Im a heating engineer with over 20 years experience & im not sure what you do for a living but i would seriously consider a career obviously if the moneys right in this as you've done a great job here & should be extremely proud. good luck with what ever you do in life
Done a great job but some questions.Hell of a lot to go wrong and maintain. Especially if you sell house on. Heat pump location. Did you need planning permission. Also.. a strategic question. Why doesn't govt go down the hybrid route like cars. IE add a heat pump to existing systems. So heat pump is main system for heating. But gas boiler kicks in at a set level such as 16 degrees internal temp. So you know the house does t drop below a certain temperature. Thus you end up paying for a heat pump and new radiators. And a shared valve system for boiler and heat pump. Also how was the heat pump last 2 weeks with cold weather. What temp was the house internally overnight. And how much electricity did you use this month. Ie what was the cost.
@@rutherfojr Thanks, planning was not required. It's actually quite a simple system, if there was an issue in the future or end of life it would be easy enough to swap the outdoor unit for a new one just like a combi boiler swap. A hybrid system would add a lot of complication and even on the coldest of days, the heat pump is still cheaper to run the gas, therefore no reason to have a hybrid system, see my update video ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
I am plumber most of my profession time I have spend for electrical heating installation and repair work . Now I am doing course for heat pump installation . I like your video cause its give me confidence for heat pump course . good luck
This is fantastic to see the whole process start to finish and all the considerations you took. That data capturing stuff should be standard for everyone as it must be so good for people to see the actual COP over time. Very jealous of your skills and that you were able to do this yourself. Wishing you a very low cost and warm winter and looking forward to seeing your results in Spring :D
Plumbing/DIY isn't rocket science. A lot of people could do this, given a bit of swotting-up. If you use plastic pipe instead of copper that removes a big chunk of the practical difficulty (soldering plumbing does take a bit of practice to do reliably), but there is some COP loss associated with that.
Glyn first of all congratulations for achieving your install. You have likely done a whole lot more research on the subject than many ‘professional’ installers and you clearly have a holistic knowledge of the principles, theory, controls and instrumentation as well as the ‘geekery’ ability to get it all ‘talking’ to each other. I really enjoyed the video and look forward to the update.
Just finished fitting a 5kw air to water heat pump to existing boiler. I bought the heat pump second hand for £180. It comes on for 4hours a day 10 to 2pm as the 6kw Solar array is at its peak at that time. I don’t have the knowledge to fit a cylinder yet but I will do by summer. The heat pump is mounted in the loft so no one see the condenser. I’ve made so many mistakes but it’s a learning experience. My system is way simpler than your system it only consists of a two way motorised valve, automatic air vent and that’s it. All prv, expansion vessel and safety related stuff is in the vallaint condensing boiler. It’s working dude just tweaking system and balancing radiators now and then. Total cost around £400 to £500 not including solar. Your project is on another level dude, you are one smart cookie 👍
It’s been a few weeks now I’ve had it installed, it’s in the loft, loft rafters are not insulated so plenty of air flow. These are my pros and cons Pros Uses wasted heat that escapes from house to loft. When it is sunny even when it is minus temps the roof tiles get hot and is used by the heat pump so better cop. No one on my street knows my house is heated by a heat pump. No noise virtually silent Cons It was so hard to get the pump into loft, I used a £8 pulley to pull it up slowly on my own. Any leaks you will be in trouble I used three layers or leak protection. Self made drip trays that are plumbed into drain. At night it can get really cold so less efficient. My heat pump is really old over 10 years so only manages to get up to around 45 when really cold. The house is quite large 150 m2 and a 5kw is way too small. I plan to get anothe heat pump in future and use both together in tandem or one for the water and one for heating. Why not for £180. Best of all I can heat my home for free when sun is shining with no emissions what soever. I use the heat generated to store into 150mm ufh 60m2 concrete slab and slowly release the heat over 2-3 days. I will use the cold air in summer to control overheating in the attic by heating hot water. This summer was brutal. Hope this helps
@@manikdesign Ah right, I didn't realise the air intake was from within the loft! I can't see how this will work! A heat pump needs a lot of ambient air movement to extract heat from the air. Why you want to be heat pump to be hidden? They're permitted planning developments, so no issues to install outside. You will need to be careful that you're not making your house colder. Have you got a roof window you could use to duct the air flow?
@@GlynHudsonI had the whole roof redone with black concrete tiles and breathable membrane, air flow is not a problem I’m more worried if there are ever any leaks up there. It’s minus 4 up there now and all is working. Water temp is 41c. Loft floor is only 100mm insulated and it’s still working, imagine when I put 300mm insulation, my house will be too hot and I will have to leave windows open
5 months have past and a water cylinder have also been fitted. It takes around an hour or 1.5kw of power to heat up the cylinder to 55deg 125litre tank. So far still working well.
Great works and enthusiasm, all works well planned and executed. It's quite funny when someone not in the know usually sees the plant room they comment " what the hell is that mess " Anyone who has some knowledge usually comments " thats neat and well planned ". One thing i noticed is regs require 2 x 2 port valves for safety resons.When 3 port is used you must still have a 2port valve with safety controls and manual reset wired through it beween valve and pressurised cylinder.
Thanks! Those regs don't apply to heat pumps, my heat pump is not capable of generating a flow temperature higher than 60C so there's no danger of over heating the cylinder. The marjorty of heat pumps are installed with 3-port diverter valves.
@GlynHudson thanks for the reply, live and learn etc, my angle was based off water G regs and the immersion heater set point not the heat pump. Once again great install and wonderful presentation/edit, looking forward to updates .
Always nice to see someone having fun with a pipe slice. That's a really nicely put together video. Good pace, good amount of content and some nice pauses as you dive into the details that are most interesting. Great work Glyn (and army of helpers including a very patient camera person :) )
Have you considered routing the gas pipes (13:42) through the inside of the house to reduce heat loss? I have a mini-split type system that is supposed to raise the temperature of my MVHR in the loft. Condenser is on the ground outside and have trunking on the outside going round a corner and up to the loft (9m ish-run). The trunking is noticeably hot to the touch when in heating mode. Also confirmed with a thermal imaging camera where I have 21° C sliver temperature band along the whole length of the trunking with outside air temp of around 5° C. As soon as I saw that, I flipped the heat pump off (central gas heating is our primary source of heat). Suffice to say, I'd not recommend my system to anyone (System Air and installed by TL Trading).
It's an air to water (A2W) monobloc heat pump, so those external pipes carry water not gas. There's no space to run them internally, there's a bathroom with a shower cubical in the way! They are however very well insulated, and the running costs are significantly less than gas, see my update video: ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.htmlsi=RujmQw4_8r6zrYgf
@@GlynHudson Ok my bad. Still worth a touch test if you have a ladder or a thermographic inspections (the cameras have really gone down in price) on a very cold day. I'm now planning on getting air-to-air mini splits and boxing/insulating the trunking afterwards.
Hi Glyn. If you ever take the cylinder out for any reason, I would strongly suggest you swap out those plastic ball valves for your shower. I have had two of those plastic ones exactly the same spontaneously split in half. Luckily I was in the same room when it happened, otherwise it would have been a really damaging flood. They happened 5 years apart, but stupidly I didn't swap out both when the first failure occurred.
Glyn, well done, this is excellent information and very well presented and filmed. Fantastic to see the whole process and the challenges and your honesty, I love sustainable devlopment and I'm very impressed with your skills and abilty and look forward to seeing your report in the Spring 🙂I wish you good luck to you and your family in all you do and your future career.
I thought, he's a climber. And it turns out you are! I'm installing an ASHP in a new build on my property near Loch Ness, but with underfloor heating. Your vid is very informative and the paintings on the walls are intrigueing!
It started out with me thinking that I might do that, but as you progressed in the work I started to have doubts. Excellent job young man, all the best to you and yours.
I picked the correct video to watch here for sure. Very detailed and thorough. I am looking at adding a heat pump to an existing vented thermal store system already heated by; solar PV immersion, wood gasifying stove, gas condensing boiler and mains immersion (as a backup). Your reply to comments has also been useful regarding integrating to a vented system with a heat exchanger. Thank you. Looking forward to the next video.
Excellent video Glyn and great work. Well done for doing such a well thought through job. We are of course all looking forward to seeing your results.. it will be very interesting.
So useful for me - just delving into the possibilities and your vid gives a great explanation into this greener alternative. Thanks for posting (bloody great).
Thanks, this video was actually filmed last year. Here's an update video with how the system performed over the last winter ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
30m2 for a 2 story, 2 bed end of terrace with an extension? I doubt it!! But impressive work. Edit: I've just seen in the description that youve addressed this and it is in fact 70m2.
Terrific video. Thank you. I am retired now, but have done a few central heating installs over the years. I love your youthful energy and enthusiasm. I have been exasperated with weeping compression joints many a time over the years. In recent times, I have mostly worked with plastic pipe. I have a holiday apartement in Portugal which I recently replumbed entirely in plastic, ditched the old bottle gas boiler, and went fully electric. May I ask why you have used copper. It looks lovely, and you have done a great job, but wouldn't plastic have been easier? I am old school and love copper, but, my God, it was much easier working in plastic.
