Just looking at the clearance distance to the fence , I’d say there probably be an issue once the outside air temperature drops and the re circulating air caused by the fence ,starts to cause freezing on the coil, which will cause the efficiency to plummet. Will be interesting to see.
Thanks for watching Michael. The distance is 760mm between the fence and the heat pump, hence the need for planning permission detailed in the first video of this series. Vaillant's minimum recommended distance is 600mm. The passage down the side of the house is a wind tunnel, improved by the changes to the fence to open slat over closed slat. I doubt there will be micro climating. If it does then we can simple raise it off the ground.
@@johntisbury I think he makes a good point about the fence being too close. This will undoubtedly cause micro climating. If you watch urban plumber, he has had this issue on a few of his jobs and now elevates the heatpumps above the fences etc.
@@deanchapple1 I've seen Szymon's videos where he has moved them to wall mounted. Air flow is all important in the location where the unit is fitted. Our heat pump is outperforming its designed COP values. Currently running at 4.6 COP since its install in July. There's no issue with it micro climating down to 3ºC even with still days with no wind. I shall be monitoring it as it get colder, but so far no issues at all.
Funny you should ask. I'm pulling together a heat pump specific video on its performance over the last 3 months. Filming tomorrow (Saturday) so should be uploaded next week sometime.
My own heat pump is online tonight! Trouble is: I’m not at home but in Germany. So I’m reading what I can into my energy consumption figures through my Solaredge app. Consumption is not constant and steady like I through they might be. I suspect there’s lots of tuning that needs to happen and I do note your remarks about air bubbles. My plumber opted for the spirotech deaerators. They put the flow water through a centrifuge which causes the micro bubbles to coalesce before being vented. I’ve had one on my old CH system. They are excellent, and since I got that fitted, no more corrosion issues.
Great news! I'm sure once you are back home you will be able to monitor the system more closely. I've read on the Spirotech website that they recommend vacuum degasser over a microbubble deaerator with heat pumps that have low flow temperature. It will be interesting to hear how you are getting on with that. It took me a good 3 weeks or so to bled all the air out of our hot water system, the rads was the easy bit.
Hi John Thank you for such a prompt reply. I am a complete novice!! I have only had system turned on since Friday afternoon. I am going to contact my installer on Monday and they are coming Thursday to install the app and go through things with me. I hope they can resolve any issues. Good to know your experiences. I may get back to you for help once I get my head round a few things - I’ve found it all a bit stressful. At least I am warm now Many thanks
Ah that's good to hear. There is a bit of a learning curve with ASHPs, but once you have overcome that then they are very easy to live with. We don't touch ours at all, apart from an annual service, and maybe a quick weak of the heat curve if it's especially cold outside for an extended period of time. Ask your installer to show you how to adjust the heat curve. Once it gets colder 1 & 2ºC and below you may need to increase the flow temperature to keep up with the extra heat loss (heat travel towards cold, so you lose more heat from your home when its cold outside). Turning up the thermostat is not the solution, leave it at 20ºC or whatever you have it set to, and increase the heat curve. In the milder weather in Spring, drop the heat curve back down again leaving the thermostat at 20ºC. Ask them what is the outside temperature cutoff for the heat pump is. e.g. at what outside temperature will the heating turn off. Ours is set to 17ºC, once it hits that our ASHP will not heat the house, just the hot water. There's no perfect temperature here, but you want it just around minimum comfort levels; 17 - 19ºC is about right. Ask them if you are running Pure Weather Compensation. This means it takes the outside temperature to determine the flow temperature of the water for your heating. If the temperature outside rises, the flow temperature decreases and vice versa. Pure Weather Compensation is the best and most efficient way to run a heating system, be it gas or ASHP. Some systems allow you to combine a room temperature with weather compensation which is ideal if you have one or two rooms that are hotter or cooler than the rest of the house.
Hi John, I have a similar system. Iv currently got an issue where Iv had water turned off to the system which gave an f22 fault code for low flow. Iv turned it back on and re pressurised the system but my heatpump isn’t kicking in to heat my DHW and heating. Have you ever come across this issue?
