New build - heat and energy considerations

[Ferdinand]

42 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

Very true.  People who have visited our build have questioned the low level, directional, MVHR terminal in the wall by one side of our bed.  It was specifically located there to gently blow cooler air on her side.  We also have a 6ft wide new bed.  Both are a way to mitigate the migration of the duvet in the middle of the night, as it gets thrown off from her side.  My hope is that the cool air supply plus the larger bed will mean less disturbance to the duvet on my side...

 

My answer to that would be a bed in 2 independently adjustable halves and 2 duvets... So she can have polar bear hide and you can have a bedsheet.

 

I think they are called a Split King.

 

 

[Onoff]

21 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

Ear plugs (I have the same problem - and no, it's not me, either).  Best ones I've found are the Stanley orange foam ones, a pair is OK for about a week (yes, I know they are supposed to be "one use only", but I've never had a problem with them over the past five years or so).

 

What's the technique, wait till she opens her mouth and shove the ear plugs in still in the bag?

[Ferdinand]

2 hours ago, lizzie said:

I cant get my UFH working and after frying all summer am now searching the garage for a fan heater. MVHR keeping it at circa 20 but thats way too cold for me.

 

UFH thermostats show a flame but floor never gets warm on checking the manifolds I find the pipes are cold so there is no hot water coming in from the boiler even though the boiler is firing, hence flame symbol on stats.  DHW is fine so it must be a prob from boiler to manifolds.  The system was commissioned last December, builders were here for months afterwards and I know now fiddled with it all because the house was too hot.  Now I come to use it for the first time and it doesnt work.  Begining to wish i had DG with tricklevents and rads at least I understand that system.

 

 Been waiting two weeks for installer to come back to sort the issues with mvhr - he installed ufh too so if I tell him now no heating will that hurry him up or be ignored...if he doesnt come next week I am going to have to find a plumber to come and look at it all but because I never had a proper handover I dont know what most of it is no doubt I will get the sucking in of the teeth and the which cowboy did this comments and a four figure quote to sort it out. @newhome I understand your frustration with it all. 

 

Start a thread and the forum will talk you through what you normally adjust, and that might do it.

 

It helped me a great deal a at the start of this year .. I did not have my ufh circulating pump set properly so heat was not getting round Far enough.

[Nickfromwales]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Start a thread and the forum will talk you through what you normally adjust, and that might do it.

 

It helped me a great deal a at the start of this year .. I did not have my ufh circulating pump set properly so heat was not getting round Far enough.

+1. 

@lizzie, get typing and snapping as it’s probably summat daft.

 

[newhome]

49 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

Best ones I've found are the Stanley orange foam ones

 

I prefer the Howard Leight Laser Lite ones. Always take a pair with me when staying in a hotel in case I get noisy neighbours.

[Nickfromwales]

13 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

I prefer the Howard Leight Laser Lite ones. Always take a pair with me when staying in a hotel in case I get noisy neighbours.

I just get bladdered and the place can burn down around me ???

[ProDave]

5 hours ago, lizzie said:

I cant get my UFH working and after frying all summer am now searching the garage for a fan heater. MVHR keeping it at circa 20 but thats way too cold for me.

You are obviously not in  the "hot flush" phase then. 

[lizzie]

@ProDave been there done that thank you!?

[AliG]

I have set the thermostats at 21C, seeing if I can get away with that or have to go to 22.

[Hastings]

On 14/09/2018 at 16:41, ProDave said:

Old house, like this one has a conventional central heating time switch to set the on and off times, and when it's on each room has it's own room stat.....

 

A lot of systems that I wire for people have "set back" rather than off.  I always believe that is to stop a house getting too cold over night so it does not take too long to warm up in the morning.  But given the very long time constant of our house I see that as completely pointless.

 

When I asked Uponor who supplied our (old house, listed cottage, single-glazing, ground floor insulation with UFH, rads upstairs, loft insulation, oil condensing boiler) UFH system controller why there is only "set back" and no way to time heating to OFF, they insisted it was more efficient to lower the night time temp a bit rather than turn it off completely.

I find this very hard to believe. Can someone please confirm/explain?

[ProDave]

Set back is more about how long it takes UFH to heat up, so by not allowing to room to get too cold, it won't take so long to warm up again.

 

In our new well insulated house if I implemented set back, you could probably measure it in days before the set back temperature brought the UFH on again. It certainly would not over night.

[Nickfromwales]

1 hour ago, Hastings said:

 

When I asked Uponor who supplied our (old house, listed cottage, single-glazing, ground floor insulation with UFH, rads upstairs, loft insulation, oil condensing boiler) UFH system controller why there is only "set back" and no way to time heating to OFF, they insisted it was more efficient to lower the night time temp a bit rather than turn it off completely.

