Video

Great video 🔝

Do you have any videos of you fitting a heat pump with multiple underfloor heating manifolds and radiator circuit?

Hi... I live in Ireland.... would you provide a system design only service?

I will be installing heat pumps, however, I do not expect to be able to use them in the depth of winter as the temperatures get to -30 Celsius. At that temperature the heat pumps simply can't keep up.

3 years ago, we moved from an LPG tank that the company now said was not allowed to be where it had sat for the last 50 years. So moved to ASHP and redid all the radiators as the others were the original and starting to go rusty. Thankfully got a fantastic RHI payment. I have a Midea ASHP and the app is bad, only counts in whole numbers for kWh usage and even though heating is off it claims it used 2 kWh for heating, rather than DHW. The house has been warmer and cheaper to run since having this ASHP fitted. Especially when used with a cheap overnight tariff! So I have just bought the Open Energy Monitor Kit and waiting for it to be installed. A video showing what parts are needing to be fitted and how it is fitted would be useful as nothing is out there that shows this. Also a ballpark figure for cost of fitting to an existing sytem would be helpful.

Is there a rule or no. When you combining 3 d1 pipes it needs to be upsized? Say for 3 15mm d1 you need to upsize last tee to 22 and tundish will 22 to 28?

What did you wrap around the pipe? this is literally my problem

Piping looks very nice, electrics on the “plant room” looks like a dogs breakfast.

How does it work in wintertime with -10C. ?

Seriously? You could probably heat that bungalow on a diesel heater, heat recovery and up to date insulation levels

They will be freezing cold come the winter and the noise will drive them crazy. Air heat pumps do not work particularly well in this cold and damp country. Also, net zero is a complete con.

Is that unit an r32 or 290

Would love to see the calculations once you get around to sharing them. Great video as always!

Great video. I really enjoy seeing how you go about your installations. Keep up the great work!

Definitely not a no brainier , clickbait

10% cheaper...ROI on that? I have heat pumps but I went air to air as it's an old farmhouse and too expensive to seal up, insulate add heat exchangers for fresh air flow.

props to the landlord for adding the renewables. Can they charge a bit more rent for their investment which reduces tenants' energy bills?

The Emperor's new clothes. Who would invest so much to heat a small bungalow?

Hmm, if the oil boiler had reached the end of its life may be yes heat pump but even then only because of the boiler improvement grant. If the oil boiler is still in good working order what would have been the reduction in running costs achieved by bringing it up to the same standard of insulation that you are putting in for the heat pump and adding modern weather compensated controls. I guess 20 % plus for very little capital outlay. The economics would then be such that you couldnt recover the capital costs of the heat pump within its 10 year life span. Of course at that 10 year point its likely than you will have to stump up the full cost of the replacement heat pump 4 times the cost of a replacement condensing oil boiler? I can see the value of heat pumps in mew installations but im afraid Im still unconvinced about conversions, by the way theres absolutely no way that the solar panels you can fit on that roof will generate enough electricity to power your heat pump through the winter either.

Thoroughly enjoying your content, approach and explanations for the last 2 years! Thank you big man! Thumbs up.

Superb explanation thank you.

Let’s hope the ashp lasts 20 years!

A great install, but just for balance we both know that ASHP will not last 20 years, it will be obsolete in 3; your estimated SCOP is optomistic. Thermal efficiency of house will mean the cumulative heat loss due to running all day will weigh against it when compared to oil which will need roughly only an hour, at most, to heat that house up. Also kerosene is more than x4 cheaper than electricity.

But when you factor in 20 grand for the system. Not good.

It will only take about a hundred years to pay for itself...🤣

Thanks

Interesting but modern condensing oil boilers do not smell (a friend of mine has one in her back garden). The oil tanker only has to visit about once annually I would have thought with a decent size tank? Maximum twice a year anyway. Notwithstanding not having to service the boiler is a bonus and additional cost saving.

How comes you got the blow off from the expansion tank connected? I thought the vaillant was a partial monobloc and has it built in to the external unit?

Excellent video (and installation) as usual. 👍I have had a look at the monitoring page and it is performing really well. That is a small property with commensurately low heat loss it will be interesting to see how it handles the shoulder months with regards to cycling. The new combi cylinder may have been a good application for this property.😉 Syzmon can you recall what design flowrate you were expecting on the system compared to what was achieved during commissioning from the Open Energy flow meter? Nice to see a Landlord looking after the property and their tenants too.👍

Hive lets you boost the heating outside of scheduled time for 30min/hour etc which is something nest doesn’t. Goes against the 'smart' nest features but personally i prefer to set my own schedules and control that way so a boost is a useful function missing from nest. Only way is to thrn up the temperature manually and remember to turn off when no longer needed.

Would like to see you do a video on Sunamp, they can’t make them quick enough , lots of Scottish councils are using them instead of cylinders now, especially in small and social houses with limited space and limited heating requirements in summer.

I’d love if we could update the commentary on noise from being silent for years to being silent for decades. Is that achievable or how far off are we?

the bulk of my work is oil fired heating, when it comes time to change boilers most customers dont want to hear the words 'heat pump', probably because of all the early installs creating a lot of scare stories (which are mainly true around here).. its always good to get rid of the kero but for most customers the greenest thing they are willing to do is try HVO when its introduced. in the past I have taken out ASHP and replaced with oil because customers are cold and poor, these stories make their way out into the Welsh communities and people dont trust heat pumps after that.. there is a lot of educational, as well as physical work to do.

Very happy with my OEM kit, really helps to understand what the system is doing and gives opportunities for fine-tuning. Would highly recommend it for anyone fitting an ASHP

He must be getting well paid by the heat pump manufacturers for promoting these heat pumps they cost a fortune to install and run and are no use in a cold climate like Scotland.