@@moyseylive have you pressed the black reset button on the front of the white control module VWZ AI? If that doesn't do it I'm out of ideas I'm sorry to say.
Mark believed with the 35mm primaries we would get good flow rates 1200l/h. The buffer was installed as a safety net however we complained about it being noisy. So Mark removed it and said I should have trusted the maths; 7kW @DT 5 is 1200l/hr.
@@normanboyes4983 yes I think it would have been trapped air based on the amount I removed from the system from bleeding. Could also be turbulence too, which again can be air, but also the speed of the flow.
This has been really interesting John for a number of reasons. We have been looking at ASHP but had a few concerns due to the plastic microbore pipe. Watching your videos has reassured us that it will work as our house is 2018 and very well insulated, plus we have already installed large radiators to run our system at a lower temperature. Also by astonishing coincidence, JMR Heating is local to us and will be doing a survey.
Well it seems to tick all the boxes for you, that's great to hear. Have you watched the full installation video too showing they 6 day instal? Might be worth watching so you know what to expect. There's many urban myths about heat pumps, 5 years ago they may have been accurate, but not now with new modern heat pumps and the knowledge and expertise that goes with the installation of them. Mark from JMR Heating and Energy is a top chap and knows his stuff would recommend him.
@@johntisbury watching it now thanks, very useful. Hopefully we won’t need any radiator upgrades as all are already double panels with those downstairs being 1.8m tall aluminium (chosen for both looks and output). Our complication will be a) HWC has to go in the loft as no suitable cupboard (slim cylinder should just fit through the loft hatch) and b) external unit will need to be wall mounted above head height over the driveway as there isn’t a suitable space at the rear of the house and the drive isn’t wide enough to place it at ground level and still park the car. Should be interesting!
@@twelvebears1971 Have you looked at the Sunamp heat battery? It replaces a HWC at around 1/3rd of the size (although very heavy) can store heat a lot longer than a cylinder for obvious reasons like not constantly dilututing the hot water with cold water top ups.
Hi John, Great video, but could you maybe add some more information for the ASHP monitoring with EmonHP. Dis you buy the level 3 kit and then get it installed or purchased with the ASHP? I am also interested to know more of how it connects up. I like you want to have more monitoring available to view and keeping track of how it is working.
Thanks for watching. Yes it was purchased and installed at the same time as the heat pump. I will certainly make a separate video on the components and how it works in more detail. I'm not expert it has to be said, but I can talk through the components and how / where they are installed and what data you can see.
Until the price of electricity drops in relation to gas, I don't see why anyone would install a heatpump in the UK. Electricity is 3x - 4x more expensive than gas so a COP of 3 - 4 is basically the same cost as gas. That is until you get into winter when you need the greatest performance out of your heating system. A gas boiler is unaffected by outside air temperature but the COP of an ASHP is greatly affected in a negative way. COP of less than 2 is not unheard of in sub zero temps. Until the price of electricity is decoupled from gas there's absolutely no point, unless HPs start producing COPS of 5+ down to -10 degrees C.
A couple of points come to mind Chris. 1) Not everyone replaces their fossil fuel heating system to save money. Many site the stopping of burning fossil fuels in their home as a main or supplementary reason. With the added benefit of no standing charge on that service. 2) Depending on your location in the country the average winter temp is around 9ºC. Sub-zero temperatures are infrequent and don't last for long, again depending on your location. Heat Pump efficiency should be measured over the course of a year, SCoP (Seasonal Coefficient of Performance) rather than COP which is a moment in time. A SCoP of 3.0 - 3.5 will be equal to gas prices at today's costs. Anything higher is therefore cheaper. If you look at Open Energy Monitoring dashboard there are 14 systems with data over 365 days. The highest SCoP is 4.2, the lowest is 2.9. The extreme cold not only affects heat pumps, condensing gas boilers are prone to having their condense pipe freeze which stops the appliance from working. Most gas boilers now fitted in the UK since 2019 are condensing combi boilers.
