Ground Source Heat Pumps

beardymarrow

ChapelBarn said:

Patrol said:

Can anyone help with what to do with "HTF pump set too low"?

Hello. My IVT manual for "High Heat transfer fluid delta" has two possible causes. I think this is the same type of error as you are seeing.

1 Not enough flow over the heatpump. Action: 1 Check that the heat carrier pump has not jammed. 2 Check that all the valves are open.

2 The particle filter on the hot side is clogged. Action: 1 Clean the particle filter.

The filter is supposed to be user-maintainable so I would check that first as below (I've checked mine in the past). If that was fine I'd be looking for a service engineer as unless someone has fiddled with valves or turned radiatiors / underfloor heating valves off it sounds like a pump may need to be replaced.

Do you have a manual? Page 30 of mine describes how to check and clean the filters as below
1 Shut down the heat pump using the On/Off button

(a bit here from me, the hot filter will be in your heat pump. I can remove my front cover with two screws at the top, and the filter is towards the top on the left (next to the black cassette cylinder and under some U shaped pipework. The valve is a lever handle that rotates 90 degrees from on to off from memory)

2 Close the valve and unscrew the sealing cap
3 Loosen the circlip holding the screen in the valve. Use the supplier circlip pliers

(a bit here from me, the pliers taper to fine points so you can put them into the two small holes in the circlip. Be careful not to drop the circlip)

4 Lift out the screen from the valve and wash clean with water 

(a bit here from me, the screen is like a small metal thimble)

5 Refit the screen, the circlip and sealing cap

6 Open the valve and start the heat pump using the On/Off button

Hello - OK thanks for that. I have a C series pump and so the valve is external to the pump. I have located it and cleared out the particle filter using the instructions above (and have just located my original manual)

I'll keep and eye on the alarms and see whether they return. At the moment it does seem to be working normally.

Was there quite a bit of stuff in the filter? 

ChapelBarn

beardymarrow said:

ChapelBarn said:

Patrol said:

Can anyone help with what to do with "HTF pump set too low"?

Hello. My IVT manual for "High Heat transfer fluid delta" has two possible causes. I think this is the same type of error as you are seeing.

1 Not enough flow over the heatpump. Action: 1 Check that the heat carrier pump has not jammed. 2 Check that all the valves are open.

2 The particle filter on the hot side is clogged. Action: 1 Clean the particle filter.

The filter is supposed to be user-maintainable so I would check that first as below (I've checked mine in the past). If that was fine I'd be looking for a service engineer as unless someone has fiddled with valves or turned radiatiors / underfloor heating valves off it sounds like a pump may need to be replaced.

Do you have a manual? Page 30 of mine describes how to check and clean the filters as below
1 Shut down the heat pump using the On/Off button

(a bit here from me, the hot filter will be in your heat pump. I can remove my front cover with two screws at the top, and the filter is towards the top on the left (next to the black cassette cylinder and under some U shaped pipework. The valve is a lever handle that rotates 90 degrees from on to off from memory)

2 Close the valve and unscrew the sealing cap
3 Loosen the circlip holding the screen in the valve. Use the supplier circlip pliers

(a bit here from me, the pliers taper to fine points so you can put them into the two small holes in the circlip. Be careful not to drop the circlip)

4 Lift out the screen from the valve and wash clean with water 

(a bit here from me, the screen is like a small metal thimble)

5 Refit the screen, the circlip and sealing cap

6 Open the valve and start the heat pump using the On/Off button

Hello - OK thanks for that. I have a C series pump and so the valve is external to the pump. I have located it and cleared out the particle filter using the instructions above (and have just located my original manual)

I'll keep and eye on the alarms and see whether they return. At the moment it does seem to be working normally.

Was there quite a bit of stuff in the filter? 

Actually no, the bottom of the filter had some of the holes blocked, but mainly it was clear. I've not had an alarm for a few days now and will keep checking to see if they return

beardymarrow

ChapelBarn said:

Actually no, the bottom of the filter had some of the holes blocked, but mainly it was clear. I've not had an alarm for a few days now and will keep checking to see if they return

Might be worth checking upstream to see if there's another filter on the central heating pipe work? It would be strange for only a couple of bits to cause an alarm, but maybe it's right on the edge of the required flow rate and those couple of bits were enough to tip it over the edge. When mine alarmed the internal filter had a couple of bits in it, but there was another y filter upstream that was mega blocked (which I cleaned out and cured the problem, but I ended up replacing with a Magnaclean anyway).

