newhome Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 13 minutes ago, PeterW said: Oooh as you have the screwdrivers out.. any chance of taking the cover off one of the UH1 UFH units and posting a couple of pics of the inside ..? Yeah, will do so tomorrow assuming one of the 51 new screwdrivers fits I’ll not electrocute myself I assume? I didn’t need to unscrew the immersion cover as I keep it unscrewed as it was a pain in the arse keep having to take it off when the bloody thing tripped out. The last boiler fixer (not cock job) said that he reset the temps to stop it tripping out. I’ve not used it since so can’t say whether it’s working better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 Here’s one from eBay. I assume mine is the same but I will open it tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 It’s more to see what is and isn’t connected ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 1 minute ago, PeterW said: It’s more to see what is and isn’t connected ... Ah ok. Will sort tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 2 hours ago, PeterW said: @Nickfromwales I think it’s piped wrong.... The schematic you posted shows multiple heat sources to a single heat bank. The top source on the picture is of a gas boiler, not an electric boiler on this storage tariff. It would explain why the boiler shuts down so quick too. If it is putting the full 24Kw into the top 25% of the tank, then as soon as it gets down to the top stat it’s cutting out - 75% of the tank is still cold or cool. The electric boiler needs to be piped as per the pellet boiler as then it will heat the whole tank and hence act as a buffer for the time that the E2000 is not available. I can’t see where the solar circuit is attached but I bet it’s near the top too - there is no way you can thermosyphon that much heat into a tank that size as it will stratify. Chapter two The reason ive been silent this eve is that ive been studying this beast so I can answer more definitively. 'Tis a mysterious device of many guises.... If you really dig into the MI's ( manufacturers installation instructions ), ALL of them, it gives addendum's for the various configurations and alterations which you should be making according to heat source / space heating etc. So.... For starters we know that the cylinder stats do zilch, thanks to cock guy, so the above statement is right, but for the wrong reasons. The TS has 3 cylinder stats which I thought I understood, but I got a bum steer off their own tech guys so I went it alone instead, finding out why and where and how many there should actually be. So.... The lowest stat should be used to control a heat dump which basically brings on the space heating pump if the TS ever gets to too high a temp, so prob set to around 70oC. The middle stat "can" be used in tandem with the upper stat for 'buffering' heat into the TS. The top would be boiler on, and the bottom would be boiler off. Thats iirc supposed to give longer burn times so maybe better suited to pellet or oil. Not suited to this setup, with electricity and off peak in the picture so we move on... Middle stat should be 'full heat' aka winter mode, and the upper stat should be 'partial heat' aka summer mode / hot water only. These are more commonly seen / understood as 'hot water' or 'heating and hot water' on conventional controllers with say gas boilers with hot water cylinders. The MI's also state that you can locate these stats in different places by moving the stat pockets around according to the end application, so again its a problem as this has clearly been fully loaded to deal with a wood burning stove / solid fuel heat source in the picture, which it was never intended to have. 2 hours ago, PeterW said: If it is putting the full 24Kw into the top 25% of the tank, then as soon as it gets down to the top stat it’s cutting out - 75% of the tank is still cold or cool. Exactly what its supposed to do, when in hot water / summer mode. Just enough DHW to fill a bath or have 2 showers etc according to the MI's. Space heating cannot be drawn when in summer mode, so the controller that selects that must purposely kill the space heating too. The cylinder stats control the boiler and nothing else. Simple. You select 'summer mode' bringing the system out of 'holiday mode' aka 'standby', and then the upper cylinder stat calls for the boiler to heat the TS upper portion until satisfied. Bingo bingo. Likewise with the middle stat, for 'winter mode', but with the full heat. Bingo bango2. Selecting winter mode will also then lift the kill on the space heating and if there are any rooms stats wanting heat, the relevant pump/s will turn on, as commanded by the wiring centres, and heat will be drawn from the TS as its being injected by the boiler. Eventually the boiler will catch up with / match demand, eg the rooms get up to temp and start sending warmer water back to the TS return, and the TS will eventually satisfy the middle stat and the boiler will go off until the stat next calls for heat. Good news is the boiler will start to