Octopus to EDF - please help beginner in a pickle

FreeBear

Gerry1 said:

This is a useful hygrometer, the Mebus EM763.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/386314710501

Also available from Amazon but not so cheap.  They sometimes appear in the middle of Lidl/ Aldi.

I'm a fan of the Xiaomi temperature/humidity sensors. Fairly cheap, has an app so that you can monitor from your phone. If you don't mind a wait - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294954096373

rebeccaqphan

thanks macman, i've not managed to get the pressure back up to 1. It's still on 0.6 - 0.8 bar. I'm too scared to touch it as last time I did I broke the boiler. I didn't notice because I would say it never even got to 15-16 let alone 30. I was still wearing my winter jacket or robe inside my house during dinner as it was so cold!

I've got someone coming out who is a gas engineer / plumber who originally changed all the radiators approx 2 years ago Qyburn. 

Phones4Chris

rebeccaqphan said:

I've got someone coming out who is a gas engineer / plumber who originally changed all the radiators approx 2 years ago 

Personally, I would have got someone different, as a fresh set of eyes may spot something that wasn't done correctly in the first instance.

Qyburn

rebeccaqphan said:

thanks macman, i've not managed to get the pressure back up to 1. It's still on 0.6 - 0.8 bar. I'm too scared to touch it as last time I did I broke the boiler. 

If the system won't pressurise there's something wrong. Mains water is around 2 bars or more, so if the system doesn't go above 0.8 then it's going somewhere. Faulty pressure relief somewhere? Vent still left over from when it was an open system? Leak not so likely as the pressure would go down to zero. 

kimwp

Qyburn said:

rebeccaqphan said:

thanks macman, i've not managed to get the pressure back up to 1. It's still on 0.6 - 0.8 bar. I'm too scared to touch it as last time I did I broke the boiler. 

If the system won't pressurise there's something wrong. Mains water is around 2 bars or more, so if the system doesn't go above 0.8 then it's going somewhere. Faulty pressure relief somewhere? Vent still left over from when it was an open system? Leak not so likely as the pressure would go down to zero. 

It's not not pressurising; they haven't attempted to pressurise it.

t0rt0ise

kimwp said:

Qyburn said:

rebeccaqphan said:

thanks macman, i've not managed to get the pressure back up to 1. It's still on 0.6 - 0.8 bar. I'm too scared to touch it as last time I did I broke the boiler. 

If the system won't pressurise there's something wrong. Mains water is around 2 bars or more, so if the system doesn't go above 0.8 then it's going somewhere. Faulty pressure relief somewhere? Vent still left over from when it was an open system? Leak not so likely as the pressure would go down to zero. 

It's not not pressurising; they haven't attempted to pressurise it.

Doesn't the boiler simply stop altogether if the pressure is too low? Mine does, shuts down until I attend to it.

kimwp

t0rt0ise said:

kimwp said:

Qyburn said:

rebeccaqphan said:

thanks macman, i've not managed to get the pressure back up to 1. It's still on 0.6 - 0.8 bar. I'm too scared to touch it as last time I did I broke the boiler. 

If the system won't pressurise there's something wrong. Mains water is around 2 bars or more, so if the system doesn't go above 0.8 then it's going somewhere. Faulty pressure relief somewhere? Vent still left over from when it was an open system? Leak not so likely as the pressure would go down to zero. 

It's not not pressurising; they haven't attempted to pressurise it.

Doesn't the boiler simply stop altogether if the pressure is too low? Mine does, shuts down until I attend to it.

Maybe? But mine goes pretty low (slow leak in the system somewhere) and still keeps going.

dunstonh

5 pages already and I admit to have not read beyond page 1..... so, apologies if I duplicate.

1. turning off the heating for the 4 which we don't use and then shutting the door? Not sure if that will work in reducing our usage, please help?

I suspect this has already been answered but yes, that is what you should do and it makes a difference.    We are in a large farmhouse and from Autumn we mothball a wing of the house and several bedrooms by closing the doors and not heating them.    We almost halved our oil use by doing that.    (We also reduced the thermostat from 21c to 19.5c and replaced some doors that were old and letting wind through.  Still have some single-pane windows to sort and some cold spots where internal insulation will be put in at some point).

2. I realised that our thermostat was set to 30 degrees so have reduced that to 25. Our house is always so cold (always wearing at least 3 layers) so I didn't even realise it was set to 30. Is setting to 25 standard or is it higher or lower please?

That is your major issue.  30 degrees is massively high.   25 is also very high.      Older houses tend to be circa 19.5, although some will go to 21.    Newer houses or houses that have been insulated will often go lower.

In most cases, it's not the temperature you feel but the change in temperature.     So, if you have a room at 21c and another at 18c, then moving between those rooms you will feel the cold.     Whereas if the areas you are in are all 21c, they will feel warmer than you moving between a room at 30c to a room at 25c.

So, you need to reduce the temperature but perhaps balance the temps between the rooms you do use and ideally target 19.5 as the ballpark temperature.

Qyburn

t0rt0ise said:

Doesn't the boiler simply stop altogether if the pressure is too low? Mine does, shuts down until I attend to it.

Ours doesn't. We were on an open system until recently, F&E tank only about 12' above the boiler, giving less than 0.5 bar at any time.

kimwp

Mark_d said:

If your thermostat is set to 18 then it means no room will be warmer than 18.  Some could be far below this temperature.  I would suggest maybe 22 degrees. 

This comment just popped into my head @Mark_d - this isn't how it works. If a thermostat is set to 18, then the boiler will heat until the thermostat gets to 18 (or thereabouts). So the air adjacent to the thermostat will be heated to 18. But other rooms will heat to different temperatures - a sunnier room will get warmer, a draughtier room will be colder etc. If you have radiator trvs,  you can then adjust these so your radiators will heat the rooms to the temperature that you want (I think they actually heat to a temperature that you set the radiator to heat to - I'm not sure of the details). If you have a portable thermostat, you can move it between rooms and it will heat the new room to the set temperature and every other room will be at a new temperature. If you put the thermostat in the fridge, it will heat the house as hot as the boiler can manage.

So if your thermostat is in the quickest to heat room in the house, the above is true, but otherwise not.