Disastrous and disruptive central heating installation; where to now?

[Mike Reed]

In terms of finding the leak, weather looks reasonable after this week's chilliness so perhaps a good time to get someone in. Norwich showing no lower than 5c at night next week and 13 during the day.

Still awaiting contact from the plumber and t.b.h., I'm out of my depth here and have too much on my limited capability plate to take on anything more at present. Vague plan A is to soldier on as is, keeping 16 degrees at night and 17 by day on the 'stat, which keeps the leak at bay. Leak detection is one thing (assuming carpets etc. don't need to be lifted) but digging out concrete, entailing storage of furniture on the patio and complete disruption, is another.

There's also the plumber's suggestion when he came that rads could be piped from upstairs, but I'm not at all sure this is feasible, good though it would be to have above ground pipework.

If you tie the ballvalve up you’re going to effectively drain the heating via the leak. You’ll have to turn the boiler off altogether then and use your immersion heater to heat the hot water if you have one.

That's what I was trying to ascertain; bad news but thanks.

This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it. You really need to stop dithering and get it sorted before your whole system (and new boiler) ends up ruined. I’ve seen cast iron heat exchangers and radiators leaking like a sieve after barely months of fresh oxygenated water running through them.

Again, thanks for the warning. Yes, it IS a mess, and we're living from day to day keeping things going, so the water isn't being replenished at the mo', but I wasn't aware of that potential danger from fresh additional mains water, as happened for a month (unknown to us) from mid December. I could put my hand up to dithering, Ellenor, but dealing with insurance, media and other business (hour-long calls resolving little) does cause problems in prioritising; hence hoping my plumber would put sth in motion or at least contact/advise; it's his installation which (inadvertently) caused this.

You should therefore set the TVRs to be at the temperature you want and have the thermostat in the last room the water flows through. I think.

Depends on outside temp's and sun in our case. I've found myself turning TRVs up, down, off and on more that I've ever done but realise that with present problems and consequent domestic changes full balancing isn't an option. We don't heat rooms not used during the day, e.g.

Tony, Ellenor and Notaclue et al, I shall have to research local leak detection firms as soon as I can get on top of other pressing hassles but at least I can get my wife onto that aspect. Thanks for all the input and warnings etc. At least, the htg system is working well at the lowish temp's we're at, 24/7 and periodic inspections in the loft continue. It has taken some time to establish at what flow rate the leak starts but it now seems pretty consistent.

I'm surprised that the outside temp's can have such an effect on underground pipes, though (witness the leak starting during the December cold snap.

An hour on the phone to my house insurance (due for renewal) yesterday to find out the precise limitations on underground htg. pipes (acc. damage cover) as opposed to service pipes. Diverted to the claims dep't who were not exactly black and white in answers but I was told that detection would/might be covered; ? on digging up and restitution up to me. Not incredibly helpful !

 

[Darth Vader]

The use of a single thermostat even with TVRs on radiators is a crude system and belongs in the past. For heating you just have a single thermostat that calls for heat (i.e. tells the boiler to fire up) and it will do that until the call is dropped. Its just a boiler fire up on/off signal. It may mean that in some homes the TVRs are next to useless as they can only stop the hot water going into a rad and the boiler may turn off long before the required room temp has been reached. Hence the boil and freeze scenario that most of us have experienced.

When I had my Vaillant system installed 2 years ago I had all my rads (19) fitted with ambiSENSE intelligent TVRs. Each TVR can call for heat so each room can be maintained at the temp that you want independently. This can be done via an app on iOS or Android (I also have it running on a PC in a VM). My wife loves the way she can boost or cut the temp in her office from her smart phone when she wants and independently from the rest of the house heating.

ambiSENSE | Smart TRV | Vaillant UK

Its been very good indeed and we have been warm without boiling nor any stuffiness and with lower gas usage to boot. When first installed my wife said "I feel warm but the rads are cold to touch". I have for more than 30 years tried to explain how central heating should work but it did and still does fall on deaf ears. What keeps us warm is infra red radiation and not hot stuffy air. The rooms are warm without any stuffiness because the walls are radiating IR. Black body radiation.

The other vey useful feature is weather compensation. The boiler water flow temperature for the rads is automatically adjusted depending on the outside temperature. The hot water temp is also separately adjustable via the app..

Oh! We also have a 10 years parts and labour guarantee with this new system.

DV

Here is the VR700 app running in an Android VM on a 2012 Mac Mini under Win 11 Pro.

The kitchen rad is turned off but reports a room temp of 18.4 but the thermostat is close to the floor so the room is more like 19+ degrees. The HiFi room is warm enough to sit and listen to music in the evening as its the IR radiation from the walls keeps you warm.

