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Now I've actually had a look at your plantroom drawing the following thoughts occur to me: How are you intending to attach your expansion vessels to your walls made our of air and dreams? Are you chasing your domestic water pipework into the wall to get it to route behind your electrical trunking? You probably want to just put your electrical board over the incoming cable location and rework things based on that as the bending radius of a nice bit of 3 phase incomer cable is significantly more than you've allowed for (and it doesn't particularly want to stay bent which may well defeat your blocks tacking it on) You probably want to bring your connection pipework to the UFH manifold in over the top rather than under the bottom as the bottom will have 10s of distribution pipes out to the floor going down it (made of the lovely slightly meltable plastic). Given those crossover pipes are before the blending setup and your wood burner could get your pipework up to 100°C that could do something funky if they are in contact. When routing actively consider what bends you're planning to use and whether you will be blocking yourself out of installing them. I'll admit to having seen worse planned things but that mostly only tells you of the horror stories I've seen (which were then completely ignored by the actual installers on site).
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Dec 9, 2023 13:57
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Mousus posted:On the coldest days the buffer vessel isn't doing anything as there is a full heating load. The buffer vessel only has a job to do when it's 'a bit cold', not very cold, so you need some heating but not the full output. In the middle of working you don't have a cold slab of concrete anymore you have a warm (but not quite warm enough) one. Either way, there's enough thermal mass in the slabs that even lifting them a degree or two is a reasonable length duty-cycle at full output. If the job of the buffer tank is to ensure the heat pump runs at full load whenever it's running, then there needs to be more controls to swap over to the buffer tank just when the heat pump thinks it can slack off. Like, a thermal switch set to 35 degrees on the UFH return manifold or something. At the moment it's just in parallel with the UFH. If say zone_fuckdungeon3 calls for heat, the buffer tank has to get heated at the same time and that'll make things slower. What's stopping hot UFH circulation water just passing through the buffer tank and back to the heat pump, rather than passing around the UFH circuits?
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Dec 9, 2023 21:06
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Endjinneer posted:If the job of the buffer tank is to ensure the heat pump runs at full load whenever it's running, then there needs to be more controls to swap over to the buffer tank just when the heat pump thinks it can slack off. Like, a thermal switch set to 35 degrees on the UFH return manifold or something. At the moment it's just in parallel with the UFH. If say zone_fuckdungeon3 calls for heat, the buffer tank has to get heated at the same time and that'll make things slower. That isnt what the buffer tank is there for, if the buffer tank is already warm the call for heat from the UFH will simply be met by that. If the call for heat cannot be met by the buffer tank alone it yells at a heat source to provide heat, this will be the heatpump which starts providing heat. This heat can be directly drawn by the UFH without needing to heat the buffer tank, but any that is not used by the UFH enters the buffer. Endjinneer posted:What's stopping hot UFH circulation water just passing through the buffer tank and back to the heat pump, rather than passing around the UFH circuits? The UFH loop is just that a loop. If it requires more heat as its lost temp due to doing its job of heating the slab, it will draw some as described above. The no longer useful cold is expelled from this loop back up to the colder bottom of the buffer tank heatstore. This will either sit there as the buffer tank is still warm enough to service the load, or the buffer tank will call for heat from a heatsource which will engage its pump and start sucking this colder water from the bottom of the heat store. Mousus posted:Now I've actually had a look at your plantroom drawing the following thoughts occur to me: Yeah well this is the eternal problem. lots of screws and bolts and poo poo I guess. Mousus posted:Are you chasing your domestic water pipework into the wall to get it to route behind your electrical trunking? No, the relevant sections of trunking have already been mounted 50mm off the wall to allow insulated pipework to pass behind. Mousus posted:You probably want to just put your electrical board over the incoming cable location and rework things based on that as the bending radius of a nice bit of 3 phase incomer cable is significantly more than you've allowed for (and it doesn't particularly want to stay bent which may well defeat your blocks tacking it on) The consumer unit has already been installed as shown on the diagram and everything cut to length. It wasn't really practical to have it directly above the incoming cable as its right in the middle of the back wall and in the way of everything else. The 3 phase cable is already positioned and bends fine. Its probably not as neat as the diagram but works. Mousus posted:You probably want to bring your connection pipework to the UFH manifold in over the top rather than under the bottom as the bottom will have 10s of distribution pipes out to the floor going down it (made of the lovely slightly meltable plastic). Given those crossover pipes are before the blending setup and your wood burner could get your pipework up to 100°C that could do something funky if they are in contact. The pipe runs will be insulated and theres a fair bit of space under the UFH manifold for them to pass by. The underfloor heating pipes are themselves rated to 100oC but the woodburner temps will never get that high anyway as there are several thermal cutouts before that could happen. Mousus posted:When routing actively consider what bends you're planning to use and whether you will be blocking yourself out of installing them. Thats why I've made the 3d model to work out exactly whats needed and whether its buildability is realistic and if it remains maintainable.