Hi Peter, thanks for your comment. For the best efficiency a ASHP requires high flow rate and low resistance pipework. The main reason I choose to use copper is the internal bore dimension is larger than plastic, especially since plastic required inserts that restrict the flow further. Also, regulations require an unvented cylinder to be plumbed in copper at least for the first few meters. Plastic pipework is great for some things, I've used plastic pipework for the hot and cold water feeds in our kitchen and bathroom.
@@GlynHudson yes, I agree. I'd forgotten about that. The fittings you get in Portugal are even more restrictive than those in the UK. Fine if you have mains water pressure to drive the flow, but probably not if you just have a circulator. I get it.
As an EV & ASHP owner, I feel load shifting is key - I have Octopus Go Faster for 5 hours from 1:30-6:30am. I charge the car first then the hot water and then heat the house with ASHP for the last period up to 6:30am. I let the Tesla Powerwall sort itself out and it normally charges to 100%. This way by the end of my off peak period I have a fully charged car and home battery, hot water AND a house at 20 degrees… I then use whatever solar is produced for daytime leaving the powerwall to cover the dark evening for cooking and keeping us warm. It isn’t really cold enough yet to really test this system but my hope is that with my well insulated house I can minimise peak power usage keeping winter costs to minimum.
Some here, I schedule DHW cycle for my Octopus Go period. I've also got a battey which is due to be installed in a few weeks, very excited about this since it will enable the ASHP to run fully from off-peak power
We were advised not to wall-mount our external unit because it was likely to resonate, so mounted it on the ground about 1ft away from the wall instead. Have heard the same is true for AC units, but your solid stone walls may be less susceptible to this!
I used rubber dampers between the bracket and the unit, they seem to be working well, I can't detect any vibration from inside the house. In fact, it's almost impossible to tell if the unit is running without going outside since it's so quiet. Installers will want to avoid wall mounting since it's a lot more work. 1ft clearance is a bit tight, I'm surprised they were willing to install with such a small clearance, this will be much less than the manufacturer's recommendation.
Just had a ECO4 air source heat pump fitted and realise this is not a job for a plumber but a hydraulic engineer.. Flow/pipe size/pipe insulation is critical to the system working correctly.. With a SCOP of 3 or higher
Absolutely brilliant, well done. You should form your own company if you have not already done so and train others. There is a dearth of companies with engineers who are capable of doing what you have achieved. I have been looking for years into ASHP ever since the RHI was introduced many years ago and still haven’t found any company I am confident in to do a pucker job, maybe Octopus might fill this void as I was very impressed with their survey but wanted to wait till they got some installs under their belt.
@@GlynHudson Those guys charge mega bucks as they're used to working on millionaire's houses. I'd avoid them unless you could get them on a friend's rate.
The intro frightened the life out of me! You said total floor area of 30sq.m, this totally threw my calcs on our 270year old 80sq.m two bed, then I added up totals in your heat calc sheets, it seems you have around 70sq.m. I look forward to your spring update as I'm considering a 6kw system, but 'everyone' says it won't work on a house like ours.
Yes, it's about 65-70 m^2, I corrected this on the description. I got this wrong in the commentary since 30m^2 I's the area of the ground floor. It's been working very well, house has been lovely and warm and average COP for heating and DHW over the winter has been 4.2 which is very good. It's one of the best performing installations on heatpumpmonitor.org
@@GlynHudson Very interesting info, going through that list looking for properties which might have similar heating requirements to ours, and it seems doable despite all the naysayers who advise me it's not possible on a house like ours. Looking at some of your data, do you run the heating 'constantly' i.e. you aim to keep home heated throughout day and night, instead of the 'traditional' burst of heat in morning and night? From what I can make out esp. on old not very well insulated houses this seems the way to go, and indeed this is what we do with our present multifuel heating, it 'ticks over' 24/7 then ramps up in evening. I know someone how had a heat pump in a rental and it was taken out due to not working, but from what I can work out they tried to use the 'traditional' blast of heat morning and evening.
@@fredbloggs72 it's definitely possible, heat pumps can work efficiently in any house had long as the system is correctly designed. Yes, we run the heatpump at low flow temperature most of the day. However, my wife is on maternity leave so is home most of the day so this makes sense. If we were both our during the day we would set a set back temperature a couple of degrees lower than the evening setpoint. Same goes for overnight. Agree, older properties with large thermal mass work well with this approach. Asking a heatpump to deliver a very hot 'blast' of heat twice per day will result in much lower efficiency.
I have a heat pump and love it . But unlike you I was not confidant enough to fit it myself. I really enjoyed watching this video. And your other European adventures 👍
Good grief! You must have massive 'cojones' to take on a project like that, and a brain to match! I've only just started taking an interest in heat pumps and I had no idea you could power traditional radiators and water tank storage as all I'd seen was air con type units running in houses. I'm surprised you didn't use plastic pipes for much of the install as soldering (and even compression) can increase potential for leaks, not to mention the hassle of bending and feeding copper pipe, but I'm sure you have your reasons for that even though it seems to add more hassle to the project. I hope now that it's no longer 30 deg. outside it's doing the business and I look forward to your follow up. Thanks so much for posting this as I'm sure the filming and editing probably doubled the effort of an already complex job.
Thanks! Monoblock Air to water heat pumps like this one are very common particularly in the UK. In other countries where they have more need for cooling in the summer air to air (A2A) heat pumps e.g A/C are more common. If done correctly a soldered copper pipe is less likely to leak and more robust long term than plastic. Cooper also has a larger internal bore for the same external bore than plastic, so it can handle more flow. It's been quite cold in the UK this winter, we had temperatures down to -5C, the heat pump worked great keeping the house nice and warm and getting good performance. I will be doing an update video soon, in the meantime here's a link to live and historic performance data from my heat pump emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Nice work Glyn, I have recently been studying this subject for a possible future project i am planning, I would be grateful to hear of your findings through a north Wales winter. Have you been expanding your family ?? Thanks for the film Ed
Magnificent video! Just leaves me fealing there is huge complexity in heat pump installation, when compared to, say Gas. Yes I do understand the reasons for and against, but my point is that with huge complexity there is almost always huge complications when things fail. And, therefore, the associated cost. You're not going to have any engineer 'call out' issues though - you can do it yourself !
Hi Tim, thanks for your comment. The two things which made this job more complicated than an average install was the fact the outdoor unit was wall-mounted at up high, and I fitted some extra monitoring kit. Apart from that everything else is identical to a gas or oil system boiler install with an unvented cylinder. There's not really much to go wrong that can't be easily replaced e.g three-port valves and pumps are stocked in every plumbing merchant.
Agree, I later realised why I had issues getting the the heat meter to seal, the thread on the body of the heatpump is not BSP, I should have used a flat face union with rubber washer to convert to BSP then use an iorn to convert to compression fitting
Wow! What did you say after "disconnect the gas for the last time"? You kinda lost me after that 🤣 Amazing skills, clever chap, fascinating video thanks
Very impressive. I have an even smaller much older quarry mid terrace house, also in North Wales. We are currently on an aging mains gas combi-boiler in need of replacement. it still gives us hot water but heating no longer functions. I also have a woodburner. I was considering a mini- split air to air heat pump with either a separate air source domestic water heater or possibly solar hot water and possibly some PV to supplement the mini split. Still considering various options. I was thinking to get away from a "wet" heating system if possible. Challenges include solid random stone walls, somewhat difficult to drill holes in without instability and lack of space for a hot water tank. Your video has given me a lot to think about how an air source heat pump "wet" system might still be a possible option. Be good to see your follow up after this cold winter in North Wales (so far!).
Thanks for your comment. A2A systems can be very efficient and are much easier to install, especially for a small house. Although unfortunately they won't be able to heat hot water
@@GlynHudson Thanks Glyn. Agreed A2A "mini splits" seem much easier to fit for heating and competitive on cost, not sure if DIY systems are available. Hot water supply will still be an issue, however, especially for available space. Options for domestic hot water I'm considering are a combination of economy 7 supply and PV to phase change tankless heat store (Sunamp or other) Or a dedicated heat pump water only heater which seem to be available. However I'm not sure if these pump heat from outside or from warmer areas inside the house which might make sense during summer but not in winter in UK/Wales. I will continue research!
@@malcolmnew8973 you can get heat pump hot water heaters which duct air from outside, there are American models which take heat from inside, but this is not normally wanted in the UK! This guy seems to know his stuff on HP hot water heaters: ruclips.net/video/gBh510zhvAA/видео.html
@@GlynHudson I've checked out your link suggested in previous reply. Very useful thanks. Also he mentioned a popular European system; a 4 way multisplit system with 3 air to air heaters and the fourth adapted to a small hot water cylinder which would be perfect for me, sadly not available in the UK, not sure when if ever!