 

[stevec67]

The use of a single thermostat even with TVRs on radiators is a crude system and belongs in the past. For heating you just have a single thermostat that calls for heat (i.e. tells the boiler to fire up) and it will do that until the call is dropped. Its just a boiler fire up on/off signal. It may mean that in some homes the TVRs are next to useless as they can only stop the hot water going into a rad and the boiler may turn off long before the required room temp has been reached. Hence the boil and freeze scenario that most of us have experienced.

When I had my Vaillant system installed 2 years ago I had all my rads (19) fitted with ambiSENSE intelligent TVRs. Each TVR can call for heat so each room can be maintained at the temp that you want independently. This can be done via an app on iOS or Android (I also have it running on a PC in a VM). My wife loves the way she can boost or cut the temp in her office from her smart phone when she wants and independently from the rest of the house heating.

ambiSENSE | Smart TRV | Vaillant UK

Its been very good indeed and we have been warm without boiling nor any stuffiness and with lower gas usage to boot. When first installed my wife said "I feel warm but the rads are cold to touch". I have for more than 30 years tried to explain how central heating should work but it did and still does fall on deaf ears. What keeps us warm is infra red radiation and not hot stuffy air. The rooms are warm without any stuffiness because the walls are radiating IR. Black body radiation.

The other vey useful feature is weather compensation. The boiler water flow temperature for the rads is automatically adjusted depending on the outside temperature. The hot water temp is also separately adjustable via the app..

Oh! We also have a 10 years parts and labour guarantee with this new system.

DV

Nice. I bet that wasn't cheap.

 

[Mike Reed]

This can be done via an app on iOS or Android (

All Heathen Greek to me, Lewis. No smart phones here. Believe me, my previous system may have been crude, but was efficient (yes, energy costs were always lower than average) and simple. Technology may move on but leaves others behind in the wake of so-called progression.

Oh! We also have a 10 years parts and labour guarantee with this new system.

All our stuff is guaranteed for different periods according to manufacturer, and I was told by the installer that valves and some other stuff only had one or maybe two years' guarantee on them. How come you got a blanket guarantee?

 

[twotone]

Nice. I bet that wasn't cheap.

Aye depends on whose stuff you buy Steve but Honeywell's evo home system, which is relatively old now, is about £1200 for 8 TRVs and the controller etc but motorised thermostatic valves which are basically zone valves, so you effectively have as many zones as you have rads with the TRVs fitted, but that set up is not a money saving feature, although they will probably save you some money on fuel, but they're mainly a comfort feature plus you need a boiler with a high modulation ratio ie 1-8 or better and also weather compensation as @Darth Vader says.

I have an outside sensor and weather compensation too but it's not all it's cracked up to be cause you lose some control over the heating system because the controller is running the boiler's flow temperature.

 

[twotone]

All Heathen Greek to me, Lewis. No smart phones here. Believe me, my previous system may have been crude, but was efficient (yes, energy costs were always lower than average) and simple. Technology may move on but leaves others behind in the wake of so-called progression.



All our stuff is guaranteed for different periods according to manufacturer, and I was told by the installer that valves and some other stuff only had one or maybe two years' guarantee on them. How come you got a blanket guarantee?

Depends on the manufacturer/installer Mike.

Worcester Bosch controls have the same warranty as the boiler if both are bought together and registered at the same time think Vallaint are the same.

 

[Darth Vader]

Depends on the manufacturer/installer Mike.

Worcester Bosch controls have the same warranty as the boiler if both are bought together and registered at the same time think Vallaint are the same.

Yes. If registered at the same time its a 10 year guarantee. I have the bits of paper from Vaillant.

DV

 

[stevec67]

Aye depends on whose stuff you buy Steve but Honeywell's evo home system, which is relatively old now, is about £1200 for 8 TRVs and the controller etc but motorised thermostatic valves which are basically zone valves, so you effectively have as many zones as you have rads with the TRVs fitted, but that set up is not a money saving feature, although they will probably save you some money on fuel, but they're mainly a comfort feature plus you need a boiler with a high modulation ratio ie 1-8 or better and also weather compensation as @Darth Vader says.

I have an outside sensor and weather compensation too but it's not all it's cracked up to be cause you lose some control over the heating system because the controller is running the boiler's flow temperature.

Interesting. I can imagine that this is comfort led and not primarily energy saving. My gas bill is £45 a month, it's going to take a long time to recover £1200 in reduced energy consumption. I'll spend it on loft insulation first I reckon.

 

[twotone]

Interesting. I can imagine that this is comfort led and not primarily energy saving. My gas bill is £45 a month, it's going to take a long time to recover £1200 in reduced energy consumption. I'll spend it on loft insulation first I reckon.