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Dec 9, 2023 22:52
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Endjinneer posted:I think our heat pump just runs at 2kW or so until the UFH return manifold gets to about the same temperature as the send manifold. After that it runs at like 0.8kW to keep topping up the heat in the UFH loop. Maybe it cycles on and off here as well, I don't know. A big enough UFH heating system with a tight enough thermal coupling between the floors and the pipes absolutely can (for some manufacturers) hit the point where you don't actually need a buffer vessel since you've already got the thermal mass in your system. Very much the case that different manufacturers have different minimum system volume recommendations and I'm not 100% sure whether they just have better turndown ratios on some of them or just are willing to fly closer to the sun with number of compressor starts. So long as the heat pump is sized to do more than the design condition UFH output (which when it is also doing the domestic hot you want to really hope it is) the circulation pumps on the UFH loop in NJAN99's system will grab the nice freshly heating water with only the overspill going into the buffer with the way his system is plumbed (in the nice schematic at least, I have not done a full pipe tracing on the layout). There are absolutely systems that get plumbed up with the buffer vessel 100% in line that run into your complaint though, those tend to be relatively small buffer vessels however. NotJustANumber99 posted:No, the relevant sections of trunking have already been mounted 50mm off the wall to allow insulated pipework to pass behind. I definitely do not envy you trying to install your insulated domestic water pipework in through 50mm gap then bending into the wall. Willing to bet you'll end up with an awkward gap in your lagging there but since the trunking's already in I guess you're stuck with it. NotJustANumber99 posted:The consumer unit has already been installed as shown on the diagram and everything cut to length. It wasn't really practical to have it directly above the incoming cable as its right in the middle of the back wall and in the way of everything else. The 3 phase cable is already positioned and bends fine. Its probably not as neat as the diagram but works. Another spot where I really don't envy your install job of trying to either slot the pipework in behind the cable (which really wants to be firmly fixed in place rather than having opportunity to flex) or needing to kink all of your pipework to pass in front of it (which I'm sure is a job an experienced plumber would have no problems with using a pipe bender but neither of us are one of those). NotJustANumber99 posted:The pipe runs will be insulated and theres a fair bit of space under the UFH manifold for them to pass by. The underfloor heating pipes are themselves rated to 100oC but the woodburner temps will never get that high anyway as there are several thermal cutouts before that could happen. NotJustANumber99 posted:Thats why I've made the 3d model to work out exactly whats needed and whether its buildability is realistic and if it remains maintainable.
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Dec 9, 2023 23:29
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Guess whose got a shiny new 3 phase smart meter? Yeah, not me. Appointment was booked for yesterday 12 - 4. Was onsite all day checking up at the road every so often. Nobody turned up. Rang them, on hold an hour then cut off. Finally got through, no explanation, another legally mandated 30quid for the missed appointment and they'll contact me about rebooking. FFS Found another off the shelf buffer tank that suits my needs so ordered that, Polish.  https://cewgroup.co.uk/product/buffer-tank-without-coil-200l/ Within an hour get an email from them with details of my refund? Wtf? No explanation just order cancelled, heres the money back. There is a dark and mysterious international conspiracy operating to prevent me from building my heating system.
