Our Wood Pellet Boiler decisions.........

lostinrates

ModelCitizen wrote: »

Thanks. Interesting as I am in the same situation, sizing the system for my house as it will be in two years time, after its size has been increased by 38% and I've improved the insulation of the existing Victorian build as much as I ask able. Don't suppose you I've Sussex do you? I'll read your thread now.

Nope, I don't live in Sussex. We're not increasing the house 'that' much, only one reception room is being added, and the rooms above that. They will be built to very high levels of insulation and will be south facing so hopefully that will help there. We're messing a bit with lay out, an existing bedroom and cot room is about to be come the main family bathroom, we wanted to do that in January, as we should have had a couple of months off the builders etc being in, as it is, this issue is stalling everything, as we cannot put the bathroom in without knowing we have the ability to provide it with heating and hot water. It's really dismal having only a dodgy and weak electric shower in an unseated room.....something we put in just for a clue of months for summer to get through phase one and boiler installation!


I should probably add, we are also standalone, very rural and windswept, but still south of England. We do live in a spot that seems to get the colder weather in winter (our spring is a couple of weeks later than it is in the villages around us).

dejonge3

Just had one whole week of heating from our compact 24 (with a 125 Litre Unvented Indirect Hot Water Cylinder) after what has seemed like the worst winter ever, it is currently snowing outside on the 23rd March!
It has taken since December to get the system up and running, mostly due to tradesman and warrantee issues. My advice is to get a qualified MCS fitter to install and not do what we did, which was to get a HETAS engineer to do the fitting and then have an MCS supplier to sign the fitting off... it was a total nightmare and cost me more in the long run.

I have so many questions to ask but will try not abuse this thread
If any of you have a compact 24 and can help me with any of the following I would really appreciate it:

1) Is it possible to programme the boiler to heat the hot water for just an hour or two at specific times of the day? I have it set to they system configuration 2 (or 2.2 as it states in the manual)

2) I have tried to reduce boiler start ups/echo stop starts by changing the maximum power settings from 5 down to 3 but would like to know other owners methods of reducing this? An Italian thread discusses changing experimenting with the pellet recipe settings and also discusses changing the 'UT' settings to 18 or 19, has anybody changed either of these settings, if so what were your results?

DanRichards

dejonge3 wrote: »

Just had one whole week of heating from our compact 24 (with a 125 Litre Unvented Indirect Hot Water Cylinder) after what has seemed like the worst winter ever, it is currently snowing outside on the 23rd March!
It has taken since December to get the system up and running, mostly due to tradesman and warrantee issues. My advice is to get a qualified MCS fitter to install and not do what we did, which was to get a HETAS engineer to do the fitting and then have an MCS supplier to sign the fitting off... it was a total nightmare and cost me more in the long run.

I have so many questions to ask but will try not abuse this thread
If any of you have a compact 24 and can help me with any of the following I would really appreciate it:

1) Is it possible to programme the boiler to heat the hot water for just an hour or two at specific times of the day? I have it set to they system configuration 2 (or 2.2 as it states in the manual)

2) I have tried to reduce boiler start ups/echo stop starts by changing the maximum power settings from 5 down to 3 but would like to know other owners methods of reducing this? An Italian thread discusses changing experimenting with the pellet recipe settings and also discusses changing the 'UT' settings to 18 or 19, has anybody changed either of these settings, if so what were your results?

Do you have a thermostat and timer fitted inside?. I control the boiler via the timer and upstaors and downstairs thermostats that are fitted internally. I never touch the settings on the boiler at all. It is set to full power and has eco mode activated, after that the only times i touch it are to refill and clean.

dejonge3

DanRichards wrote: »

Do you have a thermostat and timer fitted inside?. I control the boiler via the timer and upstaors and downstairs thermostats that are fitted internally. I never touch the settings on the boiler at all. It is set to full power and has eco mode activated, after that the only times i touch it are to refill and clean.

