Underfloor heating help

samsam89

Morning all.

We have a new house which has underfloor heating (piped) throughout the ground floor and radiators upstairs.

We have noticed recently as the weather gets colder that the upstairs radiators come on fine and we feel warmth upstairs but when we come downstairs it is cold. We have a thermostat in the hallway but nowhere else.

The engineer that fitted th system said as it is based on an air source heat pump outside it will simply kick in when it needs to in order to maintain our desired temperature inside. He also said not to touch it and it runs itself.

We’ve had him out once before and to clean the filter but the Mrs didnt remember anything he said about the system.

Any obvious things I can check myself before calling him out as he has said he will charge call out fees?

I’ve reatached the accuators as they didn’t feel as if they were on properly and they have popped up with blue rings which are now warm to touch on the top?

Looking to troubleshoot before having to pay!

Heedtheadvice

It sounds like you really need to understand your system a bit more to appreciate what controls which, is there a programmer/timer, boiler temperature, afe thefe different controls for underfloor amd rads etcetera.


What are the actuators you mention controlling?
Do the rads have thermostatic controls?
How long is the heating coming on for?
Pictures of the various bits you discuss might help.


But bear in mind the following.
Rads heat up fairly quickly but not instantly. rad surfaces become quite hot and you feel some radiated heat from them as well as convected.
Underfloor heating is a lot slower as it warms up a big mass but then retains heat for longer. Design temperature is much lower too as it then gives a more gentle heat with more of a tendancy to be background heating typically can be 15 to 20+ degrees rather than say 50 of a hot radiator. You get a more even, not as hot temperature that is slower to react heating and cooling. Warming up can take a couple of hours in some systems.


Heat also rises so downstairs will loose some heat to upstairs.


Does any of that have an influence?
Edit: New house? Why should you pay anything?

samsam89

You’re right I think I do- it’s an air source heat pump powered system.

The actuators in the cupboard under the stairs control the underfloor for each zone downstairs. Living x 2, dining x 1 and entrance/cloaks x 1.

This is a picture of the manifold.

https://ibb.co/7xfkNH3

The underfloor is not active in the picture as the temperature is sufficient on the thermostat at present however having reconnected them, they now do kick in when requested by the thermostat and the temperature has been great since I reconnected them.

I do wonder whether the quite basic flomasta thermostat we have is pretty insufficient. I wonder if a smart thermostat would better control our home heating.

Currently unsure as to the rad setup, but there is no hot water feed at the manifold so I suspect it’s fed directly from the hot water supply at the boiler.

southcoastrgi

So are you saying you only have 1 stat to control all of the ufh ?

samsam89

southcoastrgi wrote: »

So are you saying you only have 1 stat to control all of the ufh ?

Yup.

Feel like the builder did it on the cheap! We are open plan it’s worth adding but have a seperate cloakroom and entrance hall.

theonlywayisup

samsam89 wrote: »

Yup.

Feel like the builder did it on the cheap! We are open plan it’s worth adding but have a seperate cloakroom and entrance hall.

We are open plan but each "zone" has it's own stat.

Do you know what the manufacturer of the UFH is?

robatwork

As pointed out ^^^^ the UFH can take ages to get up to temp. Leave it on a few hours....bear in mind it will retain the heat too so take ages to cool down too. Needs some finessing to know when to put on/off.

samsam89

It seems to be working better now the actuators are connected properly - it’s kicking in whenever the temperature drops below the set point and maintaining the temperature nicely.

The manifold is made by Roth, the thermostat is Flomasta and the boiler and air source heat pump are Nibe.

I think a smart thermostat may be the way to go in terms of zonal temperature control as the current one simply doesn’t do that even though the zones exist.