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Dec 12, 2023 14:08
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Are buffer tanks even real?
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Dec 12, 2023 14:41
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They just haven't fully loaded yet.
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Dec 12, 2023 15:20
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He needs to buy a scrawnier tank rather than a buffer one.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:13
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NotJustANumber99 posted:another legally mandated 30quid for the missed appointment and they'll contact me about rebooking. FFS At least you're starting off in the black on this negative rates scheme.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:29
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How's Brexit going?
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Dec 12, 2023 23:30
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Have you considered making your own tank? I think you could rig one up with a water heater and some copper tubing.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:16
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Cat Hatter posted:How's Brexit going? Really took an L on that, didn't they?
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Dec 13, 2023 01:55
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devicenull posted:Have you considered making your own tank? I think you could rig one up with a water heater and some copper tubing. Wow, you’re right, there are several videos of DIY buffer tanks made from heater tanks.
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Dec 13, 2023 02:15
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Yeah look it's simple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxdqQr-1Gk
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Dec 13, 2023 18:26
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WhatEvil posted:Yeah look it's simple: -Oceangate CEO
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Dec 13, 2023 19:05
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Been lurking on the sidelines enjoying here as ever. I wanted to chime in with the internet situation, I assume things are a bit different now. But when I moved into my first flat in 2014, it was this weird conversion of an old school building, and we couldn't get internet. It took four months for BT to hook us up proper because the place had no connection (What were people doing before?! The building had other flats in). Fun random facts about this old flat: The place also had fleas which we learnt while there(!), no isolator for the shower, a weird under-kitchen-sink water heater, and we learnt ALL about hygrometers and humidity because the place was soupy with no central heating and broken storage heaters. When we moved out the backs of all our lovely 'babies first tenancy' furniture from ikea was coooovered in mold. Every tradesmen that would eventually come to fix something would be like drat what is this place? No water bill and no official postcode listing when you'd order online, no wonder it was 400 quid. It was almost like those generic lovely apartments you see TV series characters move into in America. Minus the cockroaches touch wood [ i guess?] Random tangent........I'd imagine you're gonna be a bit hosed when the drill & van man comes. Hopefully it's not a 4 month wait!
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Dec 14, 2023 11:08
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We have a tiny under-sink water heater that goes to a special "this is fuckin' hot" tap. Didn't put it there but useful for instant hot water for tea. Also I think you were living in some kind of illegal tenement.
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Dec 14, 2023 15:00
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I have three dehumidifiers in my house now, after replacing the windows and cutting out all the drafts we found a load of black mould and mushy plaster behind a cupboard months later I think we extract about 30 litres a week during the wet season, though that's preferable to having the windows open all the time
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Dec 14, 2023 15:46
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I've been mostly fiddling about in the plantroom when I've bothered to go to miserable, cold, muddy site. All the screws I'd put through the dense plasterboard to hold it help mechanically fix it to the blocks had their heads sticking out cos if you try and overtighten them they just churn up the block and fall out which was going to make it hard to plaster over them. So I took them out one by one and countersunk each one into the plasterboard in a new hole and put them all back in.  Of the many things I'm bad at I'm particularly bad at plastering. I did a whole house before and couldn't have been this bad... Beyond doghit. Whatever sand it a bunch and keep repeating to myself its only the plant room and doesnt matter.  I think it might actually be easier to plaster the whole lot rather than try and fail to feather in at the joints. Blocked up the last hole in the wall around the services ducting from plant to real rooms, then put foam in around the water pipes. Seemed sensible.  It probably looks passable in the picture but its awful. also getting trenchfoot again from sludging round in the mud you can see out the door that gets walked in. Might be worth laying a concrete path round or something now. Dunno.  