As you say emitters are key, in my opinion. I see most people who claim "heat pumps don't work" just try to bolt on a heat pump to cast iron rads or small panel radiators with no fins. Then get surprised 55C outlet temps are not going to heat the home.
Brilliant video, thanks for uploading and you must be really proud of the fantastic job that you did. A useful thing to test for leaks is a ROTHENBERGER DRY PRESSURE TEST KIT. It connects temporarily to an open pipe with a pushfit connection. Any other open ends are bunged up with MONUMENT TOOLS NYLON DRAIN PLUGS 6 PIECES.. You then get a car tyre foot pump and put in a bit of pressure. Leave it for a while and see if the built-in pressure gauge goes down. If it does, find the leak and fix it. It saves the hassle of water leaking everywhere and not being able to redo solder joints that are now wet. (ps you can test small bits of the heating circuit as you build it) Also if you have any non soldered joints/fittings that keep leaking use Fernox LS-X leak sealer. It will fix pretty much everything. All the above were invaluable when I ripped out all the poor original plumbing and radiators on my central heating and did a proper job like yourself..
Thanks, that's useful advice. I did do a air pressure test before filling up the system by just fitting a bike valve stem into a compression fitting, your dry pressure test kit sounds like a good solution. I would be very wary of using use Fernox leak sealer since it could block up the small passageways inside the heat pump heat exchanger which could reduce performance.
Wow great work and great video thanks. Very interesting putting heat pump high on the wall might ask if we have one installed as not got much outside space too . Very interesting to see your winter cop and your scop and costs with this winters high electricity prices !
V interesting! Would love an update to this video going through any snags in the last 4 months since installation and also the performance during this fairly cold winter
Thanks. Update video will be coming in the spring. The heat pump has been working perfectly, the house has been lovey and warm despite some cold snaps down to -5C. It's been getting an average COP of 4.2 which is excellent. Here's a link to live and historic data from the unit emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Excellent video! Great quality of work! All very informative - thanks. I wish I was 30 years younger, I would definitely have a crack at this but unfortunately my old bones and joints complain too much now!
Great job love your enthusiasm for renewables, I’m exactly the same and excited to be a part of the change. I run a heating company and we’ve recently got into the heat pump industry and it’s changing the game if it’s done right but it’s takes a lot to design the perfect system. I can see you’ve can a very good idea about the maths behind it. All I would say is y plan three port valve systems are old technology that should be updated to suit the modern tech you have
Thanks, great to hear you're getting into heat pumps. Y-plan on an HP is totally different to a Y-plan on a system boiler, HPs have hot water priority and weather compensation built-in in as standard, so they run a different flow temperature for central heating compared to hot water, checkout the live data from my system here: emoncms.org/samsung5kw, you can see the flow rate increase during a DHW cycle. I far as I understand there's no reason not to use a Y-plan for HP.
Hi Glyn, great video and excellent piece of work on the installation. Question - did you consider an air to air heat pump (is that the right term?) I've seen some suggested that can heat in winter and cool in summer - if augmented by solar I think cooling in summer has a lot to say for itself these days...
Thanks, I did briefly consider A2A but living in North Wales cooling is not a really needed, I also need DHW heating which A2A cannot do. However, I think A2A could be a good solution in some situations. Heat Geek have some videos on this.
Really useful and practical, thank you. Am just about to DIY our own heat pump system ... You left all the TRVs wide open? Did you balance the rads at all? Which TRVs and lockshield valves did you use? Did you run 15mm tails to 22 and 28mm main pipes (looking at the pipe run on the rads in your sitting room for example).
Thanks, the system didn't need balancing, I tried to size the pipework so the rads that needed the most flow had larger pipework. Obviously, this is not always possible but you want to aim to do as little balancing as possible, closing a lock shield will reduce the flow through the rads and therefore limit heat transfer. Primary pipework for rads starts at 22mm then tees off to 15mm to feed differant rads. I have up to 4 rads on a single 15mm towards the end of the circuit. You need to calculate how much powr each rads needs to deliver to see what size pipe work you need to used.
Glyn, I was impressed. It is the first time that I've seen a heat pump install that I fully understood thanks to your insight! I twice had to run to my system after seeing ideas on your installation. First my Eddi doesn't have a temperature indicator, I went & checked, great idea, not quite sure how to do it! Then your de-stratification pump too! Again I went to look. My son suggested that I just use the Eddi circuit 2 to operate it so when Max Temp[ Reached appears it pumps then switches back to Eddi heating. I have a simple spare top & bottom pipe I could use to do that as well. What do you think?
You need the relay sensor board for Eddie whuch has a temperature sensor input. Eddie actually has a destrat pump option on one of the relays which automatically turns on the pump when the tank gets to temperature. It's mentioned in the Eddie manual. Make sure to use a 'bronze' pump whuch is rated for potable water
long time no see; Great job Glyn, look forward to further video's 👍🏻 I be going Air-source HP soon, but I think I'll be paying to have it fitted; Colwyn Bay.
I'm with you regarding changing pipes and upgrade radiators I will get a heat pump eventually however my biggy is air tightness first. Well, the very first step is to add more solar panels and more batteries I'm making my house air tight. Then I'll get an MVHR after saving up After that I'll get triple glazing Then I'll make my radiators bigger and upgrade the pipework too. I might then also get a heat pump water cylinder Then, and only then I'll get a heat pump. I think a lot of reasons why people aren't happy with heat pumps is because their house might be very well insulated but it isn't necessarily air tight Their radiators might also be quite old, and don't necessarily operate at around 40c. People are taking short cuts and they really shouldn't because once they do, they regret taking that short cut, but they blame the heat pump instead of the fact that they've not done any prior work to make their house well insulated AND air tight. An MVHR isn't necessary, unless you're aiming to use PassivHaus principles like I am, but the rest are absolutely stuff you should do before putting in a heat pump
@waqasahmed939 I have DIY'ed an MVHR based on a VentAxia unit I got on ebay. Was not difficult, just lots of air plumbing to do. Works really well. House much lower humidity. Biggest challenge was the main air intake/exhausts fitted.
Hi Glyn, very impressive job, you did there. I just noticed one small thing (if I understood your setup correctly): the expansion vessel for the pottable water on the hot water cylinder isn't flow-through, so it creates a big dead zone. This could be a breeding ground for legionella. In my country this would against code, but I don't know about your country. We either have a flow-through expansion vessel on the the "cold" side of the cylinder or none at all and just let the pressure relief valve handle it.
Hi Jan, thanks for your comment. I've never seen a flow-through expansion vessel installed in the UK. The expansion vessel I installed was included with the cylinder by the manufacture. The vessel is installed on the cold water inlet, so it should never experience temperatures high enough to grow legionella. However, flow though expansion vessels so sound like they could be a good idea. What country is this code?
@@GlynHudson I am from Germany. I assume the room where the expansion vessel is, isn't below 20°, especially in the summer, because it isn't flow through the water will be around the temperature of the room. I also heard that today it is advised to also insulate the cold water pipe and keeps it sperate from the warmwater and heating pipes, to keep the water longer cool. But I don't think it's required. But I am not an expert on that.
You got me thinking about freeze protection. I agree about not wanting glycol for the loop to the monobloc ASHP, and I definitely decided not to use much glycol in my indoor hydronic loop which so far has a large tank volume (85gal tank, +system volume, help with storing available heat either on good solar days or limited off-peak grid period), and would be very expensive ~$100/5gal ~50%*100gal ~50gal glycol = ~$1000, doa!. I had been thinking to use glycol in the lower volume of water in the loop out to the ASHP outside., but maybe just the FPVs like you have. With those FPVs as located, two of them, if both open, will the small freeze preventing flow only come to the valves from indoors, and _not_ go through the HP, and thus potentially freeze. Do you want one valve at one side of the ASHP, so the small flow will come from both directions of the loop and some will be going through the heatpump?
A really good and honest video which is helpful to anyone considering undertaking their own project. Glyn mate, not to take anything away from this great vid...you need to have a second safety diverter on the cylynder to comply with safety regulations.
@GlynHudson Cracking install. What is the silver internal pipe insulation? Did you insulate the pump/filter? I find out headers lose allot of heat between cycles on our Ecodan. So much so that the HP seems to spend twice as long when topping up HW as it has to heat the headers. When these are cold they pull the tank temp down too. Having said that my DIY fitted 30 tube solar install works well at minimising run times. Really interested in a follow up video and I see you mention a battery install in the comments too!
Thanks. Yes, I did my best to insulate the pipes as best I could. Insulating pipes is tricker than it looks! I found using the sliver wrap bubble foil it was easier to get nice tight insulation around the fittings.
Great video, very interesting. But watching you do all that plumbing to put in all those radiators, I’m wondering whether you considered an air-to-air ductless multi-split system?
Thanks, A2A can be a good option for some houses, however I think it would have been challenging in my house since the solid stone walls are 600mm thick, getting fan coil units in every room would have been tricky. I already had radiators and pipework, so upgrading the radiators was not too much work. The benefit of an A2W system is that it also heats DHW, and generally it's a more comfortable warmth since there's no movement of air. The big benefit of A2A is cooling in summer, but this is not a big requirement where I live...yet
Thank you for a very informative and well presented video. Just interested to know how long it takes to heat the water to the required temperature say from cold in the winter, since I read the vaillant has only a 1m^2 coil?
