When does your Heating usually go on?

[thenry]

No but I love kits (cats) I can't do flip flops neither, the toe part makes me cringe eww.

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

18c is considered chilly, mines currently set to 20c and Ive had to put a jumper on.

Never found this. Shorts and t shirt is order of the day. However the thermostat is in the "coldest" location in the house. So guess most parts are greater than that .

[thenry]

So in the end the council took care of it all. I did try a tradesmen for better kit but it wasn't happening. I was always under the illusion that like for like changes are permitted. New internal doors in place of old cardboard like doors.

My boiler now takes some time to reach temperature. An engineer came out and said it might be the fan on its way out or main board but both held it's own while testing. I guess I'm not going to know now until winter kicks in. Normally it would boost but that's not been happening recently.

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by thenry

So in the end the council took care of it all. I did try a tradesmen for better kit but it wasn't happening. I was always under the illusion that like for like changes are permitted. New internal doors in place of old cardboard like doors.

My boiler now takes some time to reach temperature. An engineer came out and said it might be the fan on its way out or main board but both held it's own while testing. I guess I'm not going to know now until winter kicks in. Normally it would boost but that's not been happening recently.

Stupid question is it set to economy?

[thenry]

There is no eco setting only the ability to keep water hot so it's near instant at the tap which I have off. I don't know of the engineers menu.

Combi boiler is a vaillant ecotec pro 28

[Carth]

Can't be bothered to google, but wouldn't the name 'ecotec' suggest either an eco setting . . or possibly it's only operating parameter

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by thenry

There is no eco setting only the ability to keep water hot so it's near instant at the tap which I have off. I don't know of the engineers menu.

Combi boiler is a vaillant ecotec pro 28

From past experience get a second or even a third. opinion Before I have mine ripped out completely, I had a combi. It had a leak only small but a clear leak , had contact with BG to look after it. Engineer one " fixed" the the leak after about an hour. Next day it was leaking again. Engineer 2 said it was water caught on the pipes dried it well that took 10 mins . Next day it's still leaking. Engineer 3 came out. Took one quick look , went outside went on his phone, body language said he was not a happy guy. He was here for nearly 4 hours had 2 other people come to see him . The boiler was basically taken apart and rebuilt. He told me in the end that the problem was ******* obvious, and that any one that had a clue would d have clearly seen it. Shown the part with clear water marks , on it. boss came round apologize and gave my wife a bouquet of flowers for all the problems caused . Said the others had been sacked . Who knows if that was true. That's when I had had enough, and had it all replaced.

[Taf]

We were part of a group of council homes that were moved from Baxi back boilers in the living room gas fire hearth to Baxi wall-mounted combi-boilers.

They all suffered problems, from minor to major and dangerous, with ours having every part, apart from the case and wall plate, swapped for new.

So the council changed to a single Worcester model which was overpowered for our home but just adequate for most.

All OK for a year or so, then drips and auto shutdowns started. It was always the same component that failed, a pressure bladder that developed pinhole leaks. Once their initial stock of spare bladders had been used up, the new ones all worked perfectly.

Our was installed as "on-demand" only on the downstairs loo wall, 6 feet from the kitchen tap and directly below the bath, so there are no long runs of pipe to lose heat when the boiler kicks into life when a hot tap is opened. We lost the attic cold tank and airing cupboard hot water tank, but a neighbour had the boiler fitted into the airing cupboard, feeding a pressurised hot water tank. They soon learnt not to leave the system keeping tank water hot 24/7! Their system is on a waiting list to be moved into their downstairs loo, losing the hot water tank and reducing their gas consumption significantly.

Moving the boiler into the downstairs loo is also a precursor to a heat pump being installed at some point, "when costs drop to an affordable level." A couple of test systems were fitted in the summer of 2023, using the existing 15mm pipe and radiators. The tenants complained that the pumps ran almost 24/7 during the colder months, achieving only 17.5c around the house and not providing enough water even for a shallow bath. And then there were the higher costs, as electricity is about 5 times higher than mains gas. And their neighbours were constantly complaining about the incessant noise.

Originally Posted by Taf

We were part of a group of council homes that were moved from Baxi back boilers in the living room gas fire hearth to Baxi wall-mounted combi-boilers.

They all suffered problems, from minor to major and dangerous, with ours having every part, apart from the case and wall plate, swapped for new.

So the council changed to a single Worcester model which was overpowered for our home but just adequate for most.

All OK for a year or so, then drips and auto shutdowns started. It was always the same component that failed, a pressure bladder that developed pinhole leaks. Once their initial stock of spare bladders had been used up, the new ones all worked perfectly.

Our was installed as "on-demand" only on the downstairs loo wall, 6 feet from the kitchen tap and directly below the bath, so there are no long runs of pipe to lose heat when the boiler kicks into life when a hot tap is opened. We lost the attic cold tank and airing cupboard hot water tank, but a neighbour had the boiler fitted into the airing cupboard, feeding a pressurised hot water tank. They soon learnt not to leave the system keeping tank water hot 24/7! Their system is on a waiting list to be moved into their downstairs loo, losing the hot water tank and reducing their gas consumption significantly.