Sevalar posted:Random tangent........I'd imagine you're gonna be a bit hosed when the drill & van man comes. Hopefully it's not a 4 month wait! Today was internet day! Had to be onsite first thing with a 5 hour window for them to turn up. Which they did fine, mid-morning. And, unsurprisingly, I do not have internet yet. Didn't even get to see his drill. All I got was this:  He graffitied the floor. The good news is that its not as complicated as I thought. They don't have to dig up as much of the pavement as I thought. He thinks they can tap into the existing underground trunk that runs all the fibres to the telegraph post that apparently goes straight past my driveway entrance, so avoids arguments with the pub about digging up access to their carpark. But this still takes a minimum of two weeks to get permission from the highways agency/council to dig up the pavement. So it'll be next year now. When they come and do that they will run a fibre down from the telegraph post where the I dunno, fibre switchboard thing is, through their underground trunk to the new junction to my conduit and all the way round to the house. The fibre is actually then jointed where it comes out of the ground into my little plastic BT box on the outside of the house. Another guy will then come out separately and run the final fibre from here to my socket inside. The guy today could have done this final bit today so it was done ready. But when I showed him how far I wanted it run across the garage and through the service side tunnels he said he didnt have a long enough fibre in the van. he'll put a note on for the next guy to bring 50metres worth which will almost certainly be ignored and have to happen twice. Whilst showing him the connection point into the house I've discovered the pub fence has blown(been pushed?) back against the side of my building.  and dented my lovely, only-been-there-a-couple-of-weeks, shiny new guttering.  Great. Oh and it looks like theyre running some power cable for lighting or something round the fence so thats probably snapped and electrified my entire gutter system or something.
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Dec 14, 2023 18:56
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NotJustANumber99 posted:
We've got some "temporary" random outdoor concrete tiles forming stepping stones round from our drive to the back of the house. Works great, don't sink at all, and they're so ugly that I hope the previous owner got paid to take them
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Dec 14, 2023 20:31
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Welp it can be damaged, time to rip off the entire run of gutters and replace them with thick(er) stainless.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:03
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Didn't realise this was my elon ball bearing through the window moment
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Dec 14, 2023 22:45
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NotJustANumber99 posted:he'll put a note on for the next guy to bring 50metres worth which will almost certainly be ignored and have to happen twice. Twice? In this build???
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Dec 15, 2023 06:25
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NotJustANumber99 posted:Found another off the shelf buffer tank that suits my needs so ordered that, Polish. Can you not just use a second normal unvented hot water tank and just not bother plumbing up the heating coil it has in it?
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Dec 15, 2023 13:45
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Not having enough fibre seems completely wonky to me. Even a reel with hundreds of meters of fibre on it would barely take up any room. I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to do it.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:03
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It's plausible. Some of the companies are absolute skinflint wankers when it comes to equipping their vans and will hand out only the necessary material for the jobs scheduled for that day, all the way down to the metres of cable. The tradey capable of adjusting to unexpected scenarios is a dying breed.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:10
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goatface posted:It's plausible. Some of the companies are absolute skinflint wankers when it comes to equipping their vans and will hand out only the necessary material for the jobs scheduled for that day, all the way down to the metres of cable. When the crew came to fit my fibre I gave them a full bottle of isopropyl because they didn't have any for cleaning the fibre connection and I felt sorry for them.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:39
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Well that's pretty dire.
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Dec 15, 2023 15:40
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Yup, I've lost count of the number of otherwise capable tradies absolutely hamstrung by skinflint wanknozzle managers. Because the savings of not , say, having your boiler & heating maintenance people have all the common tubing & joint pieces in their work van surely makes up for the oodles of mandatory return visits and sheer loss of valuable work time from not having it available and having to order it for every loving job.
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Dec 15, 2023 20:29
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Just Winging It posted:Yup, I've lost count of the number of otherwise capable tradies absolutely hamstrung by skinflint wanknozzle managers. Because the savings of not , say, having your boiler & heating maintenance people have all the common tubing & joint pieces in their work van surely makes up for the oodles of mandatory return visits and sheer loss of valuable work time from not having it available and having to order it for every loving job. I assume it's because the small trade companies are all either trading while bankrupt or shortly will be, so these decisions get made entirely according to today's cashflow demands rather than anything sensible.
