that we paid them a fee to do so. 

 

Before he died my hubby talked about sticking a second boiler in there for hot water, possibly a combi boiler, but didn’t get much further with it. Space would be a bit of an issue as the boiler room is pretty full. The electrics are all on the opposite wall, although that isn’t an external wall anyway, and the central vacuum unit is in the middle of the only other external wall. Not that I use that much anyway. I have a cordless Dyson that’s much easier to use ;). Hubby was gadget man and I just like plain and simple (and straightforward) things. 

 

I haven't noticed an address just the name, but it is something that we mention from time to time just in case :-). Sometimes people eg leave the lat and long in screenshots from Google Maps.

 

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The solar thermal system looks like it is a sealed system which means that there is ALWAYS fluid in the panels on the roof. If the controller for the solar (deltasol thing) has been switched off for any length of time then the fluid in the panels on the roof will have stagnated and probably boiled (the sun is powerful like that). This pushed up the system pressure and triggers the over pressure valve to open and you loose fluid. 

No big deal TBH. the system will need draining, cleaning and recharging with new antifreeze. Hopefully there are no leaks form the overheating, but it's an easy fix really. Scottish Borders is too far for me I'm afraid ? 

 

 

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Last ones. There is not much more in there. A single pipe that goes round almost at floor level and some pipe spaghetti at the end but I’d need to remove all cleaning stuff to get to those for a photo. 

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6851E66F-1AC4-4175-98AA-448E08DADD80.jpeg

7A25B65E-5B7E-4DED-8438-21F4C2C90C72.jpeg

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