I think that you are correct in that the leak was on the automatic air vent.
The noise will have been due to the fact that you had air in your system, which the above vent is supposed to remove. The vent works on the following principle. Inside the body of the vent is a float, which opens and closes a valve, which is connected to the port on the top with the red plug fitted. If there is air in the system it should eventually makes its way into the vent, and cause the float to lower, which in turn opens the valve. The open valve allows the air to escape, until water enters the body of the vent and lifts the float, which in turn closes the valve. If a little dirt gets on the valve seat it can prevent the valve from closing fully, and hence allow water to leak out.
It would be useful to have an old towel handy to mop up any water that may escape. Try closing the isolation valve and removing the red plug, then slightly open the isolation valve and see if there is air coming out of the top port. This should eventually stop when all the air has been expelled, but if you get water coming out then it means that the valve has not sealed fully.
If you get lots of air coming out, but no water, and then it stops, it could be that the pressure in the system has fallen to zero. Ask someone to slightly open the system filling valve and watch for further air and/or water coming out of the vent. Also see if you get any response from the pressure gauge.
When you were told previously to tighten the valve, was it the red plug that you tightened down? Is the red plug solid or does it have a hole in it? The reason I ask is that quite often such devices have plastic plugs or caps fitted to prevent dirt entering during transit, but should be removed when put into service.
If the vent continues to leak water then it will need to be repaired or replaced. If you feel up to it and have the necessary tools you could open up the vent and have a look inside, it may just require cleaning. There appears to be a joint near the top of the body of the vent, which should allow the top section to be removed.
If the pressure gauge does not respond when you refill the system, it could be that the gauge is faulty or there is a blockage. If possible, partially drain the system and remove the pressure gauge, and check that there is no accumulation of dirt or rust in the hole in the connection at the rear of the pressure gauge.
If you are not certain about anything the please just drop me a line.
I have just noticed a cross section view of the automatic air vent on the Intatec website.
If you have a set of Allen Keys, close the isolation valve and then carefully remove the dark plastic fitting in the side of the upper section of the vent. This is the valve arrangement. If it is dirty, try cleaning it using an old toothbrush or something similar. When cleaned refit and test the system again.
I'll turn off the isolation valve then I can have a better look and use an Allen key to open it up.
Hopefully it will just be dirty and I'll be able to clean it. I'm a bit reticent to do any more myself as I'm wary of undoing a connection and finding I can't put it back properly and have a leak (has happened before with simple things like u-bends in sinks).
If it is more than just dirty I'll order a new valve along with the replacement gauge and take it from there. I think I can handle changing the gauge.
The result of my experiment with switching off the HW and heating was that yesterday we used 11kWh (of which 2kWh overnight) compared with 20kWh the day before. So roughly 9kWh must be due to the HW. I'm not sure what makes up the 11kWh (some was cooking). Anyway once I have a meter fitted on the heat pump supply I'll have an accurate daily reading of its power use. It's a lifestyle choice to have constant hot water so probably little scope for reducing that. Also there is probably some heat loss in the underground conduit between the heat pump and the house. I won't be digging up the patio to see if it was done properly - just have to live with however it is.
Having looked at the cross section image of the automatic air vent on the Intatec website, the red plug isn't just a transport seal, it is actually a needle valve. It can therefore be used to prevent water from leaking if the internal valve fails to seat correctly.
Probably the best way to operate your system is to keep the red needle valve closed on a permanent basis, and then say once a month open it slightly and see if you get any air or water coming out. Eventually you should get to the point were all the air has been removed from the system.
Before you remove the valve assembly with an allen key, have a look at the cross section image on the Intatec website. Because you have an isolation valve, and the fact that the automatic air vent does not need to be installed for your heating system to work normally, if you find a lot of dirt in the vent then you could try opening it for cleaning. The two halves are screwed together, but could be tight and require tools to undo. If you cannot effect a repair yourself then you can just order a replacement.
I'm used to stripping down equipment and forget that others have not had the training that I have enjoyed over the years. The important thing is to have a clean workspace, look at any drawings or diagrams that are available, remove parts and lay them out in a logical order, clean the parts and put them back together in reverse order.
From the point of view of electricity usage, it may be useful to draw up a list of all the equipment that is connected or plugged in and check its power rating on the manufacturers label. Our highest day over the past week was 9.3 kWh household usage, though because we have a solar PV system we actually imported just 2.6 kWh, and of course all our hot water was heated using solar energy. I suppose your 11 kWh plus 9 kWh for hot water would probably be deemed normal.
This winter and spring has been a lot colder than last year, and it's really interesting to see the correlation between ambient temperature and ASHP consumption.
Our next step in this journey is to now drop our consumption. The new K3s have definitely addressed our cold rooms, and everything is now coming to temperature. I think that we'll try and drop the flow rate to 40C, and see if that helps.
I dropped ours to 40C on May25, 2021, but the outside temperatures have gone up and I haven't seen a considerable difference, but let's see what happens.
For comparison April and May were also very high for gas usage. It is said this was due to it being both cold and wet.
Gas usage rose 36 per cent in May and 25 per cent in April compared to normal average usage levels.
It was the frostiest April for at least 60 years, according to the Met Office.
In some regions, usage was up by more than 50 per cent.
