Woodpellet boiler woes

Canucklehead

Edit. Not sure what you mean by forwarding the link to the 'team'.

Is the installer MCS registered?


I can only conclude the installer is as bad as the manufacturer.
How can the manufacturer say it looks ok when clearly it's not?

If you are not sure what a thermostatic blending valve looks like then google will help.

lostinrates

Canucklehead wrote: »

I take it the installer is not MCS registered then, as you are not consulting them with this problem.

The MCS scheme is designed to deal with this type of thing so that unqualified installers don't run riot and produce the kind of installation you have.

I can only conclude the installer is as bad as the manufacturer.
How can the manufacturer say it looks ok when clearly it's not?

If you are not sure what a thermostatic blending valve looks like then google will help.

Yes, they are MCS registered. I have forwarded your link to the project manager in case they are not aware of it. I have been speaking to the citizens advice consumer Service about how to proceed, they did not raise MCS, but now I see this is clearly a good route to take, so have put it forward as the route we take from this point. (team is my architect/project manager and husband, it's a bit tongue in cheek. )

Thanks for highlighting it.

SEE

lostinrates wrote: »

Yes, they are MCS registered. I have forwarded your link to the project manager in case they are not aware of it. I have been speaking to the citizens advice consumer Service about how to proceed, they did not raise MCS, but now I see this is clearly a good route to take, so have put it forward as the route we take from this point. (team is my architect/project manager and husband, it's a bit tongue in cheek. )

Thanks for highlighting it.

I feel for you, seems like a lot of time, money and effort on your part for some pretty poor results. Sometimes I wish we could raise the old tradesmen from the dead, they did the jobs properly. My uncle had his garage roof done last year and got an elderly chap out. Uncle said he wanted a patch repair and the gent said no way. He wanted to do it properly, or not at all. I took his number, workmen like that are hard to come by.

lostinrates

SEE wrote: »

I feel for you, seems like a lot of time, money and effort on your part for some pretty poor results. Sometimes I wish we could raise the old tradesmen from the dead, they did the jobs properly. My uncle had his garage roof done last year and got an elderly chap out. Uncle said he wanted a patch repair and the gent said no way. He wanted to do it properly, or not at all. I took his number, workmen like that are hard to come by.

It has felt like a lot of time, money and effort too! Thank you for the sympathy. Its a difficult time of year because of the festive season, it heightens anxiety (we had to cancel my inlaws staying with us from overseas) and it came at the end of a summer of builders (who were fantastic). It's been a shame because it is now leading to the delay of the next phase because we do not want to get going with that (it was planned for thios month) till we know this is working. Not least because it is to put in a bathroom in our spare bedroom, and to lose a spare bedroom for a bathroom with no hot water would feel like shooting ourselves in two feet!

Silent_Dancer

It sounds to me that this is a problem with the heat exchanger not being big enough to transfer the energy to the hot water. Why didn't the installer fit an unvented hot water cylinder as well?

lostinrates

Silent_Dancer wrote: »

It sounds to me that this is a problem with the heat exchanger not being big enough to transfer the energy to the hot water. Why didn't the installer fit an unvented hot water cylinder as well?

We were told this was all that was necessary so it was never raised.

Silent_Dancer

lostinrates wrote: »

We were told this was all that was necessary so it was never raised.

In effect the heat exchanger on the thermal store is similar to way a combi boiler works and given the number of bathrooms you have this has proven to be inadequate. This will be particularly true if you have high flow rate showers.

I would add an unvented cylinder to the system. Allow 50l per potential household member. I would also a twin coil one so you can easily add solar thermal at a later date.

lostinrates

Silent_Dancer wrote: »

In effect the heat exchanger on the thermal store is similar to way a combi boiler works and given the number of bathrooms you have this has proven to be inadequate. This will be particularly true if you have high flow rate showers.

I would add an unvented cylinder to the system. Allow 50l per potential household member. I would also a twin coil one so you can easily add solar thermal at a later date.

We have, ATM, one bathroom, not a numbe of them. The system is not able to cope with so much as a strip wash at he sink ATM. it was however spec'ed for four to I've bathrooms in a six double bedroom house ( so a sizable number of users, tough we felt it reaonable to presume not all would be using the water concurrently).

Silent_Dancer

lostinrates wrote: »

We have, ATM, one bathroom, not a numbe of them. The system is not able to cope with so much as a strip wash at he sink ATM. it was however spec'ed for four to I've bathrooms in a six double bedroom house ( so a sizable number of users, tough we felt it reaonable to presume not all would be using the water concurrently).

If there's not even enough for the sink then something is seriously amiss, have you tried contacting the manufacturers direct?

bgprior

1. Check if your installer claims to conform with the REAL Assurance Consumer Code (most of them carry the REAL logo on their website if they do). If you can't get a satisfactory response from them, refer them to REAL.

(Text removed by MSE Forum Team)

I agree with other comments. It doesn't sound like your problem is with the wood pellet boiler, but with the heat storage and distribution system attached to it. 28 kW should be giving you a lot more hot water than you are getting. Different wood pellet boilers may be more or less efficient, more or less reliable, and more or less automated, but it is unlikely that they cannot put out the amount of heat that they are rated for. Sounds like it's either not being called enough, or the heat isn't being exchanged efficiently enough.

We have a 70 kW wood pellet boiler for me and my two neighbours. Two large houses (four bathrooms each) and one cottage (two bathrooms). One of the big houses has very poor efficiency (listed building, singled glazed, minimal insulation), the other two properties are averagely efficient. No problems supplying all the heat and hot water for the properties, although each of us also burns logs to save a bit of money.

But watch out for distribution losses. They are much higher than the theoretical figures claimed by manufacturers and installers. I'm about to do a blog post on our website with the details, but in short, our ETA boiler is almost exactly as efficient as claimed (around 90%), but losses from there to each property are averaging 38.5% over the year, making a combined system efficiency of 55%! We have seen this sort of performance in some of our customers' systems too. If you have any significant lengths of piping and they aren't well-insulated (and likewise the buffer tank), you might be losing more heat than you realise. But I doubt that's the main problem in your case.