@jaynieq Thanks but system here is Samsung, looks different.

No operating instructions left here. 

Time I left you all, it has been good to have some support, technical advice is beyond me. 

It must have sounded as though I was a serial nit picker, prowling about looking for trouble. I wanted this to work.

Solid fuel stove was left in place so have fired it up once again, fortunately someone brought a bag of anthracite into kitchen as I couldn't have carried it. So disappointed. 

@dwynwen We don’t think you are a nit-picker; it would be good if all users were so discerning and keen to have an efficient working system in their home. If you think you are a nit-picker, I wonder what my installers think of my following them around, questioning anything I didn’t understand, queried almost everything and insisted on double checking on their workings at each and every stage!

Please don’t give up, you are so nearly there and I promise you, every reader and contributor to RHH will be behind you to offer advice and support when you wish to pursue the matter further.

Honestly, it is worth it in the long run in terms of comfort, quietness, even heating without up-draughts and dust rising - and who knows … in the end, we may be running systems much more cleanly and cheaply than with gas or oil! Regards, Toodles.

@dwynwen mine is also Samsung. I do not have the technical knowledge of most member here but I have mine running well enough. Shout if you do want to try ............ that is assuming you do have a system that is capable of working with some basic settings put in place

@toodles Thank you for your kind reply. Good to hear you had a result eventually.

The problem is that most days I couldn't  follow them round.

Another problem is that they were polite and helpful, not easy to complain.

It didn't feel right telling professional tradespeople their job.

Don't know what will happen, perhaps court action. Not sure what to say but all my complaints are backed up with pictures but often days after event before I noticed.

Everything on hold. They have had an inspector's report and want to return but I am worried it will be more of the same. They have already been back and replaced one bad job with another bad job.

I don't want to be awkward, intransigent, but it worries me. I have switched off the system as far as I can, not interfered with anything. As I have said so often, I should have read the small print.

@lenny Hello and thanks.

I know very little about the system just some vaguely remembered school physics about heat exchangers. There are no instruction manuals, no clue as to what does what. Boxroom looks like an engine room, suppose it is. One of the radiator thermostats fell off when the cat rubbed against it, the battery cover has fallen off another, not sure if cat was involved. Surprised to find AA batteries were needed.

A friend's daughter asked if she could post pictures of a couple of things on TikTok, she thought it would give people a laugh! I said no.

Will take deep breaths, calm down, have a good think then decide whether to swallow my pride and let them back in the house.

@dwynwen What? The Cats?! Poor things would probably prefer to be indoors. (Only Joking) As to the AA cells, quite normal; we had a Hive controlled gas boiler and I kept hold of the programmable TRV’s when we had new radiators and a heat pump installation. Now I use one of the Hive PTRV’s for our bedroom as I can set all manner of temperature and days / times routines on my iPad. These PTRV’s are powered by two AA cells in each controller; they last about 12 months or so normally so not a major expense for comfort. As to a valve head falling off, the fitters obviously didn’t commission the system fully - sound very slapdash. The best setting for those TRV’s is fully open anyway - unless and until there is some thermal gain from solar which raises the room temperature beyond comfort level. I hope the installers did carry out the radiator balancing for you? If not and when you are feeling up to it, please look at:

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/how-to-balance-radiators-the-role-of-the-lockshield-valve

As to the instruction manuals (or lack of them) the installers are obliged to supply you with these as part of the commissioning procedure - you are entitled to them as part of the whole installation. Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @jaynieq

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@jamespa

 

OK so your are getting an COP for the installation of 3.5 since it was installed, 3.6 last month and 2.95 this month.  This includes both DHW and space heating, but since your DHW consumption is very low its not going to affect the figures much.  Thats not bad but not stellar either

Its not really possible to compare two installations but FWIW my figures are 4.1, 4.5 and 3.7 in the same order (shots below).  Thats roughly 15% 'better' in terms of the effect on consumption, but we dont live in the same house so the comparison is essentially meaningless.

I note you are running in room temp expanded mode and I think you said you have radbots.  This is likely to result in the two control systems (the TRVs and the heat pump) fighting each other.  I also think you said that the property was occupied all day.

If my memory (ie the above) is correct I think its likely you will get better performance by doing the following

• Removing the heads of all or most of the radbots (you could, for example, leave the ones in any bedroom that you want cool at night but warm during the day, but the more you remove the better and definitely at least half, preferably three quarters.  They just unscrew from the valve body.  Keep them in case you want to replace them, or alternatively decide to sell them on eBay.
• Switch to room temp mode: inactive

This will result in a house that is too warm, and rooms that are not all at the correct temperature -  so you then

• reduce the Heat curve until the house is roughly the right temperature.  You need to do this slowly, over several days, to allow it time to stabilise.  You can start off reducing by steps of 1 every 6 hours, then reduce to stems of 0.5 every 24 hours.
• balance the radiators.  I think @toodles has a good way to do that which hopefully he will repost.  If Im wrong or he doesnt repost I will set out a procedure.
• I cant remember if you had an external thermostat (hopefully not as the Sensocomfort has one inside) but if you do turn it up to maximum.

You are now running on pure weather compensation (as a result of setting the room temp mode to inactive) with a balanced system, which is about the most efficient possible.

If you get temp swings due eg to solar gain, you may want to go back to room temp mode active or expanded, but TBH I found that inactive gave the best stability and comfort!  Note that switching back to expanded or inactive will react to the room where the sensocomfort is, but will affect all rooms.  An alternative if only one room is affected by solar gain is to put a radbot back on that TRV, but set say a couple of degrees above the target temp.  Then it acts as a temperature limiter.  However I wouldn't do any of this fine tuning until you have got the basics right (if that is you decide to 'play'.