@@simonkamel5782 thanks, correct the 150L slimline Vaillant cylinder has 1mw2 coil, however since it's a small tank it heats up quickly, approx 40min if totally empty a normal topup is around 20-30min. Larger cylinders will have larger coils.
Samsung gen6 with a MIM, in 5kW flavour is £2600 ish, from one of the online merchants. The 150ltr vaillant cylinders were around £550-600 on eBay earlier this year. New rads, copper, lagging, tools etc - I think Glyn would have had change from £5k on this one.
Impressive. Just to say, next time you take something metal and potentially heavy off a wall, please wear steel toecap boots rather than sandals. You can always put the sandals back on again as soon as you're done lifting!
Hey Glyn, love the work and a quick question if I may? I'm doing much the same (at the design stage atm) and have a query about your heat loss calcs. You use an air change rate of 0.3/hour. Others recommend 1 or even 2 for high moisture rooms. Any particular reason you went so low? The obvious implication being that it leads to a considerably lower heat loss. Cheers! Paul
I had a blower door air tightness test done, which indicated that my ACH was about 0.3 and my house is no means airtight! I've done a blower door test on several houses now, and they have all been considerably less than 1. Unless your house feels very drafty you can probably safely use about 0.5 ACH. However, I still oversized by radiators larger than required to be able to run a very low flow temperature.
@@GlynHudson Wow, good to know.... Do you mind saying what kind of money I would pay for that test? I guess being in the industry, you might get mates rates!
awesome video! I have 4 questions, would be super grateful for your answers: 1. Whats the reason why you didnt get the government grant? Simply because you aren't a certified installer? 2. Do you still get the manufacturer warranty on self install? 3. How about insurance? Can you still get home fire insurance if the install was done yourself? 4. If you were connected to the gas mains, could you have got a gas engineer to remove the old boiler and still do the rest yourself?
Very interesting watch and will be keeping an eye on progress/stats. I have gas central heating and last year added the Tado control system to provide zonal temp control by room. How is temp regulated on you HP system? Is it based on individual radiator, wall thermostat or water temperature to/from HP?
Having lots of zones doesn't work very well with a heat pump, they work most efficiently when everything is open. I've got TRVs on the rads, but they are set to fully on. I use the Samsung LCD controller as my main room stat, since much more intelligent than using a third party on/off stat like Tado. However, the system is set up with weather compensation, so it automatically chooses the correct flow temperature depending on the outside temp, so the house never gets too hot. Here's the data from the system so far, it's working very well I'm getting a COP of 4-5 for heating and DHW emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Hi Glyn, great video. Just wondering if you could do a quick video on how to use the heat loss calculator in more detail? Though I think the only thing I'm stuck on is how you came to the 0.3 value for air change per hour. Thank you, Chris
I actually got a pressure test done on my house to determine this. However, usually in these calculations a typical value is used. You can look up typical values for your house structure type.
Just wondering did you think of electric Trace Heating the Outside Copper Pipework , but then again the Level of Insulation you have put on same plus the Valves that open for Frost Protection... should put you in a good place also being berthed in Wales would also help... Really great Installation and great Pipe Routing to get that Tank installed, best wishes from a Mild wet and Windy Southern Ireland...
There is only a risk of the pipes freezing during a prolonged power cut when electric trace heating tape wouldn't be any help! The power cut would have to last for a significant period of time, probably several days in freezing temps for the pipes to freeze, this is very rare. If the worse were to happen the antifreeze vales would open and allow the water to drip and expand avoiding any damage.
@@zImdragon I'm not sure what day you're looking at, but it's not running continuously now that it's warmed up e.g today it's been quite warm 9C outside, the heat pump only ran for 3hr in the morning, 2hr in the afternoon then 3hrs in the evening at a flow temperature of about 33C. It got an overall COP of 4.6 today for heating and DHW which is pretty good.
@@zImdragon Ah yes, I know what you mean. The ASHP does not have infinity variable modulation, due to the stepper motor of the refrigerant expansion valve, it modulates between discrete steps. I think this oscillation is the unit switching between modulation steps. In this instance I think I'm trying to run a flow temperature which is a bit too low to be able to achieve the target room temperature. I've just been discussing this on Twitter today. I've just raised the flow Temperature by a couple of degrees today and it's mostly stopped the oscillation which has slightly increased COP. It's best not to get too hung up on minor tweaks like this, in general lower flow temperature is better, but there is a lower limit, I'm operating close to this lower limit! This lower limit will vary depending on the size of the emitters e.g if I had UFH I could run a lower flow temperature without any issues twitter.com/glynhudson/status/1622010561130012673?s=20&t=jjSQjNHmK0pdOUUA3plC7g
If you do fit a destart pump it needs to be a 'bronze' pump which is rated for potable water since it's in contact with the water that comes out of the tap. I forgot to mention this in the video.
Hi Glyn, what model de-stratification pump did you use and also did you put in some non return valves ? If so at which locations did you put in the valves and could you share what type of non return valves you used. Thanks !
I fitted a SE20B Bronze hot water circulator pump as the de-strat pump. I didn't fit any non return vales other then the one that's built into the filling loop. However, all the mixer taps and showers in my house have integrated non return vales. If your not sure you could fit a non return valve on the hot water outlet of the DHW tank
@@GlynHudson Thanks for your reply. The circulator pump is from tank DHW outlet to tank mains cold water inlet right ? In this case is a non return valve not needed at the mains water pipe to prevent the circulator from pushing hot water into the water mains in case a tap is running etc ? Perhaps also one at the DHW outlet of the tanks to stop mains could water entering the tank through reverse direction of the circulator ?
@@gopikrishnayogarajah apologies, your totally right, I did fit a non return valve just before the de-strat pump on the output of the DHW tank. Sorry I had forgotten about this!
Looks a nice job Iam just working on a training room plumbed up 3 units for show dakin and Panasonic for plumbers to see I work for a plumbers merchant we are having a open day 20th jan
Thanks, I'm using an OpenEnergyMonitor system with wired temperature sensors for DHW tank and wireless emonTH for room temperature shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonth-temperature-humidity-node/
Im a heating engineer with over 20 years experience & im not sure what you do for a living but i would seriously consider a career obviously if the moneys right in this as you've done a great job here & should be extremely proud. good luck with what ever you do in life
Thank you sir
Keen to touch base and advise on my house system
Great job
Done a great job but some questions.Hell of a lot to go wrong and maintain. Especially if you sell house on. Heat pump location. Did you need planning permission. Also.. a strategic question. Why doesn't govt go down the hybrid route like cars. IE add a heat pump to existing systems. So heat pump is main system for heating. But gas boiler kicks in at a set level such as 16 degrees internal temp. So you know the house does t drop below a certain temperature. Thus you end up paying for a heat pump and new radiators. And a shared valve system for boiler and heat pump. Also how was the heat pump last 2 weeks with cold weather. What temp was the house internally overnight. And how much electricity did you use this month. Ie what was the cost.
@@rutherfojr Thanks, planning was not required. It's actually quite a simple system, if there was an issue in the future or end of life it would be easy enough to swap the outdoor unit for a new one just like a combi boiler swap. A hybrid system would add a lot of complication and even on the coldest of days, the heat pump is still cheaper to run the gas, therefore no reason to have a hybrid system, see my update video ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
Much more informative than a lot of videos made by professional heat pump installers that I've watched.
I am plumber most of my profession time I have spend for electrical heating installation and repair work . Now I am doing course for heat pump installation . I like your video cause its give me confidence for heat pump course . good luck
This is fantastic to see the whole process start to finish and all the considerations you took. That data capturing stuff should be standard for everyone as it must be so good for people to see the actual COP over time. Very jealous of your skills and that you were able to do this yourself. Wishing you a very low cost and warm winter and looking forward to seeing your results in Spring :D
Plumbing/DIY isn't rocket science. A lot of people could do this, given a bit of swotting-up. If you use plastic pipe instead of copper that removes a big chunk of the practical difficulty (soldering plumbing does take a bit of practice to do reliably), but there is some COP loss associated with that.
Glyn first of all congratulations for achieving your install. You have likely done a whole lot more research on the subject than many ‘professional’ installers and you clearly have a holistic knowledge of the principles, theory, controls and instrumentation as well as the ‘geekery’ ability to get it all ‘talking’ to each other. I really enjoyed the video and look forward to the update.