@@johntisbury Not everyone replaces a boiler with a heat pump to save money, no you're correct. However the VAST majority of the UK public are simply not interested in whether or not their heating system is fed from "green" sources. The overwhelming majority are concerned with cost and cost alone. With energy prices being 3x what they were 5 years ago you can understand why this is. If the case for a heat pump was compelling and didn't require government meddling with stupid incentive schemes, people would be queuing up to buy them. A good product sells itself. A product that requires incentives to make it financially viable is a completely flawed concept from the start. Make electricity CHEAP and I'd agree entirely with the switch from gas to electricity but until we stop being ripped off by energy companies and governments, that's not going to happen. A depressing state of affairs, but true.
@@Chris-hy6jy thankfully there is a tide of change to amend the current wholesale pricing methodology which sets the price based on the highest contributing sourest, typically gas. OFGEM, National Grid and the Government undertaking reviews and consultations on it. However, it's a mammoth task as it's a Europe wide approach that needs to be agreed and adopted. There are some early wins with the dropping of green subsidies that are applied to electricity and not to gas. There has been a commitment to level up the disparity between the gas and electricity by 2030. However, this is a tricky nut to crack as there's the potential to leave many more people in fuel poverty if gas prices rise and electricity prices fall. With many new products and emerging markets subsidies are put in place to reduce the purchase price and it's the early adopters who get the ball rolling. Solar panels is a great example and the FiT scheme. Whilst not a perfect scheme it has managed to reduce the price of solar panels through increase in supply and make them more affordable to the mass market. Heat pumps are still in that early adopter change curve and will be for some time to come. Market disrupters like Octopus Energy and British Gas are picking the low hanging fruit and using the £7.5K BUS grant to offset the costs of installation from £0 to £500 to install a heat pump. It's not the energy companies, the big 6 as they are know, that are ripping us off it's the fossil fuel extractors. octopus.energy/blog/the-state-of-wholesale-energy/
Don't forget that most 'condensing' gas boilers are only operating in the window of 80% efficiency. Add to that solar, home batteries, TOU tariffs and you start to build a strong case for Heat pumps 👍
@Chris-hy6jy If you're interested in actual real world data of how a heat pump is performing in the latest cold spell you can watch my November rundown here : ruclips.net/video/dqA62N2H2sQ/видео.html *Spoiler, my combined CoP for heating and DHW never dropped below 3 on even the coldest days.*
Hi Harry, best place to look is on Open Energy Monitoring as this shows our system stats including outside temperature and electricity usage per year, month, week, day, hour etc. Link below to our system: emoncms.org/app/view?name=MyHeatpump&readkey=4f90376a5d12082a8e13ed4da192445c Click the link and then click on a day. At the bottom click Show Detail to see all the underlying data.
I still think the clearance in front of the heatpump is questionable. Certainly Octopus Energy would not of installed it there, because of the possibility of recycling the air as that will lower the efficiency.
Time will tell. I have purchased some smoke testers for that very reason on a cold still day I will be able to check if it is micro climating. Knowing the location and local conditions I don't think it will be a problem. However, if it does then it can be mounted up on a bracket to prevent it from happening.
I am thinking of adding a Valliant heat pump to my home and noticed you have an Eddi, are you using the Eddi to get the heat pump to heat the hot water wit the Eddi relay or is the Eddi simply heating with the immersion?
Thanks for watching. This is a great question. We had the eddi in before the heat pump by a couple of years. If we have excess solar and nowhere to put it then I will use the eddi to heat the hot water. We don't have an export tariff, so no benefit to sending back to the grid. 9 times out of 10 the heat pump will heat the hot water as it's way more efficient in terms of the COP.
Great overview video John. Would be interested to know if you've looked into if it's possible to integrate into Home Assistant and if so,what benefits that would give?
Thank you. There is an integration for the myVAILLANT app github.com/signalkraft/mypyllant-component/releases but not the sensioAPP version. Once I'm upgraded on the Vaillant app I will be trying it out. I guess it will be monitoring over automation, but yet to really investigate.