modulate as the need for heat is reduced. The next thing is how to get the heat into the TS. The flow into the TS is direct from the boiler PHE, but the return is via a TMV with connections to the mid/upper, ( for super fast heating of the upper section in summer mode as thats where DHW sucks heat from ), and then when the upper section is warmed sufficiently the blending valve then starts drawing cool water from the bottom of the TS so as to blend down the return temperature. Pay attention, this is the important bit. That blending valve is there to keep the return temp to the boiler at around 50-55oC to make the most of a condensing gas boiler. We dont have one here so another over-complicated trinket for the bin IMO. The boiler return should be only connected to the lower return tapping, and the other one that that TMV is connected to should be capped off. Note that the lower return tapping should be above the ST coil to maximise ST input. The ST coil is right at the bottom BTW as its likely to be, on average, the lowest heating input medium so is of best use when injected into the coldest part of the TS. They got that bit right. Or........the posh 'NFW' option..... The return tappings ( upper and lower ) could be via 2-port zone valves. The upper one opened by summer mode, and the lower one opened by winter mode. IMO what they should have offered in the factory for a non gas boiler installation. That ensures that the TS is using the minimum amount of energy in summer mode. For winter mode, even if no space heating is calling for heat so just the boiler and TS cycling, the lower cylinder stat will always try to fully charge the TS from tip to toe, so you will then have stored energy for the 2 hour no-E2000 input times. The PHE needs to go, as it think its cream knackered anyway. As we've had mention of the boiler circuit being full of crud its safe to assume that crud has become lodged in the narrow water-ways of the PHE, thus reducing massively its ability to transfer heat fro the boiler to the TS. I will speak to the boiler manufacturer tomorrow, if they pick up, to see if it can be converted to run on the open pipe gravity feed from the TS F&E tank, as that would mean we could do away with the PHE and additional pump altogether. It would hopefully just involve bridging the low pressure switch so the boiler ignores the low ( prob ~0.8 bar ) that it'll see if the F&E is high upstairs. Im assuming the F&E tank is upstairs as the 1st floor UFH is connected to the same body of water. That would get heat from the boiler screaming into the TS with nothing in the way and should massively decrease the reheat ( aka recovery ) times. After all that bollocks, we should be simpler, faster, way more efficient and have cut a good bit of chaff away from the wheat. 2 hours ago, PeterW said: The electric boiler needs to be piped as per the pellet boiler as then it will heat the whole tank and hence act as a buffer for the time that the E2000 is not available. You cant do that as the pellet flow goes in too low. In summer mode the flow MUST go in at the top where the DHW PHE feed is drawn from, otherwise your over-heating the TS in summer just to get DHW. On electric its important to make this as efficient as possible. The rest is just down to wiring and commissioning. A LOT to do with that as I find its just usually better to pull all the wiring completely off, put the radio on, and rewire the thing from scratch. Fault finding and working out what cock did would take longer than rewiring it. Enjoy! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 Wow, that’s awesome! How on earth was the spec done in the first place I wonder? They knew what boiler / tariff / solar we were having. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 7 hours ago, newhome said: Doesn’t it need to heat up a great wad of water in the TS hence the time it takes? That much energy would heat 200 lt of water by 39°C. So if your TS was at 25°C, it should end up at 64°C after 3 hours, and that would be enough for about 3 baths of water. I get a bath out of about 1.5 kWh, a shower about a third of that. My DHW cylinder is 200 lt and rarely goes below 30°C and I limit the upper temperature to 50°C. I think there is a lot of energy leaking out of your system somewhere. When you get the IR thermometer, see if you can point it at the solar thermal collector at night (bit hard I know). Be worth eliminating that part of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Triassic Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 (edited) The one thing I’m not clear about is, has the TS and all the associated heat sources, boiler and solar panels and all the outlets to UFH been plumbed correctly? Ie. Is the solar thermal using the correct coils as per the manufacturers diagrams? Do the UFH feed and return leave and join in the right places? Also, how many pumps are there in this system and are they all required, if one of these pumps is seized or plumping against a closed valve or controller this could be part of the overall problem. Edited February 24, 