Just finished fitting a 5kw air to water heat pump to existing boiler. I bought the heat pump second hand for £180. It comes on for 4hours a day 10 to 2pm as the 6kw Solar array is at its peak at that time. I don’t have the knowledge to fit a cylinder yet but I will do by summer. The heat pump is mounted in the loft so no one see the condenser. I’ve made so many mistakes but it’s a learning experience. My system is way simpler than your system it only consists of a two way motorised valve, automatic air vent and that’s it. All prv, expansion vessel and safety related stuff is in the vallaint condensing boiler. It’s working dude just tweaking system and balancing radiators now and then. Total cost around £400 to £500 not including solar. Your project is on another level dude, you are one smart cookie 👍
From the outdoor air
It’s been a few weeks now I’ve had it installed, it’s in the loft, loft rafters are not insulated so plenty of air flow. These are my pros and cons
Pros
Uses wasted heat that escapes from house to loft.
When it is sunny even when it is minus temps the roof tiles get hot and is used by the heat pump so better cop.
No one on my street knows my house is heated by a heat pump.
No noise virtually silent
Cons
It was so hard to get the pump into loft, I used a £8 pulley to pull it up slowly on my own.
Any leaks you will be in trouble I used three layers or leak protection. Self made drip trays that are plumbed into drain.
At night it can get really cold so less efficient.
My heat pump is really old over 10 years so only manages to get up to around 45 when really cold.
The house is quite large 150 m2 and a 5kw is way too small. I plan to get anothe heat pump in future and use both together in tandem or one for the water and one for heating. Why not for £180.
Best of all I can heat my home for free when sun is shining with no emissions what soever. I use the heat generated to store into 150mm ufh 60m2 concrete slab and slowly release the heat over 2-3 days.
I will use the cold air in summer to control overheating in the attic by heating hot water. This summer was brutal.
Hope this helps
@@manikdesign Ah right, I didn't realise the air intake was from within the loft! I can't see how this will work! A heat pump needs a lot of ambient air movement to extract heat from the air. Why you want to be heat pump to be hidden? They're permitted planning developments, so no issues to install outside. You will need to be careful that you're not making your house colder. Have you got a roof window you could use to duct the air flow?
@@GlynHudsonI had the whole roof redone with black concrete tiles and breathable membrane, air flow is not a problem I’m more worried if there are ever any leaks up there. It’s minus 4 up there now and all is working. Water temp is 41c. Loft floor is only 100mm insulated and it’s still working, imagine when I put 300mm insulation, my house will be too hot and I will have to leave windows open
5 months have past and a water cylinder have also been fitted. It takes around an hour or 1.5kw of power to heat up the cylinder to 55deg 125litre tank. So far still working well.
You're a skilled man Glynn and that's a beautiful family you have there
Great works and enthusiasm, all works well planned and executed.
It's quite funny when someone not in the know usually sees the plant room they comment " what the hell is that mess "
Anyone who has some knowledge usually comments " thats neat and well planned ".
One thing i noticed is regs require 2 x 2 port valves for safety resons.When 3 port is used you must still have a 2port valve with safety controls and manual reset wired through it beween valve and pressurised cylinder.
Thanks! Those regs don't apply to heat pumps, my heat pump is not capable of generating a flow temperature higher than 60C so there's no danger of over heating the cylinder. The marjorty of heat pumps are installed with 3-port diverter valves.
@GlynHudson thanks for the reply, live and learn etc, my angle was based off water G regs and the immersion heater set point not the heat pump.
Once again great install and wonderful presentation/edit, looking forward to updates .
Always nice to see someone having fun with a pipe slice.
That's a really nicely put together video. Good pace, good amount of content and some nice pauses as you dive into the details that are most interesting. Great work Glyn (and army of helpers including a very patient camera person :) )
Thanks! Mr tripod was very patient 😅
Have you considered routing the gas pipes (13:42) through the inside of the house to reduce heat loss? I have a mini-split type system that is supposed to raise the temperature of my MVHR in the loft. Condenser is on the ground outside and have trunking on the outside going round a corner and up to the loft (9m ish-run). The trunking is noticeably hot to the touch when in heating mode. Also confirmed with a thermal imaging camera where I have 21° C sliver temperature band along the whole length of the trunking with outside air temp of around 5° C. As soon as I saw that, I flipped the heat pump off (central gas heating is our primary source of heat). Suffice to say, I'd not recommend my system to anyone (System Air and installed by TL Trading).
It's an air to water (A2W) monobloc heat pump, so those external pipes carry water not gas. There's no space to run them internally, there's a bathroom with a shower cubical in the way! They are however very well insulated, and the running costs are significantly less than gas, see my update video: ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.htmlsi=RujmQw4_8r6zrYgf
@@GlynHudson Ok my bad. Still worth a touch test if you have a ladder or a thermographic inspections (the cameras have really gone down in price) on a very cold day. I'm now planning on getting air-to-air mini splits and boxing/insulating the trunking afterwards.
can't wait to see the winter tests!
This. Honestly, if heat pumps are at least getting a COP of 4 in the winter, that's really good
Hi Glyn. If you ever take the cylinder out for any reason, I would strongly suggest you swap out those plastic ball valves for your shower. I have had two of those plastic ones exactly the same spontaneously split in half. Luckily I was in the same room when it happened, otherwise it would have been a really damaging flood. They happened 5 years apart, but stupidly I didn't swap out both when the first failure occurred.
Thanks for the tip!
Congrats for new baby!!
Glyn, well done, this is excellent information and very well presented and filmed. Fantastic to see the whole process and the challenges and your honesty, I love sustainable devlopment and I'm very impressed with your skills and abilty and look forward to seeing your report in the Spring 🙂I wish you good luck to you and your family in all you do and your future career.
I thought, he's a climber. And it turns out you are! I'm installing an ASHP in a new build on my property near Loch Ness, but with underfloor heating. Your vid is very informative and the paintings on the walls are intrigueing!
It started out with me thinking that I might do that, but as you progressed in the work I started to have doubts. Excellent job young man, all the best to you and yours.
Thanks, it was a good challenge. I'm sure you could figure it out!
Brake it down into small parts and don’t rush. Plan each step.
Came to this after watching your winter results video. Amazing job, well done!
Thanks!
I picked the correct video to watch here for sure. Very detailed and thorough.
I am looking at adding a heat pump to an existing vented thermal store system already heated by; solar PV immersion, wood gasifying stove, gas condensing boiler and mains immersion (as a backup). Your reply to comments has also been useful regarding integrating to a vented system with a heat exchanger. Thank you. Looking forward to the next video.
Update video is live! Sorry it took so long ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
Excellent video Glyn and great work. Well done for doing such a well thought through job. We are of course all looking forward to seeing your results.. it will be very interesting.
Cheers, thanks a lot for all your help
I’ve heard the Name John Cantor
I thought it was just Welsh mythology
Nice one - good to see some faces from names from OpenEnergy notoriety 👍
Great work Glyn, can't wait get the post winter update!
So useful for me - just delving into the possibilities and your vid gives a great explanation into this greener alternative. Thanks for posting (bloody great).
Superb video. You got mad skills bro
Very impressive Glyn, love your diy skills and work ethic, hope you have a toasty house this winter and the system performs as you expect, 👍
Thanks, this video was actually filmed last year. Here's an update video with how the system performed over the last winter ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
Brilliant video there! Great to see someone install one that isn't a shill for a particular company.
30m2 for a 2 story, 2 bed end of terrace with an extension? I doubt it!!
But impressive work.
Edit: I've just seen in the description that youve addressed this and it is in fact 70m2.
I'm so pleased you shared this. It's exactly what I'm after. I love an update on the winter performance
Thanks, Here's a link to live data so far from the unit emoncms.org/samsung5kw. It's been performing very well and keeping the house nice and warm
Terrific video. Thank you. I am retired now, but have done a few central heating installs over the years. I love your youthful energy and enthusiasm. I have been exasperated with weeping compression joints many a time over the years. In recent times, I have mostly worked with plastic pipe. I have a holiday apartement in Portugal which I recently replumbed entirely in plastic, ditched the old bottle gas boiler, and went fully electric. May I ask why you have used copper. It looks lovely, and you have done a great job, but wouldn't plastic have been easier? I am old school and love copper, but, my God, it was much easier working in plastic.
Hi Peter, thanks for your comment. For the best efficiency a ASHP requires high flow rate and low resistance pipework. The main reason I choose to use copper is the internal bore dimension is larger than plastic, especially since plastic required inserts that restrict the flow further. Also, regulations require an unvented cylinder to be plumbed in copper at least for the first few meters. Plastic pipework is great for some things, I've used plastic pipework for the hot and cold water feeds in our kitchen and bathroom.
@@GlynHudson yes, I agree. I'd forgotten about that. The fittings you get in Portugal are even more restrictive than those in the UK. Fine if you have mains water pressure to drive the flow, but probably not if you just have a circulator. I get it.
As an EV & ASHP owner, I feel load shifting is key - I have Octopus Go Faster for 5 hours from 1:30-6:30am. I charge the car first then the hot water and then heat the house with ASHP for the last period up to 6:30am. I let the Tesla Powerwall sort itself out and it normally charges to 100%. This way by the end of my off peak period I have a fully charged car and home battery, hot water AND a house at 20 degrees… I then use whatever solar is produced for daytime leaving the powerwall to cover the dark evening for cooking and keeping us warm. It isn’t really cold enough yet to really test this system but my hope is that with my well insulated house I can minimise peak power usage keeping winter costs to minimum.