Moving the boiler into the downstairs loo is also a precursor to a heat pump being installed at some point, "when costs drop to an affordable level." A couple of test systems were fitted in the summer of 2023, using the existing 15mm pipe and radiators. The tenants complained that the pumps ran almost 24/7 during the colder months, achieving only 17.5c around the house and not providing enough water even for a shallow bath. And then there were the higher costs, as electricity is about 5 times higher than mains gas. And their neighbours were constantly complaining about the incessant noise.

I’ve been following heat pump developments for around 20 years now, as when we moved to our previous house we were off mains gas and didn’t even have heating oil like most of the neighbours - the house still had an open coal fire with back boiler. Back then, air-source heat pumps just weren’t an option unless you lived in a small, hermetically sealed and super-insulated chalet of the sort common in Scandinavia but non-existent in the UK. They were returning an efficiency of 3:1 if you were very lucky. Ground source heat pumps on the other hand were 4:1 or maybe a little better.

We went some way down the road of planning just such an installation but the problems began to multiply. The first problem was, back then, the established big companies were only set up to design and install large commercial projects. In response to that there were a few cottage industries popping up trying to serve domestic customers, but largely they were trying to profit off knowledge they had initially gained doing an entirely DIY installation of their own. They were interested in selling equipment but less interested in end to end design and project management. So our ground source project went from horizontal loops to collect the heat, then a vertical borehole (once it became clear we didn’t have nearly enough garden to lay the amount of horizontal collector pipe we’d need), then two vertical boreholes, at which point the whole thing was prohibitively expensive. Had the company we’d been talking to been prepared to take the entire project on and begin with a heat loss assessment of the house a lot of time and effort could have been saved.

In the end we went with wood pellets and installed a very pretty Italian burner which lived happily in the hearth formerly occupied by a Rayburn stove, but like all things Italian it was fiery yet temperamental. And getting spare parts was a nightmare because the manufacturer had given sole distributor rights to a small company way up in the northern highlands. We had a ridiculous situation a couple of times where we had to have our repairer talk to them, to get them to order something from Italy, which would be onwards delivered twice within Scotland before someone brought it to the house. More than a fortnight with no heating on two occasions (thankfully, living in a rural community, it’s easy to borrow loads of electric radiators).

These days I see all the talk of life-expired gas boilers being replaced by air source heat pumps and I just know the next national scandal is going to be the noise nuisance caused by entire streets worth of the things all kicking in at the same time on winter evenings. Even the best-made ones are far from silent, and like all things that have fans that move on bearings, the older they get the noisier they get. If it came to it and I had to have one, despite the cost and the disruption I would probably still want to turn a third of my garage over to a ground-source machine with the largest heat reservoir I could afford, and feed it from a single borehole in the back lawn. Though I still think we are going to see a government u-turn on the phasing out of gas, and a move to mixing green hydrogen into the public gas supply, probably about 5 years after the first complaints about noise and electrical overload start hitting the headlines.

[SnoopZ]

It's been a year since I got my new system boiler installed and I've had no problems with it so far, it heats the house very quickly compared to the old heap of junk, I didnt even need to wear a jumper in the colder months like I used to.

[Taf]

Originally Posted by Chris

.... in a small, hermetically sealed and super-insulated chalet of the sort common in Scandinavia but non-existent in the UK..

Friends in North Sweden and Southwest Norway both have ground and airsource heatpumps. The former is a 4-storey block of flats, built with insulation in mind 30 years ago, but recently had to have extra internal and external cladding added to reach the MINIMUM insulation levels required to get them warm enough in winter. But that minimum is 18c with the pumps running 24/7. And no hot water! The latter had to move into a new-build bungalow when their old place was condemned, as it was unable to be insulated sufficiently. Both still have to add extra heat using electricity in the dark winters.

Originally Posted by Chris

.... the next national scandal is going to be the noise nuisance caused by entire streets worth of the things all kicking in at the same time on winter evenings.......probably about 5 years after the first complaints about noise and electrical overload start hitting the headlines.

Apart from feeling chilly in their homes, often under 18c, noise is their biggest bugbear. The pumps have to be a minimum distance from homes and often sit behind baffle walls to reduce the noise and under roofing to protect them from snowfall. A noisy fan is liable to have something poked through the grill to stop the fan if a repairman is not on site ASAP! My friend in Sweden could not believe how they are installed in the UK. She called them "naked" with no cover and minimal insulation of the pipework.

The "latest innovation" dropped onto them "for Green reasons" was heat pump tumble dryers. Sure they use less electricity, but the heat source is the air from the room they are in! And I was told that they take AGES longer to dry the clothes.

We have a heat pump dryer which is pretty efficient and doesn’t take noticeably longer to dry anything - I guess it may depend what you have. We bought all Bosch gear new when we moved house, and it’s a universe apart from the Indesit Group crap we’d always bought before.