2018 by Triassic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 36 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: That much energy would heat 200 lt of water by 39°C. So if your TS was at 25°C, it should end up at 64°C after 3 hours, and that would be enough for about 3 baths of water. I get a bath out of about 1.5 kWh, a shower about a third of that. My DHW cylinder is 200 lt and rarely goes below 30°C and I limit the upper temperature to 50°C. I think there is a lot of energy leaking out of your system somewhere. When you get the IR thermometer, see if you can point it at the solar thermal collector at night (bit hard I know). Be worth eliminating that part of it. Unless there is mixing within the thermal store, which seems quite possible, having read through @Nickfromwales description of it. In that case the hot portion at the top might quickly be diluted by the large cool portion at the bottom, so cooling the whole tank down pretty quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 4 minutes ago, JSHarris said: Unless there is mixing within the thermal store Yes, but it is still 9 kWh being pumped in and only 1 shower taken. I seem to remember that the TS was 200 lt, is that right? And also read on here that it can drop by 20°C in a few hours, which seems ridiculous. Really about time that 'heating engineers' separated space heating and DHW as standard, combining the two is not good in my opinion. This will become more important as we shift over to electrical heating, though we access to so much natural gas that it is not going to happen that fast. Could just set up this system to heat the house and put in a Sunamp for the DHW . Take down the ST and replace it with PV. Not the cheapest option, but if it is burning though 9 kWh a day of electricity to get a shower is costly too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 1 minute ago, SteamyTea said: Yes, but it is still 9 kWh being pumped in and only 1 shower taken. I seem to remember that the TS was 200 lt, is that right? And also read on here that it can drop by 20°C in a few hours, which seems ridiculous. Really about time that 'heating engineers' separated space heating and DHW as standard, combining the two is not good in my opinion. This will become more important as we shift over to electrical heating, though we access to so much natural gas that it is not going to happen that fast. Could just set up this system to heat the house and put in a Sunamp for the DHW . Take down the ST and replace it with PV. Not the cheapest option, but if it is burning though 9 kWh a day of electricity to get a shower is costly too. I agree, but my experience with one showed that thermal store losses can be quite high, without having the complexity of heating pipes connected to them. Add in a lot of connected pipes that may not be well insulated and I think it's quite likely that a lot of heat could be lost from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 TS is 450 litres - it’s required to be large to act as a storage buffer for the E2000 boiler tariff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 Ah, then the 3 hours is not so odd. I don't know where I got the 200 lt figure from. That would raise the temp by 17°C, so if it started at 30°C, would be about right for a shower. (that does assume that the whole store is heated evenly, which is not the case) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeSharp01 Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 (edited) THIS POST GOT WELL OUT OF SYNC BUT I WILL LEAVE IT NONE THE LESS. Sorry - needed to sleep - but yes it does have to heat up a large amount of water but there is no waste and you may have hit the nail on the head of how your system is configured as the boiler only heats the top of the tank so it should be quick to provide heat at the top of the tank for high grade heat for showers / baths etc while the rest of the tank can run at a lower temperature to drive the UFH. @PeterW talked about stratification - this is where the tank can hold water at different temperatures up the tank in 1,2,3 or more (depending on tank size) layers. You might expect convection to sort this for you but in fact you get stratification. It may be that the plan included this phenomena so you heat the top for showers with the boiler and allow the solar system to do the rest. As, in all your copious paperwork, I have not spotted any notes on the design goals we may never know. Lets wait and get a set of temperatures from a single source (thermometer) that can be compared and then we will know, as today is a sunny day we may even get an indication of how well the solar is working. You probably need to label, actually or in your head, the various target points and pop the results in a spreadsheet, then take the readings at each target at intervals which would allow you to plot what is happening across the system. Edited February 24, 2018 by MikeSharp01 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterW Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 6 hours ago, Nickfromwales