Some here, I schedule DHW cycle for my Octopus Go period. I've also got a battey which is due to be installed in a few weeks, very excited about this since it will enable the ASHP to run fully from off-peak power
Thanks for posting .... btw ..."Perfectly safe" to remove the gas boiler, especially wearing those safety shoes !
For not being an installer, very impressed with your installation and knowledge. Well done
Nice one - looking forward to an update on how it has gone over the last 6-8 months with the heat pump....especially thru the winter. Thanks.
Update video is live! Sorry it took so long ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
Impressive! You have been busy.
Very snug well done 👍🏿pete the cabby essex
Great video 👍 You are very talented.
Really intresting video, great to see a non pro doing this kind of install.
We were advised not to wall-mount our external unit because it was likely to resonate, so mounted it on the ground about 1ft away from the wall instead. Have heard the same is true for AC units, but your solid stone walls may be less susceptible to this!
My Daikin Air-to-Air inverter for the air conditioning is wall mounted on a brick wall. I can't say that I've heard any issues.
I used rubber dampers between the bracket and the unit, they seem to be working well, I can't detect any vibration from inside the house. In fact, it's almost impossible to tell if the unit is running without going outside since it's so quiet. Installers will want to avoid wall mounting since it's a lot more work. 1ft clearance is a bit tight, I'm surprised they were willing to install with such a small clearance, this will be much less than the manufacturer's recommendation.
Just had a ECO4 air source heat pump fitted and realise this is not a job for a plumber but a hydraulic engineer.. Flow/pipe size/pipe insulation is critical to the system working correctly.. With a SCOP of 3 or higher
Impressive you took this on, clearly you have some great knowledge. Nicely explained too👍🏻👍🏻
looking forward to your next update. Brilliant install/report
Absolutely brilliant, well done. You should form your own company if you have not already done so and train others. There is a dearth of companies with engineers who are capable of doing what you have achieved. I have been looking for years into ASHP ever since the RHI was introduced many years ago and still haven’t found any company I am confident in to do a pucker job, maybe Octopus might fill this void as I was very impressed with their survey but wanted to wait till they got some installs under their belt.
Thanks, I would recomend looking for a Certified Heat Geek. Those engineers know their stuff.
@@GlynHudson Those guys charge mega bucks as they're used to working on millionaire's houses. I'd avoid them unless you could get them on a friend's rate.
The intro frightened the life out of me! You said total floor area of 30sq.m, this totally threw my calcs on our 270year old 80sq.m two bed, then I added up totals in your heat calc sheets, it seems you have around 70sq.m. I look forward to your spring update as I'm considering a 6kw system, but 'everyone' says it won't work on a house like ours.
Yes, it's about 65-70 m^2, I corrected this on the description. I got this wrong in the commentary since 30m^2 I's the area of the ground floor. It's been working very well, house has been lovely and warm and average COP for heating and DHW over the winter has been 4.2 which is very good. It's one of the best performing installations on heatpumpmonitor.org
@@GlynHudson Very interesting info, going through that list looking for properties which might have similar heating requirements to ours, and it seems doable despite all the naysayers who advise me it's not possible on a house like ours.
Looking at some of your data, do you run the heating 'constantly' i.e. you aim to keep home heated throughout day and night, instead of the 'traditional' burst of heat in morning and night? From what I can make out esp. on old not very well insulated houses this seems the way to go, and indeed this is what we do with our present multifuel heating, it 'ticks over' 24/7 then ramps up in evening. I know someone how had a heat pump in a rental and it was taken out due to not working, but from what I can work out they tried to use the 'traditional' blast of heat morning and evening.
@@fredbloggs72 it's definitely possible, heat pumps can work efficiently in any house had long as the system is correctly designed. Yes, we run the heatpump at low flow temperature most of the day. However, my wife is on maternity leave so is home most of the day so this makes sense. If we were both our during the day we would set a set back temperature a couple of degrees lower than the evening setpoint. Same goes for overnight. Agree, older properties with large thermal mass work well with this approach. Asking a heatpump to deliver a very hot 'blast' of heat twice per day will result in much lower efficiency.
I have a heat pump and love it . But unlike you I was not confidant enough to fit it myself. I really enjoyed watching this video. And your other European adventures 👍
Great video, very interesting watching your installation experience
Awesome video Glyn!
Thanks a lot for your help! No chance could I lift the unit up on my own 😂
Wonderful job
Good grief! You must have massive 'cojones' to take on a project like that, and a brain to match! I've only just started taking an interest in heat pumps and I had no idea you could power traditional radiators and water tank storage as all I'd seen was air con type units running in houses. I'm surprised you didn't use plastic pipes for much of the install as soldering (and even compression) can increase potential for leaks, not to mention the hassle of bending and feeding copper pipe, but I'm sure you have your reasons for that even though it seems to add more hassle to the project. I hope now that it's no longer 30 deg. outside it's doing the business and I look forward to your follow up. Thanks so much for posting this as I'm sure the filming and editing probably doubled the effort of an already complex job.
Thanks! Monoblock Air to water heat pumps like this one are very common particularly in the UK. In other countries where they have more need for cooling in the summer air to air (A2A) heat pumps e.g A/C are more common. If done correctly a soldered copper pipe is less likely to leak and more robust long term than plastic. Cooper also has a larger internal bore for the same external bore than plastic, so it can handle more flow. It's been quite cold in the UK this winter, we had temperatures down to -5C, the heat pump worked great keeping the house nice and warm and getting good performance. I will be doing an update video soon, in the meantime here's a link to live and historic performance data from my heat pump emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Nice work Glyn,
I have recently been studying this subject for a possible future project i am planning, I would be grateful to hear of your findings through a north Wales winter.
Have you been expanding your family ??
Thanks for the film Ed
Magnificent video! Just leaves me fealing there is huge complexity in heat pump installation, when compared to, say Gas. Yes I do understand the reasons for and against, but my point is that with huge complexity there is almost always huge complications when things fail. And, therefore, the associated cost.
You're not going to have any engineer 'call out' issues though - you can do it yourself !
Hi Tim, thanks for your comment. The two things which made this job more complicated than an average install was the fact the outdoor unit was wall-mounted at up high, and I fitted some extra monitoring kit. Apart from that everything else is identical to a gas or oil system boiler install with an unvented cylinder. There's not really much to go wrong that can't be easily replaced e.g three-port valves and pumps are stocked in every plumbing merchant.
Another question Glyn! How is it working out with a 150 litre cylinder? Happy? Borderline? Definitely wish you had bigger?
No, 150L is perfect for us, if we need any more it's very quick to reheat. If we had space I would have fitted a larger one, but it's not essential.
good effort Glyn - absolutely no need for PTFE and silicone over Loctite though :)
Agree, I later realised why I had issues getting the the heat meter to seal, the thread on the body of the heatpump is not BSP, I should have used a flat face union with rubber washer to convert to BSP then use an iorn to convert to compression fitting
Wow! What did you say after "disconnect the gas for the last time"? You kinda lost me after that 🤣 Amazing skills, clever chap, fascinating video thanks
Very impressive. I have an even smaller much older quarry mid terrace house, also in North Wales. We are currently on an aging mains gas combi-boiler in need of replacement. it still gives us hot water but heating no longer functions. I also have a woodburner. I was considering a mini- split air to air heat pump with either a separate air source domestic water heater or possibly solar hot water and possibly some PV to supplement the mini split. Still considering various options. I was thinking to get away from a "wet" heating system if possible. Challenges include solid random stone walls, somewhat difficult to drill holes in without instability and lack of space for a hot water tank. Your video has given me a lot to think about how an air source heat pump "wet" system might still be a possible option. Be good to see your follow up after this cold winter in North Wales (so far!).
Thanks for your comment. A2A systems can be very efficient and are much easier to install, especially for a small house. Although unfortunately they won't be able to heat hot water
@@GlynHudson
Thanks Glyn.
Agreed A2A "mini splits" seem much easier to fit for heating and competitive on cost, not sure if DIY systems are available. Hot water supply will still be an issue, however, especially for available space. Options for domestic hot water I'm considering are a combination of economy 7 supply and PV to phase change tankless heat store (Sunamp or other) Or a dedicated heat pump water only heater which seem to be available. However I'm not sure if these pump heat from outside or from warmer areas inside the house which might make sense during summer but not in winter in UK/Wales. I will continue research!
@@malcolmnew8973 you can get heat pump hot water heaters which duct air from outside, there are American models which take heat from inside, but this is not normally wanted in the UK! This guy seems to know his stuff on HP hot water heaters: ruclips.net/video/gBh510zhvAA/видео.html
@@GlynHudson Thanks Glyn, just what I needed!
@@GlynHudson I've checked out your link suggested in previous reply. Very useful thanks. Also he mentioned a popular European system; a 4 way multisplit system with 3 air to air heaters and the fourth adapted to a small hot water cylinder which would be perfect for me, sadly not available in the UK, not sure when if ever!