@mrmuds8624 I've now setup the emoncms in Home Assistant so will do a video on that in the near future once my dashboard looks less like a 8 year olds attempt at dashboard layouts.
@@johntisburyFantastic work! What puzzles me is that whereas MyVaillant app provides hourly data you seem to be recording data by minute. That´s nice because you can capture system cycling and this kind of things… but where do you get the data from? Have you installed special measuring equipment ?
We have a heat meter installed and linked to Open Energy Monitoring, I've covered this in previous videos. Have a look here: heatpumpmonitor.org this is independent 3rd party monitoring of heating systems, mostly ASHPs. If provides the granular data and graphs you are referring to.
Great video as always - those Valiant systems look very nice. Did you get a quote from Octopus Energy - - Daikin heat pump , Daikin compatible water cylinder, Any necessary new radiators and upgrades, Any necessary plumbing and electrical work Labour and workmanship. Quoting just under £2000 (following the increase of the grant to £7500) for our 4 bed detached house. Which seems very cheap compared to your 15k bill ?
Thank you for watching. I didn't get a quote from Octopus as I wanted a Heat Geek installation with a guaranteed COP for DHW and heating and a detailed heat loss survey. If our system does not perform to those quoted figures they will resolve it until it does at no cost to me. I also wanted a relationship with a local installer rather than a larger company. Don't get me wrong I think what Octopus Energy are doing is great and fully support their approach. However, they are picking off the low handing fruit in terms of installations. At the time we got quoted I don't believe with our micro-bore pipework and long primary runs would have been entertained by them, this was certainly the case when they started, micro-bore was a non starter for them.
Hi John. Great video, again ! I have 2 questions: what is the distance between the heat pump and the fence ? It looks less than 1m for me. Isn’t it maybe too close, so that you will have recirculating the cold air? Second one: did no-one recomend you to use an deaerator, like spirovent or zeparo ZU? I am thinking of installing one, just to be sure.
Thanks for watching Adrian. The distance is 760mm between the fence and the heat pump, hence the need for planning permission detailed in the first video of this series. Vaillant's minimum recommended distance is 600mm. The passage down the side of the house is a wind tunnel, improved by the changes to the fence to open slat over closed slat. I doubt there will be micro climating. If it does then we can simple raise it off the ground. Air separators (Spirotech) don't work with low temperature heating systems so I understand.
Hi I just had a heat pump installed.its been on for 30 hours now and it still hasn’t reached 22 on temperature. It is now only on 20.5. The radiators are intermittently generally warm but I seem to be using a lot of kWh this last day 24kwh.is this normal in anew installation? I am a complete novice!
Hi Jane, tricky to answer without some more information. What is your design flow temperature and what is your heat curve (see below) set to? Are you using weather compensation? What size in kW is your heat pump? Your installer should have gone through the system with you. There's 2 variables which affect the amount of heat a heat pump will produce; the thermostat temperature you set (22ºC in your example) and the heat curve. The heat curve tells the ASHP the flow temperature to run at based on the outside temperature. The higher the heat curve the hotter the flow temperature. The downside is the more electricity you will use. The other variable is how you are running the system, ideally it needs to be on all the time and tick over low and slow. Ours runs at around 28ºC flow temperature at the moment and our house is a constant 20ºC with the current 7 - 10ºC outside temps. There's a learning curve with an ASHP, unlike a gas boiler which blasts hot water around the radiators and cycles through hot and cold. ASHP use a different approach and run at lower temperatures and IF designed and installed properly will cost less to run than a gas boiler. 24kWh in a day is a lot to use with current outside temperatures. We have used 16kWh in the last 24 hours to give you an example.
The buffer removal and reason why was covered in the previous video on this playlist. Mark believed with the 35mm primaries we would get good flow rates 1200l/h. The buffer was installed as a safety net however we complained about it being noisy. So Mark removed it and said he should have trusted the maths; 7kW @DT 5 is 1200l/hr.