said: The PHE needs to go, as it think its cream knackered anyway. As we've had mention of the boiler circuit being full of crud its safe to assume that crud has become lodged in the narrow water-ways of the PHE, thus reducing massively its ability to transfer heat fro the boiler to the TS. Replacing the PHE isn’t complex and they can be had for £100 or so I reckon you are more likely to get crud from the tank, the UFH and the system into the boiler without it - boiler has a Y strainer that needs updating to a Magnaclean or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 10 hours ago, SteamyTea said: You will, it is the crack cocaine of building technology I very much doubt it! Hubby was the infrastructure addict, I like to switch something on and it works! There is a legacy of crap here. Like spaghetti junction of wires in a cupboard. And this bloody thing taking up half the garage. WTF! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 2 hours ago, SteamyTea said: I think there is a lot of energy leaking out of your system somewhere. When you get the IR thermometer, see if you can point it at the solar thermal collector at night (bit hard I know). Be worth eliminating that part of it. I assume you mean point it at the roof? It would have to be some bit of kit to have that range surely? And wouldn't the DeltaSol thing tell me the temperature anyway? It said 7 degrees when I got up. now 10 degrees. It's sunny out (but cold) so should get hotter later. I'm not sure whether the thermometer will arrive today. They've sent it by Royal Mail who are unreliable here and won't leave anything if I'm out, and I need to go out later. This is when Amazon Prime doesn't rock. If it's sent DPD they are excellent and know where to leave stuff. Unfortunately you can't dictate the carrier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 @PeterW here are the Heatmiser photos. It’s manifold 3 upstairs, only so I don’t have to crawl round in a cupboard downstairs. I can do if you need a downstairs photo though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 (edited) Only just started to read this and aren't understanding most of it the being the monkey see monkey do sort! What I do know from when I was mucking around with homemade ST panels is there can be an issue whereby the panel acts as a radiator at night. This from the CAT book I have from years ago: "The pump is positioned between the collector and pre heat cylinder after the check valve which is there to stop water from the cylinder being drawn back up at night when the panel is cold and cooling off all your nice hot water. This is most likely to happen if your pipes are large bore such as 22mm..." Edited February 24, 2018 by Onoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 48 minutes ago, newhome said: And this bloody thing taking up half the garage. WTF! You have not read much else on here, you have just about invited half of Buildhub around!! Can it be reprogrammed to be a boat. 41 minutes ago, newhome said: I assume you mean point it at the roof? You have to try and get the manifold or a pipe, not the roof in general because of what @Onoff says. My IR thermometer is pretty good over a distance, I scare animals and small children away with it at night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 I take back everything I said about Royal Mail . It's here so let the pointing commence ........ So the pumps ....... The green down one is 43 The green up one I burnt my hand on is 98 (maybe I is not such a wimp ) The silver upside down one is 63. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 An IR camera shot would be better at night? What about pointing the IR laser thermometer at the ST pipes that come through the loft in the roof? You almost want some cheap as thermal probe thermometers you can strap on and leave. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: You have not read much else on here, you have just about invited half of Buildhub around!! Can it be reprogrammed to be a boat. It's not set up. Terry imported it from Australia (don't ask how much that cost to ship and customs!) it was fork lifted into the garage and it's been there ever since. It took an age to come on a boat and then it arrived and he was too sick to to anything with it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newhome Posted February 24, 2018 Author Share Posted February 24, 2018 Just now, Onoff said: What about pointing the IR laser thermometer at the ST pipes that come through the loft in the roof? Don't think I can get to them. The loft hatch is one side of the house and the solar panels the other, and there is no way I'm going up in the loft I'm afraid! I is a wimp in that scenario!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 24, 2018 Share Posted February 24, 2018 I am off out for a coffee and a look at the sea, as I have been sitting here doing silly things in Excel. I shall return and look forward to seeing what is happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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