As you say emitters are key, in my opinion. I see most people who claim "heat pumps don't work" just try to bolt on a heat pump to cast iron rads or small panel radiators with no fins. Then get surprised 55C outlet temps are not going to heat the home.
Brilliant video, thanks for uploading and you must be really proud of the fantastic job that you did.
A useful thing to test for leaks is a ROTHENBERGER DRY PRESSURE TEST KIT. It connects temporarily to an open pipe with a pushfit connection. Any other open ends are bunged up with MONUMENT TOOLS NYLON DRAIN PLUGS 6 PIECES..
You then get a car tyre foot pump and put in a bit of pressure. Leave it for a while and see if the built-in pressure gauge goes down. If it does, find the leak and fix it. It saves the hassle of water leaking everywhere and not being able to redo solder joints that are now wet. (ps you can test small bits of the heating circuit as you build it)
Also if you have any non soldered joints/fittings that keep leaking use Fernox LS-X leak sealer. It will fix pretty much everything.
All the above were invaluable when I ripped out all the poor original plumbing and radiators on my central heating and did a proper job like yourself..
Thanks, that's useful advice. I did do a air pressure test before filling up the system by just fitting a bike valve stem into a compression fitting, your dry pressure test kit sounds like a good solution.
I would be very wary of using use Fernox leak sealer since it could block up the small passageways inside the heat pump heat exchanger which could reduce performance.
Wow great work and great video thanks. Very interesting putting heat pump high on the wall might ask if we have one installed as not got much outside space too . Very interesting to see your winter cop and your scop and costs with this winters high electricity prices !
Thanks, here's a link to view live data from the unit, SCOP so far is 4.3 emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Very impressed, well done.
I don't understand much of this, but it's still a fantastic video! Great job sharing, thanks 👍🏼
V interesting! Would love an update to this video going through any snags in the last 4 months since installation and also the performance during this fairly cold winter
Thanks. Update video will be coming in the spring. The heat pump has been working perfectly, the house has been lovey and warm despite some cold snaps down to -5C. It's been getting an average COP of 4.2 which is excellent. Here's a link to live and historic data from the unit emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Fair play to you. What a great job you’ve done
You did a very good job, solder ring Yorkshire type fittings would have made the job easier for you
Excellent video! Great quality of work! All very informative - thanks. I wish I was 30 years younger, I would definitely have a crack at this but unfortunately my old bones and joints complain too much now!
Thanks, plumbing is very tough on the knees. Hats off to plumbers, they have the spent most of each day kneeling down
Great job love your enthusiasm for renewables, I’m exactly the same and excited to be a part of the change. I run a heating company and we’ve recently got into the heat pump industry and it’s changing the game if it’s done right but it’s takes a lot to design the perfect system. I can see you’ve can a very good idea about the maths behind it. All I would say is y plan three port valve systems are old technology that should be updated to suit the modern tech you have
Thanks, great to hear you're getting into heat pumps. Y-plan on an HP is totally different to a Y-plan on a system boiler, HPs have hot water priority and weather compensation built-in in as standard, so they run a different flow temperature for central heating compared to hot water, checkout the live data from my system here: emoncms.org/samsung5kw, you can see the flow rate increase during a DHW cycle. I far as I understand there's no reason not to use a Y-plan for HP.
You the man @glynHudson 😀👌✨️✨️💯🤯🤯
Hi Glyn, great video and excellent piece of work on the installation.
Question - did you consider an air to air heat pump (is that the right term?) I've seen some suggested that can heat in winter and cool in summer - if augmented by solar I think cooling in summer has a lot to say for itself these days...
Thanks, I did briefly consider A2A but living in North Wales cooling is not a really needed, I also need DHW heating which A2A cannot do. However, I think A2A could be a good solution in some situations. Heat Geek have some videos on this.
Brilliant...absolutely brilliant 👏
Really useful and practical, thank you. Am just about to DIY our own heat pump system ... You left all the TRVs wide open? Did you balance the rads at all? Which TRVs and lockshield valves did you use? Did you run 15mm tails to 22 and 28mm main pipes (looking at the pipe run on the rads in your sitting room for example).
Thanks, the system didn't need balancing, I tried to size the pipework so the rads that needed the most flow had larger pipework. Obviously, this is not always possible but you want to aim to do as little balancing as possible, closing a lock shield will reduce the flow through the rads and therefore limit heat transfer.
Primary pipework for rads starts at 22mm then tees off to 15mm to feed differant rads. I have up to 4 rads on a single 15mm towards the end of the circuit. You need to calculate how much powr each rads needs to deliver to see what size pipe work you need to used.
Glyn, I was impressed. It is the first time that I've seen a heat pump install that I fully understood thanks to your insight! I twice had to run to my system after seeing ideas on your installation. First my Eddi doesn't have a temperature indicator, I went & checked, great idea, not quite sure how to do it! Then your de-stratification pump too! Again I went to look. My son suggested that I just use the Eddi circuit 2 to operate it so when Max Temp[ Reached appears it pumps then switches back to Eddi heating. I have a simple spare top & bottom pipe I could use to do that as well. What do you think?
You need the relay sensor board for Eddie whuch has a temperature sensor input. Eddie actually has a destrat pump option on one of the relays which automatically turns on the pump when the tank gets to temperature. It's mentioned in the Eddie manual. Make sure to use a 'bronze' pump whuch is rated for potable water
Highly skilled, very impressive. Thanks for sharing.
long time no see; Great job Glyn, look forward to further video's 👍🏻 I be going Air-source HP soon, but I think I'll be paying to have it fitted; Colwyn Bay.
I'm with you regarding changing pipes and upgrade radiators
I will get a heat pump eventually however my biggy is air tightness first. Well, the very first step is to add more solar panels and more batteries
I'm making my house air tight. Then I'll get an MVHR after saving up
After that I'll get triple glazing
Then I'll make my radiators bigger and upgrade the pipework too.
I might then also get a heat pump water cylinder
Then, and only then I'll get a heat pump. I think a lot of reasons why people aren't happy with heat pumps is because their house might be very well insulated but it isn't necessarily air tight
Their radiators might also be quite old, and don't necessarily operate at around 40c. People are taking short cuts and they really shouldn't because once they do, they regret taking that short cut, but they blame the heat pump instead of the fact that they've not done any prior work to make their house well insulated AND air tight. An MVHR isn't necessary, unless you're aiming to use PassivHaus principles like I am, but the rest are absolutely stuff you should do before putting in a heat pump
@waqasahmed939 I have DIY'ed an MVHR based on a VentAxia unit I got on ebay. Was not difficult, just lots of air plumbing to do. Works really well. House much lower humidity. Biggest challenge was the main air intake/exhausts fitted.
Hi Glyn,
very impressive job, you did there. I just noticed one small thing (if I understood your setup correctly): the expansion vessel for the pottable water on the hot water cylinder isn't flow-through, so it creates a big dead zone. This could be a breeding ground for legionella. In my country this would against code, but I don't know about your country. We either have a flow-through expansion vessel on the the "cold" side of the cylinder or none at all and just let the pressure relief valve handle it.
Hi Jan, thanks for your comment. I've never seen a flow-through expansion vessel installed in the UK. The expansion vessel I installed was included with the cylinder by the manufacture. The vessel is installed on the cold water inlet, so it should never experience temperatures high enough to grow legionella. However, flow though expansion vessels so sound like they could be a good idea. What country is this code?
@@GlynHudson I am from Germany. I assume the room where the expansion vessel is, isn't below 20°, especially in the summer, because it isn't flow through the water will be around the temperature of the room.
I also heard that today it is advised to also insulate the cold water pipe and keeps it sperate from the warmwater and heating pipes, to keep the water longer cool. But I don't think it's required.
But I am not an expert on that.
You got me thinking about freeze protection. I agree about not wanting glycol for the loop to the monobloc ASHP, and I definitely decided not to use much glycol in my indoor hydronic loop which so far has a large tank volume (85gal tank, +system volume, help with storing available heat either on good solar days or limited off-peak grid period), and would be very expensive ~$100/5gal ~50%*100gal ~50gal glycol = ~$1000, doa!. I had been thinking to use glycol in the lower volume of water in the loop out to the ASHP outside., but maybe just the FPVs like you have. With those FPVs as located, two of them, if both open, will the small freeze preventing flow only come to the valves from indoors, and _not_ go through the HP, and thus potentially freeze. Do you want one valve at one side of the ASHP, so the small flow will come from both directions of the loop and some will be going through the heatpump?
I’m going for a single one, located right at the ASHP, at the lowest point of the system. I balked at Caleffi prices so got mine from AliExpress.
Excellent video - well done. Will be publishing this locally since some of us want to convert. Looking forward to the winter statistics.
A really good and honest video which is helpful to anyone considering undertaking their own project. Glyn mate, not to take anything away from this great vid...you need to have a second safety diverter on the cylynder to comply with safety regulations.