Hot water a tad on the low side ! To stop Legionella you need it above 50c, 48c and lower you run the risk of legionella growth in your system pipework.
It depends if you feel you need to run a legionella cycle. We don't bother. Why? The water in the 200L hot water tank is emptied almost every day. There's not enough time for it to grow. There's more risk from shower heads that are unused for weeks at a time. The decision to run the cycle or not does depend on your lifestyle and hot water usage. Heat Geek have done a great video on the subject, link here: ruclips.net/video/oJeyc_cGIMU/видео.htmlsi=AURr4fqhwtKBK0VA
It's a shame the apps are so garbage you should be able to see and change everything that's going on not have to resort to the up and down arrows and a dot matrix screen. Also that's a heck of alot of attic and outdoor pipework your gonna be losing a chunk of efficiency in the winter (when you need it most!). Interesting vid though keep it up.
We had no alternatives on the location and primary pipe runs. This location was the shortest from the couple of locations. Agree on the apps. Open Energy Monitoring is a godsend
@@johntisbury it’s exactly the same distance And a clear in obstructed pipe run. I’ve got new external wall insulation which is as fragile as an egg. I’m also a former qualified installer MCS buisness owner so I know the job.
@@johntisbury i had a survey done a few months back and the pay back didn’t justify the outlay. Band B EPC. I don’t need any radiator changed. But I do need a new unvented hot water cylinder. With the now £7500.00 BUS payment My contribution is £1500.00 £500 deposit and the rest over 12months interest free For a Daikin 7kw plus 200ltr cylinder
Also found octopus were the only company to correctly size my system!! Few hundred watts difference on the hall stairs and landing. There paperwork quote was A1 Had 2 installers demanding payment in full and they would refund the bus payments after install! Complained to MCS and there were not interested I guarantee a lots of SMEs will be ripping people off with the installs! Not all of them But definitely a few
No wonder theres not been another update, geezers probably frozen solid along the ASHP with those clearances from the fence, no buffer, massive external pipe run and prikary pipework size.
Oh ye of little faith. We have been fine. -1.6°C all day, average 33°C flow temp, including a 52°C hot water run. 2 defrosts an hour, maintaining 20°C indoors.
@@greg434 we removed our boiler and have freed up usable space indoors where it was located. The heat pump is outside in an area that was not used and cannot be seen unless you purposely walk round there.
Just looking at the clearance distance to the fence , I’d say there probably be an issue once the outside air temperature drops and the re circulating air caused by the fence ,starts to cause freezing on the coil, which will cause the efficiency to plummet. Will be interesting to see.
Thanks for watching Michael. The distance is 760mm between the fence and the heat pump, hence the need for planning permission detailed in the first video of this series. Vaillant's minimum recommended distance is 600mm. The passage down the side of the house is a wind tunnel, improved by the changes to the fence to open slat over closed slat. I doubt there will be micro climating. If it does then we can simple raise it off the ground.
@@johntisbury I think he makes a good point about the fence being too close. This will undoubtedly cause micro climating. If you watch urban plumber, he has had this issue on a few of his jobs and now elevates the heatpumps above the fences etc.
@@deanchapple1 I've seen Szymon's videos where he has moved them to wall mounted. Air flow is all important in the location where the unit is fitted.
Our heat pump is outperforming its designed COP values. Currently running at 4.6 COP since its install in July. There's no issue with it micro climating down to 3ºC even with still days with no wind. I shall be monitoring it as it get colder, but so far no issues at all.
@@johntisbury yeah winter will be the deciding factor. Keep us posted. 😊👍🏼
@@deanchapple1 heat geek’s experiment suggests that this will not be the case ( ruclips.net/video/L5O2BSFqWwY/видео.htmlsi=TDFxO6F_r5yNqE_H )
Are there any updates on your new heat pump John now that winter is upon us? Looking forward to your barrage of data and analysis.
Funny you should ask. I'm pulling together a heat pump specific video on its performance over the last 3 months. Filming tomorrow (Saturday) so should be uploaded next week sometime.