Basically, when the filters get blocked the water flow rate through the pump slows down and that causes the temperature difference between the flow out water and the return water to be too high.

Skint59

Can someone please direct me to the place in this forum where I will find out how to save money on his water settings on IVT heat pump please? Or assist me in answering my queries below please.

We decided to sell our house that has the heat pump, and we had left hot water and room temperature settings as we used them. This is hot water on all the time, and heating on all the time at 17°C. We have emptied the house ready for the buyers but they are not likely to be in for 3-4 months.

We want to try to decrease electricity costs over winter in an empty house, especially as we now have no income from the property. 

I've set the room temperature to 10°C today on the heat pump in Room Temperature settings but haven't touched the hot water settings yet. My husband thinks that I have set it too low and that I should go back to 17°C. What do others with this system think please?

BUFF

Haven't got a heat pump myself but does your house insurance stipulate anything about minimum temperature or unoccupied for a length of time?

beardymarrow

Hi,
I'd say 10 was a bit low, but not crazy, depending on whether the house is usually damp inside. You only need to prevent the pipes etc from freezing and reduce the risk of damp. Alternatively, activate the holiday function (which is set to 15degrees), but you will need to keep setting that as it expires after the number of days you set it for. I'd probably go for 15 if it was my house.

Hot Water you could set to the minimum it will go to. Remember to run it to max heat and flush through all the hot water taps before handing it over to prevent legionaires.

Skint59

I'll take your advice and go up to 15°C. I haven't looked at holiday function. I'll see if that would be a help. I realised I can reduce the add heat to once per week to save on costs.


Someone else mentioned insurance. It has been a holiday let. I will check that insurance is not affected by it being empty.

lstevensuk

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

Random question - with the IVT heat pump is it possible to mix both radiators and UFH. Currently we have radiators throughout the house. We are building a new extension and wondered if I could have UFH in just the new part?

Yes, absolutely. We have that. I imagine it's fairly common. You need to fit a mix valve operated from the GSHP controller and separate temperature sensor so that the UFH operates at a lower temperature (curve slope is lower). The user manual shows where to fit the valve. 

Would that mean running new pipes from the GSHP to the new areas? That would be a pain as it's in a barn not the house and fair amount of tarmac in between

No, but you'd need to run the wire from the mix valve and the temperature sensor to have them controlled by the GSHP controller. In your situation I'd just have a manual mix valve 

So literally a mixer type valve that I adjust couple of times a year till I'm happy with the temp? And this connects to my existing radiator pipe work. I will ask my plumber just want to get my head around the concept first.

Yeah, exactly. It just blends a portion of the colder water returning from the ufh with the hotter flow from the GSHP so that the ufh runs cooler than the rads. 

Now I'm up and running just looking at kits. had a quote from this company. just checking I'm heading down the right route getting a full kit?

https://underfloorheating1.co.uk/product/underfloor-heating-premium-2-port-kit-system

Hi,
That looks about right, but I'm not a plumber, so I'd rely on their advice. Was your GSHP sized for this additional load?
You might also want some sort of thermostatic control over one of the zones? As an example, we have a thermostat linked to only one of the zones on our 4 zone UFH as it's in a place that gets a lot of direct sunlight so we shut that zone off if the floor temp rises due to the sun heating it.
Or, a thermostatic valve controlling the mixing if both zones need automatically controlling.
I'd recommend getting your plumber to spec what is needed to be honest, as they'll have much more experience. I only know my setup :-)

Ok so first good news is the boiler was serviced by Alto energy and they said it's running perfectly - capacitors worked! Actually the engineer was extremely helpful this time - he even knew about the weird cassettes my system uses in the ground loop. He was from America and said it used to be pretty common there. Anyway my UFH is now all connected up and running. We have temporarily wired up 2 x sonoff TH16's temp and humidity sensors so I can control through my app one for each zone. So far so good. Do I need to change any settings on my pump to take into account the larger area? I assume it's going to take a while to heat the slab up - what sort of tempatures do the slabs get up to - I can point my laser tempature gun at it

p.s. I can definitely see the need to get a raspberry Pi up and running on the boiler, it's a pain having to walk in out to keep checking readings.