We live in a 4 bed bungalow, we were advised by our supplier/fitter not to buy an external programmer/timer as the compact 24 boiler has one built-in/onboard, we do have a wireless room thermostat (suppliers advice) which is working fine but I am trying to tweak the system so that the house stays at around 18 degrees c to avoid the echo stop/starts, main reasons are that I have heard that these stop/starts are bad for the boilers, reducing their lifespan and making the boilers less efficient than when they are running at just the right level or even slightly under

Brian101

I've have found the thread very interesting. I have just installed a red compact 18 in my new build bungalow. With it connected to 250 liter unvented cylinder and underfloor heating. Has anyone else connected up to underfloor heating? How have you got on. I fired it up for the first time yesterday and let it run all night to try to worm up the house a little. And it's used 100 kg pelts as it is running flat out due to the water temperature not getting up to temperature. It's only getting to about 45 degrees. I think is because the return water from the underfloor heating is coming back quite cold as the floor has never been heated before witch is keeping water cold. I'm hoping once it all gets up to temperature it will start to modulate and use less pellets.

dejonge3

Brian101 wrote: »

I've have found the thread very interesting. I have just installed a red compact 18 in my new build bungalow. With it connected to 250 liter unvented cylinder and underfloor heating. Has anyone else connected up to underfloor heating? How have you got on. I fired it up for the first time yesterday and let it run all night to try to worm up the house a little. And it's used 100 kg pelts as it is running flat out due to the water temperature not getting up to temperature. It's only getting to about 45 degrees. I think is because the return water from the underfloor heating is coming back quite cold as the floor has never been heated before witch is keeping water cold. I'm hoping once it all gets up to temperature it will start to modulate and use less pellets.

I have found that altering the water temperature to at least 65 degrees has helped, even though we are currently not even using it for hot water, anything below 60 and the pump does not even kick in... in fact make sure that the 'pump t' setting is set to come on to at least 50 degrees.

My next purchase will be two solar thermal panels and possibly an additional 500ltr thermal store, mostly to avoid using the boiler for showers in the summer months. Then we will be getting underfloor heating in our planned extension (1 or 2 years away from now) so would be interested to hear how things pan out? I take it the whole CH system (underfloor heating and any radiators) have been calculated in KW to suite your 18KW boiler?

dejonge3

Interesting though as I am unsure if the boiler was using more pellets before (on full power, switching on and off via wireless room thermostat as yours is) or now with the power level turned down from 5 to 3?!

The other tweak is the pellet recipe setting, this is designed to help customise the amount of pellets that are in the brazier when burning takes place... will report back on my findings and settings soon.

crawmo

ModelCitizen wrote: »

Thanks. Interesting as I am in the same situation, sizing the system for my house as it will be in two years time, after its size has been increased by 38% and I've improved the insulation of the existing Victorian build as much as I ask able. Don't suppose you I've Sussex do you? I'll read your thread now.

I live just down the way from you and have been following this thread with keen interest , as we are investigating a bio mass boiler - we have three bedroom low energy rated medium size cottage. I would be interested with who you had quotes from etc and any other recommendations locally - Thanks

crawmo

We are investigating a bio mass boiler - we have three bedroom low energy rated medium size cottage.
Firstly this thread has been helpful, it would appear the majority of people on here have been pleased with the Bio mass installations?
However I'm still little confused as to what type of boiler and size would be required to run a CH & HW system, I have rads x 7
..A quick telephone query said that a Musa 15 /21 kw would be suitable - does anyone have any thoughts regarding this brand and output as our house is exposed to the elements and does get rather cold so we require something that would be fit for the job?
Also I've read reviews on here about MUSE are these the same manufacture as Musa?

I thank you in advance for any advice you maybe able to offer .

ModelCitizen

A decent company will work out what size of boiler you need. Correct sizing is important for biomass, more important that for oil. A major consideration, and effecting the choice of boiler size is whether you install a heat store (accumulator).
As for Sussex installers, see PM.