My own heat pump is online tonight! Trouble is: I’m not at home but in Germany. So I’m reading what I can into my energy consumption figures through my Solaredge app. Consumption is not constant and steady like I through they might be. I suspect there’s lots of tuning that needs to happen and I do note your remarks about air bubbles.
My plumber opted for the spirotech deaerators. They put the flow water through a centrifuge which causes the micro bubbles to coalesce before being vented. I’ve had one on my old CH system. They are excellent, and since I got that fitted, no more corrosion issues.
Great news! I'm sure once you are back home you will be able to monitor the system more closely.
I've read on the Spirotech website that they recommend vacuum degasser over a microbubble deaerator with heat pumps that have low flow temperature. It will be interesting to hear how you are getting on with that. It took me a good 3 weeks or so to bled all the air out of our hot water system, the rads was the easy bit.
Hi John
Thank you for such a prompt reply.
I am a complete novice!!
I have only had system turned on since Friday afternoon. I am going to contact my installer on Monday and they are coming Thursday to install the app and go through things with me. I hope they can resolve any issues.
Good to know your experiences.
I may get back to you for help once I get my head round a few things - I’ve found it all a bit stressful. At least I am warm now
Many thanks
Ah that's good to hear. There is a bit of a learning curve with ASHPs, but once you have overcome that then they are very easy to live with. We don't touch ours at all, apart from an annual service, and maybe a quick weak of the heat curve if it's especially cold outside for an extended period of time.
Ask your installer to show you how to adjust the heat curve. Once it gets colder 1 & 2ºC and below you may need to increase the flow temperature to keep up with the extra heat loss (heat travel towards cold, so you lose more heat from your home when its cold outside). Turning up the thermostat is not the solution, leave it at 20ºC or whatever you have it set to, and increase the heat curve. In the milder weather in Spring, drop the heat curve back down again leaving the thermostat at 20ºC.
Ask them what is the outside temperature cutoff for the heat pump is. e.g. at what outside temperature will the heating turn off. Ours is set to 17ºC, once it hits that our ASHP will not heat the house, just the hot water. There's no perfect temperature here, but you want it just around minimum comfort levels; 17 - 19ºC is about right.
Ask them if you are running Pure Weather Compensation. This means it takes the outside temperature to determine the flow temperature of the water for your heating. If the temperature outside rises, the flow temperature decreases and vice versa. Pure Weather Compensation is the best and most efficient way to run a heating system, be it gas or ASHP. Some systems allow you to combine a room temperature with weather compensation which is ideal if you have one or two rooms that are hotter or cooler than the rest of the house.
Hi John, I have a similar system. Iv currently got an issue where Iv had water turned off to the system which gave an f22 fault code for low flow. Iv turned it back on and re pressurised the system but my heatpump isn’t kicking in to heat my DHW and heating. Have you ever come across this issue?
What is the pressure is the system now? Ideally needs to be between 1.0 - 1.5 bar ideally the upper end of this.
@@johntisbury thanks for the reply, it’s at 1.5 bar, the control panel is registering that the tank temp is low but it’s not kicking in
@@moyseylive have you pressed the black reset button on the front of the white control module VWZ AI? If that doesn't do it I'm out of ideas I'm sorry to say.
1:20
Thank you John
What led your installer to the conclusion that the buffer tank is not necessary?
Mark believed with the 35mm primaries we would get good flow rates 1200l/h. The buffer was installed as a safety net however we complained about it being noisy. So Mark removed it and said I should have trusted the maths; 7kW @DT 5 is 1200l/hr.
@@johntisburyNoisy because of the air?
@@normanboyes4983 yes I think it would have been trapped air based on the amount I removed from the system from bleeding. Could also be turbulence too, which again can be air, but also the speed of the flow.
This has been really interesting John for a number of reasons. We have been looking at ASHP but had a few concerns due to the plastic microbore pipe. Watching your videos has reassured us that it will work as our house is 2018 and very well insulated, plus we have already installed large radiators to run our system at a lower temperature. Also by astonishing coincidence, JMR Heating is local to us and will be doing a survey.
