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My underfloor heating


lizzie

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27 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

Yes, that points very strongly to it being for the immersion. Watching the electricity meter should give a hint, too, as the 3 kW or so draw of the immersion should be noticeable on the LED or LCD display thingy which flashes every 1/100th of kWh or so.

 

I was just saying why a timed pump for the tap wasn't quite a loony as @lizzie seemed to think.

 

Lizzie hasn’t confirmed whether switching it off at the CU switches the ‘immersion’ off yet so you may still be right. 

 

The real loony thing however is that someone can install complex heating and MVHR systems and walk away without doing a handover, providing any notes or labelling anything, and then appear to be reticent in returning to address anything. The least they could do is provide some phone support surely. 

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@Ed Davies @newhome @PeterW @Nickfromwales

 

I have the dymo at the ready LOL, I actually bought it way back about March ready for labelling at handover....of couse handovers never happened, I asked and was ignored. or fobbed off and distracted by other problems going on.

 

On the timer pump theory guess it may be possible in some circs but I have a circulation pump here and I know how they work as have had before.  Mine does not operate on time clocks on and off like heating controls it comes on when you turn a tap on whatever time of day and my previous system was the same. I cant imagine having a pump on a tap that would only come on between certain hours what on earth would be the point in it.

 

The timer PeterW and newhome identified is without doubt an immersion timer, as far as I can tell it has never been set up and why would it my hot water is heated by the gas boiler immersion is only a back up (building regs perhaps) and immersion would very likely never be switched on under normal circs hence I am surmising that is why timer not apparently set up.

 

The problem seems to me to be that the immersion has been switched on since install, water came in December so worst case scenario immersion on from December to yesterday continuously.  It explains electricity bills so high the company refused my readings and said a meter test would be necessary.........I have had to monitor electricity consumption and report back, its pretty constant.

 

Because of this high electricity useage I wondered if there was an immersion and if it was on so I asked the electrician if I had one and if so where was the switch.  He pointed me at what we now know is the switch that controls the motorised valves and me switching it off on his instruction thinking it was immersion knocked the heating out.

 

Electrician is still adamant (without coming and looking) that it is immersion switch not heating valves, have proved him wrong but I am none the wiser about where the immersion switch is and Im not going to start switching random things off I have automated lighting and god knows what I might mess up so immersion is off at trip on CU and no doubt when i check electricity consumption that will have dropped too. Be interesting to see where immersion switch actually is and how electrician deals with having told me quite stroppily I am wrong when he is shown to be wrong when he shows up.  God help us if he doesnt know what is wired where!!

 

The temperature in the plant room is noticably lower, the tank does not feel boiling hot all the time either, it feels more normal.

 

I agree with you  to install such sytems and not give the user any idea how to use them is very bad, even just marking up switches would have been a help and as you say not coming back is also not good. The electrician and UFH/MVHR installer seemed to have fallen out with each other during the job as did the electrician and the alarm company (who are lovely and did exactly what I wanted on time and at the exact price in their quote.....a rare occurance on this build!) Prima Donna’s why did I end up with them all LOL

 

Hopefully electrician will show in next few days and I will chase MVHR/UFH installer again. I have been on to suppliers and purchased replacements for those missing bits....they are actuators on the flow valves......hopefully installer will fit them when he eventually shows up.

 

I suspect because they all fell out with the erstwhile PM I have suffered from a knock on effect. Not right or fair but I cant think of any other explanarion. I paid them all on the nail never queried anything even though it was always more than their quotes (penalised for messing about by PM usually). I should have been tougher and not paid until they did a proper handover.  All water under now I just want to get the place running as it should and never have to ask them to come again.............

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Is it a funny camera angle, or has that wiring centre under the mystery switch had the expansion vessel placed so close you can't get the lid off?

 

Was going to say to whip the lid off WITH THE MAINS OFF and post a pic.

Edited by Onoff
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13 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Is it a funny camera angle, or has that wiring centre under the mystery switch had the expansion vessel placed so close you can't get the lid off?

 

Was going to say to whip the lid off WITH THE MAINS OFF and post a pic.

Rushes to plant room in a panic........phew its the camera angle!

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4 minutes ago, lizzie said:

Rushes to plant room in a panic........phew its the camera angle!

 

Only said it to see you run! :) Does access appear reasonable for someone with a screwdriver?

 

If you can safely do it then a clear shot with your the top off would be good. I can see the cables going off to the two valves...I think!

 

 

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6 minutes ago, newhome said:

 

Whip the top off then ?

 

What’s this switch for? The one under the ‘immersion clock’. 

 

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+1. Follow that white cable that goes off to the left and behind the vertical copper pipe.