Any thoughts on the Newark Heat Geek cylinders for installations vs. Vaillant's own cylinder?

Great video. We have had our heat pump for 3 years now which was a swap for oil and have never regretted it. Cheaper to run especially as we have solar too and as you say no smell. We also had the Rayburn converted to electric which is also cheaper to run and no smells in the kitchen

We had an oil tank and combi and it didnt smell so thats not really a good reason to switch, plenty of other reasons though as you mention but space would be an issue in a lot of homes.

Yes the way forward I totally agree. 🔥🔥🔥

Not that we need to change ATM, but it goes to show that a properly running an oil boiler is quite competitive in terms of running costs. I can see the advantage removing oil in a rental property but, TBH, the hassle of having the oil topped up in our place two or three times a year isn't that big a deal and there is a sense of satisfaction if you can buy the oil when the price is low. That said, were our system to fail, I would seriously look at a heat pump (with the caveat below). As others have posted lower down, it's a real shame that there are so few Heat Geek approved installers in the west country and that old housing stock makes the heat pump proposition less appealing. As I see over and over again, so many installers simply don't understand the heat pump technology and the consumers end up with a pretty inefficient system and, in effect, a raw deal.

I rarely seen an air conditioner who managed to run for 10-15 years (usually Daikin and Mitsubishi) - and the air conditioners only run for 2-4 months in a year in my country 😅 I expect even the most expensive ones will have some ugly faults in less than 10 years if they are running for @ 6 months/year… I don’t say that is not possible for some of the heat pumps to reach 15-20 years but I don’t expect that from Vaillant… At recent(2-3years old) @100kw Vaillant boilers the impellers of the EBM Papst fans are disintegrating😅😂 … we have a lot of them failing at schools and churches 😅😂; we have a lot of 3 way valves from Vaillant failing apart in warranty 😅; electronic filling valves …. And this are extremely simple parts to make right … I will never trust Vaillant on a heat pump product 😅

@ 9:02 Are you sure? 😊 You’re secret favorite brand (😅 :D ) Viessmann can do almost the unimaginable on their ground to water heat pump from at least 2015-2016 😊 You can see everything; status of all the internal sensors; electronic expansion valve status for the refrigerant; efficiency, power output; power input, heat curves… all in one product; even graphic simulation of the refrigerant circuit 😊 …. Power and efficiency day by day…. I think the rest of the industry are just copying them 😅

@ 4:26 I really hate the ideea of 10 boxes on the wall… they could use plug in cards in the main controller just like ram memory cards in computers… but they are greedy ….

@ 4:04 Why not use a magnetic filter/separator instead of a Y filter? I really hate this tipe of Y filter - with the time the cap gets stuck and many times I have to hit it with a spanner or a hammer to crack the fused pieces of metal…(brass is the only metal on witch the metal cristals are fusing together in the earth atmosphere … other metals or metal alloys need vacuum to merge together by themselves)

Your installations don’t seem to incorporate a method to prevent thermosyphoning from the tank. Is this not a concern?

I'd looked at replacement of the gas combi with a heatpump, but the capital cost (no grants here) killed it before even considering pipe upgrades in concrete floors. What I did find baffling was the quoted annual running costs, 895 for oil, 820 for the heat pump for winters of -3 - That would be marginally under what I started with on my own 100m2 place on gas heating before beginning phased changes to insulation, monitoring temps, boiler run times, etc as I went. A manual version of weather compensation made a big difference during big freeze events, max advantage taken from the condensing aspect - When the Buderus main-board blew in March hen it was -6, it brought forward the intended change to a load- compensated Viessmann (down to 3.2 rather than 8 kW) in summer. Not a pleasant experience, but job done... Anyhow, to the cost aspect - Before closing the final phase of the thermal envelope last February, my annual gas bill was already at 380 quid equivalent - That is now headed to well under 300 for the next, and winters here go down to -16 now instead of -20 previously. The final radiator upgrade and swap around in August will see 105-120% of calculated heat loss for every room when it's -16 outside, at -3 the rads are 150-180%. If prices fall substantially for heat pumps here I might look again, but for now the combi will do me fine on 20-25% of the original gas consumption... Ok, it's not zero carbon, but a massive step in the right direction. This is why I really do not understand the UK's blinkered view to insulation, it's baffling. Open Energy began life as a bunch of like minded hobbyists, glad to see them grow over the years and become commercially successful - As boiler/etc manufacturers remain so bloody minded about interfacing, they will continue to fill the gap....

Awesome! No insulation in the loft?

It's a rich man's perk. A beautiful system, beautifully installed, but it saves not a penny in running costs. Tell us, Szymon, the actual cost. With 20 million gas fired houses, probably £300 billion for installation costs plus £30 billion a year for maintenance and replacement. On top of that £100,000 per house to strengthen the grid. That is the official figure (total cost £3 trillion) from National Grid ESO. We will have a nation of very poor householders and very rich plumbers. Will it make any difference? Not a lot because when the demand is greatest, on those windless cold winter days, we will still rely on gas power stations. The pro-net-zero BBC says that such plans are 'highly ambitious'. That's the word they use which means 'impossible'.

Works lovely at 25 degrees outside, indeed.

We don't use Open Energy Monitor, but instead use the Ebusd project's logging. Using the data from that, I was able to confirm that our heat pump suffers from the Vaillant energy integral counting firmware issue - Not that the evidence matters as Vaillant doesn't care, but it's good to be able to just quickly pull that data out. We can also clearly see if it's cycling or not, how often it defrosts etc. We've also used it to experiment with the DHW plate loading setup. I have a question about this install, on the central heating return you've used a press-fit ball valve. Are you not concerned about the maintainability of the valve or do you think that's a non-issue? I like press-fit, but I'm unsure how I feel about the ball valves.