Well it seems to tick all the boxes for you, that's great to hear. Have you watched the full installation video too showing they 6 day instal? Might be worth watching so you know what to expect. There's many urban myths about heat pumps, 5 years ago they may have been accurate, but not now with new modern heat pumps and the knowledge and expertise that goes with the installation of them. Mark from JMR Heating and Energy is a top chap and knows his stuff would recommend him.
@@johntisbury watching it now thanks, very useful. Hopefully we won’t need any radiator upgrades as all are already double panels with those downstairs being 1.8m tall aluminium (chosen for both looks and output). Our complication will be a) HWC has to go in the loft as no suitable cupboard (slim cylinder should just fit through the loft hatch) and b) external unit will need to be wall mounted above head height over the driveway as there isn’t a suitable space at the rear of the house and the drive isn’t wide enough to place it at ground level and still park the car. Should be interesting!
@twelvebears1971 fairly normal situations to be fair.
@@twelvebears1971 Have you looked at the Sunamp heat battery? It replaces a HWC at around 1/3rd of the size (although very heavy) can store heat a lot longer than a cylinder for obvious reasons like not constantly dilututing the hot water with cold water top ups.
Hi John, Great video, but could you maybe add some more information for the ASHP monitoring with EmonHP. Dis you buy the level 3 kit and then get it installed or purchased with the ASHP? I am also interested to know more of how it connects up. I like you want to have more monitoring available to view and keeping track of how it is working.
Thanks for watching. Yes it was purchased and installed at the same time as the heat pump. I will certainly make a separate video on the components and how it works in more detail. I'm not expert it has to be said, but I can talk through the components and how / where they are installed and what data you can see.
Until the price of electricity drops in relation to gas, I don't see why anyone would install a heatpump in the UK. Electricity is 3x - 4x more expensive than gas so a COP of 3 - 4 is basically the same cost as gas. That is until you get into winter when you need the greatest performance out of your heating system. A gas boiler is unaffected by outside air temperature but the COP of an ASHP is greatly affected in a negative way. COP of less than 2 is not unheard of in sub zero temps. Until the price of electricity is decoupled from gas there's absolutely no point, unless HPs start producing COPS of 5+ down to -10 degrees C.
A couple of points come to mind Chris.
1) Not everyone replaces their fossil fuel heating system to save money. Many site the stopping of burning fossil fuels in their home as a main or supplementary reason. With the added benefit of no standing charge on that service.
2) Depending on your location in the country the average winter temp is around 9ºC. Sub-zero temperatures are infrequent and don't last for long, again depending on your location. Heat Pump efficiency should be measured over the course of a year, SCoP (Seasonal Coefficient of Performance) rather than COP which is a moment in time. A SCoP of 3.0 - 3.5 will be equal to gas prices at today's costs. Anything higher is therefore cheaper. If you look at Open Energy Monitoring dashboard there are 14 systems with data over 365 days. The highest SCoP is 4.2, the lowest is 2.9.
The extreme cold not only affects heat pumps, condensing gas boilers are prone to having their condense pipe freeze which stops the appliance from working. Most gas boilers now fitted in the UK since 2019 are condensing combi boilers.
@@johntisbury Not everyone replaces a boiler with a heat pump to save money, no you're correct. However the VAST majority of the UK public are simply not interested in whether or not their heating system is fed from "green" sources. The overwhelming majority are concerned with cost and cost alone. With energy prices being 3x what they were 5 years ago you can understand why this is. If the case for a heat pump was compelling and didn't require government meddling with stupid incentive schemes, people would be queuing up to buy them. A good product sells itself. A product that requires incentives to make it financially viable is a completely flawed concept from the start. Make electricity CHEAP and I'd agree entirely with the switch from gas to electricity but until we stop being ripped off by energy companies and governments, that's not going to happen. A depressing state of affairs, but true.