Absolutely Steve but it's a good system for people working from home think H&S say that you have to have 22 degrees c in an office environment so with those motorised TRVs you can have the boiler working at really low output for just one rad/zone or two rads/zones if two people are working in the house from home in two different rooms and the boiler never cycles so the output might only be 6kw and the boiler works down that low or even less depending on the modulation ratio so you're not heating another twelve rads in the house when there's no one else home so none of this whole house roasting to heat two rooms or whole house freezing cause you've turned off the heating.

I often just advise people to buy a couple of 3kw convector heaters from Amazon for £20 in the above scenario though.

 

[LecsonQuad]

I bought a 250 watt desk heater. I use the CH to heat the flat up then when I go to my small home office the CH goes off and the desk heater on. It manages to sustain the temperature the CH has got to for under 20p per hour.

 

[Darth Vader]

Nice. I bet that wasn't cheap.

Thats debateable. I wanted something that would last out our days and would be easy for my wife to use when I go to that great gig in the sky - I'm 78 and my health has just taken a dive.

I also had a boiler with a stainless steel heat exchanger installed as well as the complete room control. This is a 6 bedroom detached house on 3 floors so with the old classic system it could eat energy if not careful and the rooms were always too hot or too cold. Now we are in the Goldilocks zone not too hot and not too cold but just right!

So we are more comfortable and use less gas to boot.

As for cost well the whole system was about the same price as two years of energy at todays prices and less than 1% of the value of this house. To me thats good value. I spent a lot more on having the garden landscaping renewed.

DV

 

[Mike Reed]

Worcester Bosch controls have the same warranty as the boiler if both are bought together and registered at the same time think Vallaint are the same.

Yes, but Vaillant don't do some of my controls/pump for a vented boiler system (from the 'orse's mouth !) so a mix 'n' match was installed.

 

[twotone]

Yes, but Vaillant don't do some of my controls/pump for a vented boiler system (from the 'orse's mouth !) so a mix 'n' match was installed.

Aye fairly common Mike just depends on the install to be honest.

I've just bought, funnily enough, two Honeywell motorised valves and a Grundfos pump for a customer with the same system as you have which is a Honeywell S plan, one of his valves is faulty but the heating system will have to be drained to replace it so I always advise to replace the other valve and the pump at the same time if the pump and valves are roughly the same age which in this case they are all over ten years old.

 

[Mike Reed]

I bought a 250 watt desk heater. It manages to sustain the temperature the CH has got to for under 20p per hour.

Ye gods! That's (under?) 80p per kWh. Shocking !!!!

I'm 78 and my health has just taken a dive.

Sorry to hear that, Lewis, and hope it's a shallow dive not unlike mine in the last year or so to 82. It's called 'bits dropping off' but I've found ill health is insidious and doesn't bounce back as it used to.

 

[Mike Reed]

if the pump and valves are roughly .... all over ten years old.

Our old Grundfos had long been in situ when we moved in 22 years ago it must've been upwards of 25 y.o. Can't see the current one matching that but I'll never know if it does.....!!

 

[Darth Vader]

I was surprised when the Vaillant trained heating engineer removed my Grundfos pump and was told it was no longer needed as the pump was now inside the boiler. He showed me and yes it was another Grundfos pump.

DV

 

[stevec67]

Absolutely Steve but it's a good system for people working from home think H&S say that you have to have 22 degrees c in an office environment so with those motorised TRVs you can have the boiler working at really low output for just one rad/zone or two rads/zones if two people are working in the house from home in two different rooms and the boiler never cycles so the output might only be 6kw and the boiler works down that low or even less depending on the modulation ratio so you're not heating another twelve rads in the house when there's no one else home so none of this whole house roasting to heat two rooms or whole house freezing cause you've turned off the heating.

I often just advise people to buy a couple of 3kw convector heaters from Amazon for £20 in the above scenario though.

That's my solution. I run the heating for a hour here and there to maintain 16 ish in the kitchen. That's as the old Offices Shops Railway Regs, now rescinded. I then top up the office with an oil filled rad and or a radiant heater. That gives about 19, which is OK for sitting at a desk, though not excessively warm. You wear a sweater in my house in the winter.

 

[Mike Reed]

You wear a sweater in my house in the winter.

My allocation is normally two or three; four in cases (of no htg). Beyond four and I start walking like a robot.

 

[Bob McC]

Can’t beat south facing windows.
Sitting posting this in our tv room, full patio windows, blinds back, no heating on and it’s 19.9 centigrade.

 

[gintonic]

Can’t beat south facing windows.
Sitting posting this in our tv room, full patio windows, blinds back, no heating on and it’s 19.9 centigrade.

same here no heating since first thing - living room is 19.8C - certainly warm enough for a sunbathing cat

20230206_103238 by uh_simon, on Flickr


(outside is 7.6)