Thanks, the cylinder has both a PRV and inlet pressure relief valve
@GlynHudson Cracking install. What is the silver internal pipe insulation? Did you insulate the pump/filter?
I find out headers lose allot of heat between cycles on our Ecodan. So much so that the HP seems to spend twice as long when topping up HW as it has to heat the headers. When these are cold they pull the tank temp down too. Having said that my DIY fitted 30 tube solar install works well at minimising run times.
Really interested in a follow up video and I see you mention a battery install in the comments too!
Thanks. Yes, I did my best to insulate the pipes as best I could. Insulating pipes is tricker than it looks! I found using the sliver wrap bubble foil it was easier to get nice tight insulation around the fittings.
14:30 Where did you get the safety shoes?
Great video, very interesting. But watching you do all that plumbing to put in all those radiators, I’m wondering whether you considered an air-to-air ductless multi-split system?
Thanks, A2A can be a good option for some houses, however I think it would have been challenging in my house since the solid stone walls are 600mm thick, getting fan coil units in every room would have been tricky. I already had radiators and pipework, so upgrading the radiators was not too much work. The benefit of an A2W system is that it also heats DHW, and generally it's a more comfortable warmth since there's no movement of air. The big benefit of A2A is cooling in summer, but this is not a big requirement where I live...yet
Thank you for a very informative and well presented video. Just interested to know how long it takes to heat the water to the required temperature say from cold in the winter, since I read the vaillant has only a 1m^2 coil?
@@simonkamel5782 thanks, correct the 150L slimline Vaillant cylinder has 1mw2 coil, however since it's a small tank it heats up quickly, approx 40min if totally empty a normal topup is around 20-30min. Larger cylinders will have larger coils.
Great video, thank you, great to see your full process
Well done and looking fwd for the upcoming video .
Update video is live! Sorry it took so long ruclips.net/video/kkNx2oSO-S4/видео.html
Great video. As a DIYer myself I would love to know how much this cost you to install vs a professional fit.
Samsung gen6 with a MIM, in 5kW flavour is £2600 ish, from one of the online merchants. The 150ltr vaillant cylinders were around £550-600 on eBay earlier this year. New rads, copper, lagging, tools etc - I think Glyn would have had change from £5k on this one.
Great video, but would be great to see a plumbing diagram, i was getting lost looking at so many pipes!
Great video! Thanks for sharing! :)
Great video, looking fwd to seeing some more stats over the winter. Did we get an introduction to a mini Glyn too?😁👍
Yes, massive congrats to you both if that is the case!
Impressive.
Just to say, next time you take something metal and potentially heavy off a wall, please wear steel toecap boots rather than sandals. You can always put the sandals back on again as soon as you're done lifting!
Fantastic job….great video too. I’d love to do this at some point in the future.
Not a bad install for a non heating engineer. Bravo.
Hope you've got your unvented ticket though when you installed that cylinder 😉
Hi amazing video. Just wondering if you have two CT clamps hooked up to your Eddi? Didn't see a production on the solar.
No, I just have the one clap. I use OpenEnergyMonitor monitoring system for monitoring the solar
Hey Glyn, love the work and a quick question if I may? I'm doing much the same (at the design stage atm) and have a query about your heat loss calcs. You use an air change rate of 0.3/hour. Others recommend 1 or even 2 for high moisture rooms. Any particular reason you went so low? The obvious implication being that it leads to a considerably lower heat loss. Cheers! Paul
I had a blower door air tightness test done, which indicated that my ACH was about 0.3 and my house is no means airtight! I've done a blower door test on several houses now, and they have all been considerably less than 1. Unless your house feels very drafty you can probably safely use about 0.5 ACH. However, I still oversized by radiators larger than required to be able to run a very low flow temperature.
@@GlynHudson Wow, good to know.... Do you mind saying what kind of money I would pay for that test? I guess being in the industry, you might get mates rates!
@@BerkeleyTowers A friend of mine did the test for me, I think he usually charges a few hundred
Nice project. We are also disconnecting the gas connection and moving to the head pump. Curious how you will end up after the first year.
Great to hear! Good luck. Yes, I'll report back in the spring :-)
awesome video! I have 4 questions, would be super grateful for your answers:
1. Whats the reason why you didnt get the government grant? Simply because you aren't a certified installer?
2. Do you still get the manufacturer warranty on self install?
3. How about insurance? Can you still get home fire insurance if the install was done yourself?
4. If you were connected to the gas mains, could you have got a gas engineer to remove the old boiler and still do the rest yourself?
1. Correct, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Correct
Very interesting watch and will be keeping an eye on progress/stats. I have gas central heating and last year added the Tado control system to provide zonal temp control by room. How is temp regulated on you HP system? Is it based on individual radiator, wall thermostat or water temperature to/from HP?
Having lots of zones doesn't work very well with a heat pump, they work most efficiently when everything is open. I've got TRVs on the rads, but they are set to fully on. I use the Samsung LCD controller as my main room stat, since much more intelligent than using a third party on/off stat like Tado. However, the system is set up with weather compensation, so it automatically chooses the correct flow temperature depending on the outside temp, so the house never gets too hot. Here's the data from the system so far, it's working very well I'm getting a COP of 4-5 for heating and DHW emoncms.org/samsung5kw
Hi Glyn, great video. Just wondering if you could do a quick video on how to use the heat loss calculator in more detail? Though I think the only thing I'm stuck on is how you came to the 0.3 value for air change per hour. Thank you, Chris
I actually got a pressure test done on my house to determine this. However, usually in these calculations a typical value is used. You can look up typical values for your house structure type.
Just wondering did you think of electric Trace Heating the Outside Copper Pipework , but then again the Level of Insulation you have put on same plus the Valves that open for Frost Protection... should put you in a good place also being berthed in Wales would also help... Really great Installation and great Pipe Routing to get that Tank installed, best wishes from a Mild wet and Windy Southern Ireland...
There is only a risk of the pipes freezing during a prolonged power cut when electric trace heating tape wouldn't be any help! The power cut would have to last for a significant period of time, probably several days in freezing temps for the pipes to freeze, this is very rare. If the worse were to happen the antifreeze vales would open and allow the water to drip and expand avoiding any damage.
@@zImdragon I'm not sure what day you're looking at, but it's not running continuously now that it's warmed up e.g today it's been quite warm 9C outside, the heat pump only ran for 3hr in the morning, 2hr in the afternoon then 3hrs in the evening at a flow temperature of about 33C. It got an overall COP of 4.6 today for heating and DHW which is pretty good.
@@zImdragon Ah yes, I know what you mean. The ASHP does not have infinity variable modulation, due to the stepper motor of the refrigerant expansion valve, it modulates between discrete steps. I think this oscillation is the unit switching between modulation steps. In this instance I think I'm trying to run a flow temperature which is a bit too low to be able to achieve the target room temperature. I've just been discussing this on Twitter today. I've just raised the flow Temperature by a couple of degrees today and it's mostly stopped the oscillation which has slightly increased COP. It's best not to get too hung up on minor tweaks like this, in general lower flow temperature is better, but there is a lower limit, I'm operating close to this lower limit! This lower limit will vary depending on the size of the emitters e.g if I had UFH I could run a lower flow temperature without any issues twitter.com/glynhudson/status/1622010561130012673?s=20&t=jjSQjNHmK0pdOUUA3plC7g
Lovely tidy job. I like the destrat pump idea.
If you do fit a destart pump it needs to be a 'bronze' pump which is rated for potable water since it's in contact with the water that comes out of the tap. I forgot to mention this in the video.
Fantastic job, very clever, liked and subbed 👍
Hi Glyn, what model de-stratification pump did you use and also did you put in some non return valves ? If so at which locations did you put in the valves and could you share what type of non return valves you used. Thanks !
I fitted a SE20B Bronze hot water circulator pump as the de-strat pump. I didn't fit any non return vales other then the one that's built into the filling loop. However, all the mixer taps and showers in my house have integrated non return vales. If your not sure you could fit a non return valve on the hot water outlet of the DHW tank
@@GlynHudson Thanks for your reply. The circulator pump is from tank DHW outlet to tank mains cold water inlet right ? In this case is a non return valve not needed at the mains water pipe to prevent the circulator from pushing hot water into the water mains in case a tap is running etc ? Perhaps also one at the DHW outlet of the tanks to stop mains could water entering the tank through reverse direction of the circulator ?
@@gopikrishnayogarajah apologies, your totally right, I did fit a non return valve just before the de-strat pump on the output of the DHW tank. Sorry I had forgotten about this!
Looks a nice job Iam just working on a training room plumbed up 3 units for show dakin and Panasonic for plumbers to see I work for a plumbers merchant we are having a open day 20th jan
Nice video. But I can't find either of the two heat loss calculators you mention. Can you please provide links to them?
Well done Glyn great work
Thanks Ken 👍
Fantastic job. what software are you using to monitor the water temp.s COS etc. did I hear you say a pie.?
Thanks, I'm using an OpenEnergyMonitor system with wired temperature sensors for DHW tank and wireless emonTH for room temperature shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonth-temperature-humidity-node/