In South Wales, gas usage in May was 54 per cent higher than the four-year average, while in the North West, South West and West Midlands it was 43 per cent higher.
Our downstairs is all open plan, and the heating of it is split into zones. The kitchen is on a zone and the living/dining room are on a zone.
Last year during the winter, we only turned the living / dining room zone on, as that’s where we relaxed in the evenings, and the kitchen was only used to cook in so we didn’t bother with that zone. Thinking that, that made the most sense.
As we get closer to turning on the heating again, I’ve been wondering should I be turning on both the kitchen and the living / dining zones? Is it less efficient to only turn on one zone in an open plan room? In theory does it take longer for the desired room to be heated in an open plan room if only one of the zones is turned on?
Our downstairs is all open plan, and the heating of it is split into zones. The kitchen is on a zone and the living/dining room are on a zone.
Last year during the winter, we only turned the living / dining room zone on, as that’s where we relaxed in the evenings, and the kitchen was only used to cook in so we didn’t bother with that zone. Thinking that, that made the most sense.
As we get closer to turning on the heating again, I’ve been wondering should I be turning on both the kitchen and the living / dining zones? Is it less efficient to only turn on one zone in an open plan room? In theory does it take longer for the desired room to be heated in an open plan room if only one of the zones is turned on?
Does anyone have any thoughts?
Hi Dan,
To keep the temperature constant within an area, it is necessary for the heat energy put into the area to match the heat energy lost. To actually raise the temperature it is necessary to put in more energy than that which is being lost.
By having both zones on together it would be possible to raise the temperature quicker if needed, but more importantly, if the heat source is an ASHP, is that the heat demand would be met with a lower water flow temperature. The lower the water flow temperature coming from an ASHP, the more efficient will be its operation.
@dant, I agree with @derek-m. If it's really open plan, what you're doing is trying to heat your whole house with half the radiators necessary. There will be less hot water circulating and, although the smaller volume of water will heat up quicker, it will take longer to heat the house. The circulating water will also cool down quicker too and the thermostat will soon be calling for heat again. I've now got minute by minute monitoring on my ASHP; what I can see is that it uses a lot of power to raise the flow temp and a lot less to keep it there. I think heating a bigger colume of water and keeping it heated might use less power that less water going up and down. I might be completely wrong of course !! 😀 Maybe try having the kitchen zone on but at a lower temp?
We have two zones we control separately but while they are connected, it's definitely not open plan.
@george I too have a secondary return fitted pumping hot water to a separate annex. We initially ran the bronze pump throughout the day but quickly realised this was overkill.
The bronze pump was plugged into the mains via a 13amp plug so we installed a timer so the pump would turn on for an hour in the morning and on for a couple of hours in the evening.
But again I realised this too was overkill. The pump just needs to run enough to flush the cold water from the pipes. Once flushed the pump can be turned off until the water in the underground pipes becomes cold/or luke warm. The pump can then be turned on again for a minute or so.
Depending on how well insulated your underground pipes are your pump could run for say 1 minute every hour.
Might be worth a try to see if it lowers the energy consumption.
For quite a number of years I have been carrying out observations and tests on our central heating system. Like you, I soon realised that the central heating pump does not need to run for extended periods of time. I eventually designed a system in which a primary sensor measures the temperature within our home and feeds this data into a controller. A secondary sensor measures the temperature of one of the radiators and is also connected to the controller. Dependent upon the temperature measured by the primary sensor, the controller calculates the required temperature of the radiators to achieve the desired setpoint. If the temperature measured by the secondary sensor, located on the radiator, is below the temperature calculated by the controller, the controller starts the central heating pump and the boiler. The central heating pump and boiler run for approximately 4 minutes until the temperature of the radiator achieves the calculated value. The process repeats when the temperature of the radiator falls by a few degrees. During mild weather the pump and boiler may only switch on for 4 minutes every two hours or so, but when the outside air temperature is -5C, it may be every 15 minutes.
If you wish you could automate your system by installing two thermostats, one monitoring the room temperature and one monitoring the radiator temperature. You could even keep the timer in the circuit to control the timing of the heating. If you wire the output from the timer to the room thermostat and then the output from the room thermostat to the radiator thermostat, the output from the radiator thermostat then being connected to the pump. When the timer switches on, this will power the room thermostat. If the room temperature is below the setpoint then the room thermostat will switch on and power the radiator thermostat. If the temperature of the radiator is below the setpoint of the radiator thermostat then the heating pump will be switched on. Once the radiator is up to temperature the radiator thermostat will switch off and stop the pump. The pump will therefore be switched on and off dependent upon how quickly the radiator cools, and once the room is up to temperature the system will stop operating until the room cools sufficiently.
In this way you should achieve better control of the temperature within the room with the minimum energy consumption.
@derek-m Thanks for your comment Derek. Unfortunately I was replying to a post way back on page 6 but the forum software doesn't seem to collate threads. I didn't make it clear that my post was about DHW.
@derek-m Thanks for your comment Derek. Unfortunately I was replying to a post way back on page 6 but the forum software doesn't seem to collate threads. I didn't make it clear that my post was about DHW.
Hi Mark - hit the "quote" button to get the text from the reply to appear on your reply.