DeeWestern

ARtYXiFy said:

DeeWestern,
Your analysis is quite right, there is a problem with the flexible hoses that go to and from the heat exchange unit. Although they are flexible and have a rubber insert they also have a stainless steel covering both internally and externally and are therefore ferromagnetic. These hoses act as a beautiful magnetite trap and over the years will have gradually occluded and now the flow through them will be really quite reduced.This is the engineering equivalent of human angina. Put a magnet on them to prove it to yourself.
This firm can supply replacement hoses.           jsenergi.co.uk 
Type in these search terms:

Slang¾ LöpMutt90 ° ¾ LöpMutt¾

and

Slang¾ utv¾ löpmutt¾

Personally I had a plumber do the job, though you may be very capable. It will recur but many years away hopefully. You could try putting a magnetic filter in, flush the system and refill with inhibitor. G8/G9 (the Delta) should now drop back into the acceptable range of 7-10 degrees.

I've ordered these two pipes, and hopefully they will finally - after many years - fix the incessant alarms!

How do I swap them over? Is it a case of killing the power, pulling the handle that stops the flow (where you can get access to the thimble particle filter), then unscrewing the pipes with a spanner? Or is loads of water going to spill out as soon as I unscrew it?

Should I put PTFE tape on the joints? Anything I need to do after putting everything back together - refilling or bleeding anything?

Thanks!

beardymarrow

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

beardymarrow said:

lstevensuk said:

Random question - with the IVT heat pump is it possible to mix both radiators and UFH. Currently we have radiators throughout the house. We are building a new extension and wondered if I could have UFH in just the new part?

Yes, absolutely. We have that. I imagine it's fairly common. You need to fit a mix valve operated from the GSHP controller and separate temperature sensor so that the UFH operates at a lower temperature (curve slope is lower). The user manual shows where to fit the valve. 

Would that mean running new pipes from the GSHP to the new areas? That would be a pain as it's in a barn not the house and fair amount of tarmac in between

No, but you'd need to run the wire from the mix valve and the temperature sensor to have them controlled by the GSHP controller. In your situation I'd just have a manual mix valve 

So literally a mixer type valve that I adjust couple of times a year till I'm happy with the temp? And this connects to my existing radiator pipe work. I will ask my plumber just want to get my head around the concept first.

Yeah, exactly. It just blends a portion of the colder water returning from the ufh with the hotter flow from the GSHP so that the ufh runs cooler than the rads. 

Now I'm up and running just looking at kits. had a quote from this company. just checking I'm heading down the right route getting a full kit?

https://underfloorheating1.co.uk/product/underfloor-heating-premium-2-port-kit-system

Hi,
That looks about right, but I'm not a plumber, so I'd rely on their advice. Was your GSHP sized for this additional load?
You might also want some sort of thermostatic control over one of the zones? As an example, we have a thermostat linked to only one of the zones on our 4 zone UFH as it's in a place that gets a lot of direct sunlight so we shut that zone off if the floor temp rises due to the sun heating it.
Or, a thermostatic valve controlling the mixing if both zones need automatically controlling.
I'd recommend getting your plumber to spec what is needed to be honest, as they'll have much more experience. I only know my setup :-)

Ok so first good news is the boiler was serviced by Alto energy and they said it's running perfectly - capacitors worked! Actually the engineer was extremely helpful this time - he even knew about the weird cassettes my system uses in the ground loop. He was from America and said it used to be pretty common there. Anyway my UFH is now all connected up and running. We have temporarily wired up 2 x sonoff TH16's temp and humidity sensors so I can control through my app one for each zone. So far so good. Do I need to change any settings on my pump to take into account the larger area? I assume it's going to take a while to heat the slab up - what sort of tempatures do the slabs get up to - I can point my laser tempature gun at it

p.s. I can definitely see the need to get a raspberry Pi up and running on the boiler, it's a pain having to walk in out to keep checking readings.

You shouldn't need to change anything. Might need to re balance the radiators in the old bit in case they get starved, but I'd guess the plumber has done that? The pump itself will just get on with it.