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Dec 16, 2023 16:15
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It's normally the bigger utility firms subcontracting in my experience. They only want to pay for labour and they're not interested in any of the materials they provide being used in any other job. So they hand out only what was predicted to be necessary.
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Dec 16, 2023 16:52
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That's my experience yes. It's really the big companies that pull this poo poo. Probably because they have the spreadsheet jockeys on staff to ~optimize~ their inventory.
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Dec 16, 2023 18:45
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Just Winging It posted:Yup, I've lost count of the number of otherwise capable tradies absolutely hamstrung by skinflint wanknozzle managers. Because the savings of not , say, having your boiler & heating maintenance people have all the common tubing & joint pieces in their work van surely makes up for the oodles of mandatory return visits and sheer loss of valuable work time from not having it available and having to order it for every loving job. My wife works for a supplier to utilities, the amount of outright waste that goes on there is staggering. They had one guy that was bitching he couldn't bring his truck with a welder home anymore to do side jobs. They can't keep shovels in stock, for whatever reason they just disappear regularly. (Oh my shovel broke I need a new one repeated monthly). Spools of tracer wire get used up like crazy (100ft spool, 20 ft run, remainder just vanishes somehow) Just based on stories, I'd guess there's at least 25% of common supplies don't get used for actual jobs.
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Dec 16, 2023 19:06
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Jaded Burnout posted:When the crew came to fit my fibre I gave them a full bottle of isopropyl because they didn't have any for cleaning the fibre connection and I felt sorry for them. Yeah, despite telling them multiple times before hand that they'd need to put a hole through concrete the ones that came to my place didn't have any concrete bits and I ended up lending them one of mine.
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Dec 17, 2023 04:53
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Wonder if this is more of a UK tendency. Guy came to install fibre at our old house and just casually drilled through our 160-year old foundation which was like 3 feet of stone because he had diamond-tipped bits on hand. I also saw that he had an entire spool of fibre. No issue. Or I just got lucky.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:01
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That heating setup seems overly complicated, and you risk tanking the COP of that heat pump with buffer tanks. Hire a professional to design your (UFH) system properly for an air-source heat pump and forget about all the rest.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:30
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Wibla posted:That heating setup seems overly complicated, and you risk tanking the COP of that heat pump with buffer tanks. Hire a professional to design your (UFH) system properly for an air-source heat pump and forget about all the rest. 
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Dec 18, 2023 05:57
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Bad idea, that won't be as entertaining.
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Dec 18, 2023 06:47
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Main problem with buffer tanks and heat pump is the temperature, typically a buffer tank operates at higher temps than heat pumps are designed for (more of a limitation inherent to them). You lose COP trying to get higher temps than 55 degrees C. That's why they are ideal for combing with hydronic floor heating (or very large surface area radiators). I'm sure it can be done however, it would likely require some clever design and intelligent automation. edit: I've looked around and at least for NIBE heat pumps like my F-1245 they have an accessory (AXC40) which is basically a controller for a shunt/mixer valve that interfaces with the heat pump and an external temperature sensor connected to the buffer tank. If there's hot water in the buffer tank, it will open the shunt valve and hot water from the tank will be used for heating the floor (or radiators). It will even mix the water to the desired temperature that the heat pump wants. When the buffer tank cools the shunt valve disconnects the tank from the loop and the heat pump takes over sole responsibility for heating until the buffer tank is warm enough again. I figure something like that is a decent solution for combining a wood boiler and heat pump, the heat pump doesn't have to work against a buffer tank then but directly against the floor heating system for maximum COP. At least in theory. I have no practical experience of this, though I would love a wood boiler to supplement my heat pump when power is expensive though. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Dec 18, 2023 |
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Dec 18, 2023 07:39
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His Divine Shadow posted:edit: This seems like a sane solution, particularly as it keeps the heat pump happy. You can get very good COP factor from air source heat pumps if you install them correctly, particularly in the UK where it doesn't get very cold. Power has to be very expensive for a wood boiler to be worth it, IMO. I would be more worried about a prolonged power outage. But then the problem becomes having enough backup power to run circulation pumps and control circuits...
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Dec 18, 2023 12:07
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