It’s in! They left us 10 minutes ago. We have heat in the pipes! They have given it an immersion boost and they reckon we should have hot water within the hour.

My father in law was here with them all day, I’m only got in myself for the last 30 mins. He is a bit of a renewables guru and was liaising with them all day and he is quite content. Really happy with how good and friendly and courteous the team from MCA renewables were. Now let’s see how we go!

Woke up this morning and I would say things are looking promising with probably a few wee things to sort out.
The immersion boost had the tank temperature up at 52 when I went to bed at midnight and we had good hot water from that obviously. 

The underfloor was heating steadily too when I went to bed and the radiators upstairs were warm if not hot. 

got up this morning and the progress of the underfloor heating had slowed. Quite little progress in 7 hours and I noticed that the temp on the tank had dropped to 28, so no hot water coming out of taps. I put the immersion on again and it came up and seems to be staying up. 
Engineer is calling in again today so we shall see.

I would say though that 16 degrees in my kitchen and 17 upstairs feels much nicer than it did when they systems were fired by oil. Don’t really understand why that is, but it’s good!

@marvinator80 Excellent, keep us updated, which I am sure you will, looking forward to seeing how you get through the "burn in/nurturing phase"

@derek-m I was toying with the idea of putting Solar panels + battery and thinking it's perhaps better to store any solar energy in a battery and then use it where is best to use it including the heat pump.  Then rather than an Eddi immersion you would use heat pump which should be higher cop even in the summer months.  Would this be a better setup?

Posted by: @soniks

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@derek-m I was toying with the idea of putting Solar panels + battery and thinking it's perhaps better to store any solar energy in a battery and then use it where is best to use it including the heat pump.  Then rather than an Eddi immersion you would use heat pump which should be higher cop even in the summer months.  Would this be a better setup?

Dependent upon the size of your solar array, you may find that you have an abundance of solar generation on quite a number of days.

The benefit of a power diverter is that it only diverts the excess solar generation, which would normally be exported back to the grid, so can heat the water in your hot water cylinder, gradually throughout the day. Running a heat pump may heat the water quicker, but could entail importing power from the grid.

Obviously, with sufficient battery storage it would be possible to store the solar PV energy and then run your heat pump to produce hot water, which would indeed be more efficient, but then find that you later have excess solar generation which is once more exported to the grid.

The other factor to consider is running your heat pump just to produce hot water adds to the running hours and subsequent wear and tear.

@marvinator80

I was going to say see page two of the following guide, but of course you have not changed anything internally.  For me the main difference is that our back patio does not smell like heathrow airport anymore.

Posted by: @william1066

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@marvinator80

I was going to say see page two of the following guide, but of course you have not changed anything internally.  For me the main difference is that our back patio does not smell like heathrow airport anymore.

 

NHBCFOUNDATION.ORG "https://www.nhbcfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NF71-Guide-to-Underfloor-Heating.pdf"

Thanks William. It seems that the lower flow temperature working constantly means that 17/18 is as comfortable as 20 was when our underfloor and radiators were fired by oil. 
Also with oil we found that rooms very quickly went from too cold to too hot. Not finding that issue now at all, though it’s early days. 
My wife and I are currently at a hotel break (Gleneagles, it’s amazing) and grandparents and children are at home. Reports from them are that everything is working as it should. 
Will see again myself tomorrow.

Posted by: @derek-m

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Posted by: @soniks

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@derek-m I was toying with the idea of putting Solar panels + battery and thinking it's perhaps better to store any solar energy in a battery and then use it where is best to use it including the heat pump.  Then rather than an Eddi immersion you would use heat pump which should be higher cop even in the summer months.  Would this be a better setup?

Dependent upon the size of your solar array, you may find that you have an abundance of solar generation on quite a number of days.

The benefit of a power diverter is that it only diverts the excess solar generation, which would normally be exported back to the grid, so can heat the water in your hot water cylinder, gradually throughout the day. Running a heat pump may heat the water quicker, but could entail importing power from the grid.

Obviously, with sufficient battery storage it would be possible to store the solar PV energy and then run your heat pump to produce hot water, which would indeed be more efficient, but then find that you later have excess solar generation which is once more exported to the grid.

The other factor to consider is running your heat pump just to produce hot water adds to the running hours and subsequent wear and tear.

 

Proper construction of our garage starts tomorrow. We only got the foundations poured before everything froze up so hoping to have solar and battery installed in March sometime. 

will also be playing it by ear between the Eddi and ASHP.

@william1066 and aye our utility room used to smell of kerosene but about a year ago the fire valve failed and after we replaced that we have no smell. Now I know the smell is gone forever.

@marvinator80

To provide hot water a heat pump has to work hard, so draws more power from the supply. This is not a problem when the solar PV system is generating sufficient energy, but if you were to switch on your kettle at the same time, you may then end up importing power. The other thing to consider is those 'pesky' clouds.

A power diverter monitors the electricity supply to your home, to see if you are importing or exporting. If you are exporting say 1kW due to the present amount of solar generation, it can diverter this 1kW to your 3kW rated immersion heater, so you would be neither importing or exporting. If you now switch on your 3kW kettle, the diverter would stop diverting to the immersion heater, and your kettle will be powered by 1kW from the solar PV system and 2kW from the grid.

If in the same situation you were running a heat pump to provide how water, and it was drawing 3kW, then with 1kW of solar generation you would be importing 2kW, which would increase to 5kW if you also switched on your kettle.

Ok, so back from our break and system seems to be performing perfectly. Electricity use has reduced markedly each day Friday to Monday and I’m sure that’s to do with it bedding in and the rising outside temperature.

all looking good so far.

Actually, I think 2 of the new radiators might need a tweak. They are nowhere near as warm as the other ones.

Rightly, none of them are running hot like the did with the oil boiler. 

Installers are coming back for a check in tomorrow so I’m sure we can sort that.