I find this very hard to believe. Can someone please confirm/explain?

You set the setback temp ( actually it’s referred to as nighttime / unoccupied “economy” temp ( aka ‘off’ ) and daytime “comfort” temp ( aka ‘on’ ) )  to the lowest temp you can accept the house falling to at night.

youd probably be best setting it to 16oC and most of the year it’ll likely not come on much anyway. 

The generic ‘economical’ advice you got is just knee-jerk I-can’t-be-bothered-to-go-into-detail reply. Pretty much the norm. 

[Jeremy Harris]

Our old house (1980's bungalow, with some improvements to insulation and airtightness) just had a programmable thermostat that was set exactly as @Nickfromwales has said, 16 deg C as the unoccupied/nightitme temperature, 20 to 21 deg C for the occupied temperature.  Worked OK because that house only took an hour or so to heat up, and cooled down almost as quickly when the heating went off.  I never turned the heating off in summer, as the thermostat settings meant it just didn't come on most of the time then.

 

As @ProDave has mentioned, such a system wouldn't work for our new house, which like his takes days to cool down and many hours to heat up.

[Hastings]

I can't set a particular temperature at all. The only temp control is a via physical dial (marked with lines but no numbers for degrees C) on the thermostat in each of the two rooms that has the UFH. I then hang a thermometer by the thermostat to discover what I have set it to. There is a progammable timer that controls both zones and lets me set 'Comfort' or 'Economy' periods, never 'Off', for each room.

 

In the absence of any information confirming that I am saving energy by leaving the downstairs heating on 24/7 I think I will go ahead and try and modify the controls.

 

I wondered about just installing a switch that I can time, that simply interrupts the power to the thermostat, that would effectively create an 'Off' period for the night.

[Jeremy Harris]

I fitted a battery powered programmable room thermostat to the heating system at our old house.  It was pretty straightforward to just swap the old dial-type thermostat for the programmable thermostat, but it did mean terminating the now unused neutral in the back box, as the old dial thermostat had a small heating element to speed it up.

 

If you replaced your room stats with these, you could then just leave the main programmer on all the time (sound like it may be like this anyway) and you could programme temperatures and times, including off periods, using the programmable room stats.  A search for "programmable room thermostat" will throw up lots of these, usually around £50 each for a reasonable one.

[Hastings]

Thanks, that sounds ideal.

I just removed  the cover of one of the room thermostats and discovered more controls that look like they might help with the issue but I can't understand what they do exactly. The lowest pot (purple POT 1) is the main temp control.

Any ideas please?

Edited February 4, 2019 by Hastings

[ProDave]

Is there a manufacturers name and model number on that thermostat?  Googling DT-37 etc does not help much.

[Hastings]

Uponor T-37

3108

1000536 T-37

IP20 T50

 

'FLOOR' pot Seems to be to do with limiting temps in the floor if a suitable sensor is fitted in the floor.

'ROOM' looks interesting.

 

All I can find from the manufacturer is:
 

Quote

 

"24V Wired Room Controls...

T-37

The setting range can be limited mechanically by adjusting pins under the thermostat dial. A floor sensor can be wired to the thermostat which will give the thermostat the ability to control the minimum or maximum floor temperature."

 

 

Edited February 4, 2019 by Hastings
added info

[ProDave]

The manual for the Upnor system is here https://www.uponor.gr/-/media/country-specific/uponor_com/download-centre/indoor_climate/underfloor-heating/brochures/mi-control-system-controller.pdf?v=00980da3-16c5-40ed-ac3d-a8bebbf3c6af

 

That thermostat has provision for a floor temperature sensor that you don't appear to have so the floor setting will do nothing.

[Hastings]

Thank you @ProDave. Scouring a more extensive installation manual I have found that there was a T-38 thermostat that allowed setting both Comfort and Economy temps but these aren't available any longer. Why didn't they tell me about that one a few years back when I asked for a solution? I will contact the manufacturer again in case there is a current unit that will work with my system. 

 

On 04/02/2019 at 13:35, JSHarris said:

I fitted a battery powered programmable room thermostat to the heating system at our old house.  It was pretty straightforward to just swap the old dial-type thermostat for the programmable thermostat, but it did mean terminating the now unused neutral in the back box, as the old dial thermostat had a small heating element to speed it up.

 

If you replaced your room stats with these, you could then just leave the main programmer on all the time (sound like it may be like this anyway) and you could programme temperatures and times, including off periods, using the programmable room stats.  A search for "programmable room thermostat" will throw up lots of these, usually around £50 each for a reasonable one.

Thanks. Might well be my best option.