Before you do any of this I strongly recommend you read section 2.12 of the sensocomfort manual and would recommend (a little less strongly) to visit the heat geek site and watch what they have to say about radiator balancing.  Dont worry if you dont follow everything they say, you will pick up some tips and principles.

If that doesnt make sense or you need further explanation please ask.  However please bear in mind that, whilst this will probably save money, it might be 'only' 10-20% and it might not.  However its very unlikely to make the system more expensive to run.  Also I wont be offended if you do nothing, your system is not a 'car crash' so far as I can tell and you might be quite happy to leave as is.

You are lucky BTW, the Vaillant user interface is much more user friendly than many other heat pumps and the control system is very capable.

Posted by: @lenny

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Posted by: @cathoderay

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Is it some form of Tory government money laundering scheme for private companies?

Now that is moving off topic 😏  but ECO is a follow on from CESP and CERT, both started under Blair.

 

Posted by: @cathoderay

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.............it reminds us that questionable implementations of 'benefit' schemes are endemic.

but are the schemes that people needing that help have to use. Questionable implementation is not a problem for those entitled to "benefits" and we all have the power to change the Implementers (?)  every 5 years ..... 

but that discussion really is hijacking JanieQ's topic 😌 

 

I actually think its totally unfair to blame the Government entirely, whatever the colour.  The fact is that any scheme of this nature (and indeed almost any scheme where the person who pays is not actually the end customer) is open to abuse by unscrupulous people, and there is absolutely no end to the ingenuity of people when it comes to being unscrupulous. 

Personally I think that, given human nature, its totally impossible to design a scheme which is totally immune to this problem, so Governments face the dilemma of accepting some level of abuse or having no schemes at all.  Of course some politicians, particularly those more right leaning, will advocate the second of these and certain sections of the media will (it seems often rather successfully) amplify the abuses, whilst suppressing the successes, in support of that position.  

This being the case I think we all have to make a decision.  Do we prefer that our Government, of whatever colour, attempts to do things which help people that need help and/or help the environment and/or some other cause, albeit that this will inevitably lead to some abuse, or do we decide that the inevitable abuse (however limited) is too high a price to pay and abandon every attempt by Government to do anything which involves any kind of 'subsidy' with the aim of making the lives of some better.

@jamespa Your request is my pleasure!

https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/how-to-balance-radiators-the-role-of-the-lockshield-valve

Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @jamespa

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This being the case I think we all have to make a decision.  Do we prefer that our Government, of whatever colour, attempts to do things which help people that need help and/or help the environment and/or some other cause, albeit that this will inevitably lead to some abuse, or do we decide that the inevitable abuse (however limited) is too high a price to pay and abandon every attempt by Government to do anything which involves any kind of 'subsidy' with the aim of making the lives of some better.

I started writing a post about this earlier, and put it aside while I dealt with some other things. By the way, I am of the view that this is sufficiently on topic, it's related to why did the OP have a problem in the first place:

Posted by: @jaynieq

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Hi, I’ve just joined this forum and feel like a rabbit staring at the headlights of truck.. 

Long story but because of a medical condition I was awarded an Eco4 grant in September ‘24. An ASHP and solar panels were installed in October to replace oil boiler. I’m completely bewildered and have no clue what I’m doing with the system. My electricity bill has sky rocketed and quite frankly I’m scared, and cold. 

The installers have been less than helpful. I really don’t know what to do and am seriously considering having the whole system taken out.

@jamespa, what you say above implies it has to be a binary choice, which it isn't. We could learn from experience, ditch schemes that fail, and increase budgets for schemes that do better. 

The gist of what I wrote earlier is about why ECO4 is in such a parlous state. It still seems that the ECO4 funding is a government tax added to our electricity bills, which is then collected and administered by private companies. What I am not at all sure about is who has oversight, and who ensures accountability when things go wrong. @dwynwen has mentioned 'an inspector' a couple of times, but it is not clear who they work for (or represent) or what teeth if any they have. I dare say if @jaynieq and @dwynwen had had competent independent oversight available to them, they may not have found themselves in the awful situations they found themselves in. 

@cathoderay The inspector who called said he was independent, not connected in any way to contractors.

I left him to his work. He said he would write a report but there was no guarantee that the cosmetic faults would be rectified although there were "other matters" which would need attention.

It is all so cheap and obviously a rush job. The inspector did say that a little more time and care would have made a lot of difference. Think the biggest shock was the amount of work needed to restore some sort of order to house. A long list and doubt I can afford it. Told all I would need to do was some redecorating. The list is long and includes jobs that will need professional tradespeople. Think some of it would have been included in a paid for contract as necessary works.

I am also seriously considering having everything removed, hate waste but most could be reused.

Probably going off the subject but I keep reading about Hive, no idea what that is. 

@dwynwen please stay.. 

I was so down and disheartened when I first came across this hub. My despairing post was met with brisk kindness and immediate offers of help. There are many knowledgeable folk here who are generous with their time and expertise. 
I’m still bemused by the system and frightened by the sheer cost of it, but little by little, I’m beginning to understand and learn.

I’m sure there will be similar story for you. To use a hackneyed phrase,

’hang on in there..’

Sending my very best wishes to you (in the absence of any knowledge or expertise)