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I think it is almost certainly the immersion, if you have a smart meter or one of those dongles the electricity companies sometimes send out to track electricity usage you could immediately see the 3kW power usage that @Ed Davies mentions above. Even just watching the meter tick up faster which show you it was on.

 

Have you been using an unexpectedly large amount of electricity? Hopefully it hasn't actually been using the immersion to heat your hot water.

 

The plumber would not have installed a circulating hot water system without you specifying it, they are quite unusual and usually only in very large houses.

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@AliG I dont know I didnt do the spec PM did it with installer.  I just said I wanted good hot water supply, no dribbling taps. We are single story and plant room a long way from bathrooms so maybe thats why.  I dont know I just accepted what they both told me was the necessary spec for my house.

 

........hiding in corner feeeling stupid again..........

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8 minutes ago, lizzie said:

........hiding in corner feeeling stupid again..........

 

Come out of the corner. You got this, and things are falling into place. No one can have felt more of an idiot than me with my system so you don’t have possession of the stupid badge cos I’ve still got it ?

 

 

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Sorry the note I did to accompany those photos seems to have disappeared.

 

There are three white cables coming from the electric box on the back of the hot water tank, they go into trunking.  I believe 2 of them emerge at that immersion heater timer, no clue on third one........

 

The cable that come from unknown switch below immersion clock goes into boiler, there it stops.  There is a separate white cable that comes out of the boiler and goes up to the secondary circulating pump (mounted upside down) on the pipe next to the boiler.  This pump lights up when boiler in use.  Could the third white cable be in this switch?

 

The three black cables that go into the box next to the (what we now know to be) the motorised valve switch....2 of them go up the motorised valves 1 & 2 and these clearly run the manifolds for UFH. The third black cable goes to what looks like a different motorised valve on the copper pipe low down next to tank.  In the pic you can just see the bottom of the green  circulating pump mounted above.

 

What I did not realise until earlier was that the unknown switch does have some bearing on the immersion timer, I didnt notice yesterday but as well as switching off the boiler and the secondary circulating pump it is connected to the immersion timer.  The programme display icon (very small) goes off when switch off.  The clock display remain on which is what threw me.

 

I have worked out from the invoices what those various pumps are - I claim no knowledge beyond the description on the invoice.

 

 

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There are supposed to be labels on damned near everything now, so why the electrician who wired it didn't label it I don't know.  There's also supposed to be a description or diagram of the whole installation somewhere by the consumer unit, although that's a rule that's more often than not ignored.

 

I spent ages going around labeling stuff, so every switch and box has a label on letting anyone who looks at it know what it does.  It should be standard practice, especially as labeling machines are pretty cheap and it's a lot easier to label stuff as you go, rather than do it all at the end when you may well have forgotten what some of the things do, or connect to.

 

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2 minutes ago, lizzie said:

I think a need an independent plumber and electrician to come and look over the whole thing make sure its ok and tell how it bloody well works!

 

Sorry just so frustrated with it all.

 

If it make you feel better go and have a read through my thread. That one makes your system seem like a walk in the park. I don't think there was a single thing right with it!! 

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5 minutes ago, lizzie said:

@JSHarris I so agree!

 

As an example, this is our heating and hot water control box, with labels on every relay and LEDs on them so anyone can see at a glance what's on and what's off.  Under the centre blanking strip there are three connections from the thermostats, so when the lid's off anyone can see which connection goes where:

 

2015557696_Wiringcentre1.thumb.JPG.6817b63069a0b5bb484d5f97de118e4c.JPG

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13 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

As an example, this is our heating and hot water control box, with labels on every relay and LEDs on them so anyone can see at a glance what's on and what's off.  Under the centre blanking strip there are three connections from the thermostats, so when the lid's off anyone can see which connection goes where:

 

2015557696_Wiringcentre1.thumb.JPG.6817b63069a0b5bb484d5f97de118e4c.JPG

A thing of beauty... I am hugely envious

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For my building warrant application the house designer included boiler-plate text like the following:

 

heat-inst.png.5988da9301a14cdc4c80b88efa90dd3f.png

 

presumably because building control would whine if something of the sort wasn't there. So perhaps the failure to document isn't just a personnel/contractual matter but also a building regs matter.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

For my building warrant application the house designer included boiler-plate text like the following:

 

heat-inst.png.5988da9301a14cdc4c80b88efa90dd3f.png

 

presumably because building control would whine if something of the sort wasn't there. So perhaps the failure to document isn't just a personnel/contractual matter but also a building regs matter.

 

 

 

I don’t think you were here when my nightmare heating thread started. Mine got signed off without any labelling, instructions and without anyone checking it. Most of it didn’t work and the UFH in the extension wasn’t even connected up until @Nickfromwales and @PeterW came up to fix it. 

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