Nice people thread part 7 - a thread in its prime

lostinrates

GDB2222 wrote: »

To put that in perspective, we have a huge Megaflo hot water cylinder that is around 2 meters high, and that gets hot within an hour of the system being started up. Bear in mind that we don't have to heat all the hot water in it in order to get enough hot water for most purposes. That is because hot water rises to the top of the cylinder, and the hot water is drawn off from the top. So, when I say that ours is hot within an hour, I just mean that we are able to get as much hot water as we need within an hour.

I wondered whether LIR has a more complicated system with solar panels and a heat store?

Not commenting on my system but...

When choosing heating in a rural environment you look at what's avaiable. In recent tradition this is oil and perhaps solid fuel aug,enter by other things like agas and woodburners and fires. Oil is expensive. There is potential in pellet to be self sufficient in ways I don't want to go in to ATM. Other renewables integrating seem wise, but are a bigger longer term investment.

Systems come in the varity of seriously geeky to...call a man twice a year to check it. As that's what old and solid fuel etc require basically so doesn't seem too tedious. I know Lydia tracks her solar effectively...I would just hope mine did ok I think:o

Edit: and yes, it's quite like any system I have dealt with before.

silvercar

lostinrates wrote: »

Not commenting on my system but...

When choosing heating in a rural environment you look at what's avaiable. In recent tradition this is oil and perhaps solid fuel aug,enter by other things like agas and woodburners and fires. Oil is expensive. There is potential in pellet to be self sufficient in ways I don't want to go in to ATM. Other renewables integrating seem wise, but are a bigger longer term investment.

Systems come in the varity of seriously geeky to...call a man twice a year to check it. As that's what old and solid fuel etc require basically so doesn't seem too tedious. I know Lydia tracks her solar effectively...I would just hope mine did ok I think:o

Edit: and yes, it's quite like any system I have dealt with before.

Whoosh. Didn't understand much of that.

But the bottom line is that the heating system has to do what is intended ie heat your home. In my simple mind either:
a) there are teething problems
b) the system is not going to be capable of providing heat to your home.

Even if it is a system that is going to need nurturing, it has to be set up so that once nurtured it provides the heat. I hope your expert will be able to decide that with the right nurturing it will deliver. Remember that however green and self sufficient you want to be, you have your health to look after and do require some warmth.

silvercar

If I was you (!) I would get some electric heaters and heat one room downstairs and your bedroom. This evening fill kettle loads of water, heat the bathroom and have a soak. You really can't go on getting so upset about this and need some home comforts.

PS you have my total sympathy, I can't bear being cold.

lostinrates

silvercar wrote: »

If I was you (!) I would get some electric heaters and heat one room downstairs and your bedroom. This evening fill kettle loads of water, heat the bathroom and have a soak. You really can't go on getting so upset about this and need some home comforts.

PS you have my total sympathy, I can't bear being cold.

Well, we have lit the woodburner. This works, sort of, but it heats a sitting room, and to be honest, there is only so much just sitting one can do when there is a house full of stuff that needs doing! Especially when I just sat and slept most of summer!

I can cope without heating, moaningly:o, but cope, what I can't cope with is having paid a big sum for heating that doesn't work and the combined with the promise that it should work, because how you live with heating is different to how you live without it. Things you wouldn't even think about.

Edit, oh, and I would love a bath, but I am just physically incapable of getting that much hot water up there and there is no really conveniant upstairs socket, so I will have a hot dribble under the shower.

GDB2222

Surely, with the immersion heater on 24/7 you should have lashings of (extremely expensive) hot water. That's a poor solution long term, but in the short term it does not matter, and you have your health and wellbeing to consider.

Rather than crying or getting cross, just try to get your own expert in ASAP. It does sound as though your present guys are trying but are way out of their depth. They'll probably be delighted if someone comes in and tells them what to do.

lostinrates

GDB2222 wrote: »

Surely, with the immersion heater on 24/7 you should have lashings of (extremely expensive) hot water. That's a poor solution long term, but in the short term it does not matter, and you have your health and wellbeing to consider.
You might think so. Xx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx x xxxxx xxxx xxxx xx xxx xxxx xxx. (x is what I would explain if I were talking about it .
Rather than crying or getting cross, just try to get your own expert in ASAP. It does sound as though your present guys are trying but are way out of their depth. They'll probably be delighted if someone comes in and tells them what to do.

Yep, sorting this, unlikely to get the right person out this week.

michaels

LIR your house is big but not huge. We are something over 160 square metres and our boiler is only 18kw and that was overspecced and it spends most of its time running at minimum of 4kw. The hot tank has 6kw of back-up immersions so these could probably make at attempt to heat the house if the water could be made to circulate that way. It seems a bit odd if your system is burning all the fuel and failing to heat the house. Presumably the suppliers and installers if they can't resolve the issues have been in touch with the manufacturers technical support and they should be encouraged (at their expense) to call out an engineer from the manufacturer to resolve the issues. There will be a list of parameters a correct installation should comply to and as long as the installer has followed the correct installation procedure and your system meets the criteria then the manufacturers will take responsibility for any fault in the installation.

GDB2222

That's interesting, Michaels. Our boiler is a modulating boiler that's supposed to deliver whatever is needed between 10 and 50 kw. It seems to be on rather a lot, but hopefully at the lower end of the scale. We do have a load of draughts though, and I spending time trying to reduce those.

lostinrates

michaels wrote: »

LIR your house is big but not huge. We are something over 160 square metres and our boiler is only 18kw and that was overspecced and it spends most of its time running at minimum of 4kw. The hot tank has 6kw of back-up immersions so these could probably make at attempt to heat the house if the water could be made to circulate that way. It seems a bit odd if your system is burning all the fuel and failing to heat the house. Presumably the suppliers and installers if they can't resolve the issues have been in touch with the manufacturers technical support and they should be encouraged (at their expense) to call out an engineer from the manufacturer to resolve the issues. There will be a list of parameters a correct installation should comply to and as long as the installer has followed the correct installation procedure and your system meets the criteria then the manufacturers will take responsibility for any fault in the installation.

The heating was spec'ed for the finished house. It should this a doddle. ( I have no idea how many square or cubic, which might be relevant metres it is now, or how many it will be, there are other differences of course, with period buildings....)

Edit, I just added o the square m of our house ..sure I have done this before on an np thread. (well, most of it, i got bored adding up and now wonder if the problem is our boiler is just too small. We had a heat calculation survey thingy done and this came up as ok, but if yours is 18 and the square metres of your house is that and the square m of ours compared to our boiler size seems....not right, let alone with with the added bits. Especially when you consider elements like better build quality of houses from the last century compared to houses like this (apart from the doozer fixed bit ofcourse).For my record follows some gobbledygook (number of cats, number of horses, number of letters in the reference)

Other issues I won't comment on yet.

lostinrates

GDB2222 wrote: »

That's interesting, Michaels. Our boiler is a modulating boiler that's supposed to deliver whatever is needed between 10 and 50 kw. It seems to be on rather a lot, but hopefully at the lower end of the scale. We do have a load of draughts though, and I spending time trying to reduce those.

There is a thread on old style about window quilts, which are, I read, popular in Scandinavia Canada and US, ( I have never heard of them before). I am trying to work out if adding a foil layer to heavily interlined curtains would have same benefits, but I don 't think so unless you have pelmets too.....contact on four sides witha wall seems really vital.