@@Chris-hy6jy thankfully there is a tide of change to amend the current wholesale pricing methodology which sets the price based on the highest contributing sourest, typically gas. OFGEM, National Grid and the Government undertaking reviews and consultations on it. However, it's a mammoth task as it's a Europe wide approach that needs to be agreed and adopted. There are some early wins with the dropping of green subsidies that are applied to electricity and not to gas. There has been a commitment to level up the disparity between the gas and electricity by 2030. However, this is a tricky nut to crack as there's the potential to leave many more people in fuel poverty if gas prices rise and electricity prices fall.
With many new products and emerging markets subsidies are put in place to reduce the purchase price and it's the early adopters who get the ball rolling. Solar panels is a great example and the FiT scheme. Whilst not a perfect scheme it has managed to reduce the price of solar panels through increase in supply and make them more affordable to the mass market.
Heat pumps are still in that early adopter change curve and will be for some time to come. Market disrupters like Octopus Energy and British Gas are picking the low hanging fruit and using the £7.5K BUS grant to offset the costs of installation from £0 to £500 to install a heat pump.
It's not the energy companies, the big 6 as they are know, that are ripping us off it's the fossil fuel extractors. octopus.energy/blog/the-state-of-wholesale-energy/
Don't forget that most 'condensing' gas boilers are only operating in the window of 80% efficiency.
Add to that solar, home batteries, TOU tariffs and you start to build a strong case for Heat pumps 👍
@Chris-hy6jy If you're interested in actual real world data of how a heat pump is performing in the latest cold spell you can watch my November rundown here : ruclips.net/video/dqA62N2H2sQ/видео.html
*Spoiler, my combined CoP for heating and DHW never dropped below 3 on even the coldest days.*
I have read your comments re the distance of the unit to the fence - I fully expect you to have issues once the ambient drops to zero and below.
Time will tell for sure.
Can you state on average how many Kw of electricity you are using per day with the heat pump on
Hi Harry, best place to look is on Open Energy Monitoring as this shows our system stats including outside temperature and electricity usage per year, month, week, day, hour etc. Link below to our system:
emoncms.org/app/view?name=MyHeatpump&readkey=4f90376a5d12082a8e13ed4da192445c
Click the link and then click on a day. At the bottom click Show Detail to see all the underlying data.
I still think the clearance in front of the heatpump is questionable. Certainly Octopus Energy would not of installed it there, because of the possibility of recycling the air as that will lower the efficiency.
Time will tell. I have purchased some smoke testers for that very reason on a cold still day I will be able to check if it is micro climating. Knowing the location and local conditions I don't think it will be a problem. However, if it does then it can be mounted up on a bracket to prevent it from happening.
Exactly right, there is not enough space in front or behind the heat pump. Should be 1.5m in front and 300mm behind (minimums)
I am thinking of adding a Valliant heat pump to my home and noticed you have an Eddi, are you using the Eddi to get the heat pump to heat the hot water wit the Eddi relay or is the Eddi simply heating with the immersion?
Thanks for watching. This is a great question. We had the eddi in before the heat pump by a couple of years. If we have excess solar and nowhere to put it then I will use the eddi to heat the hot water. We don't have an export tariff, so no benefit to sending back to the grid. 9 times out of 10 the heat pump will heat the hot water as it's way more efficient in terms of the COP.
Great overview video John. Would be interested to know if you've looked into if it's possible to integrate into Home Assistant and if so,what benefits that would give?
Thank you. There is an integration for the myVAILLANT app github.com/signalkraft/mypyllant-component/releases but not the sensioAPP version. Once I'm upgraded on the Vaillant app I will be trying it out. I guess it will be monitoring over automation, but yet to really investigate.
OpenEnergyMonitor Emoncms also has a Home Assistant integration
@@GlynHudsonthanks Glyn good call
@mrmuds8624 I've now setup the emoncms in Home Assistant so will do a video on that in the near future once my dashboard looks less like a 8 year olds attempt at dashboard layouts.
@@johntisbury thanks, I look forward to it!
How do you get all those nice graphs and data?
I use Microsoft Excel and manually record the data on a daily basis and chart from there.
@@johntisburyFantastic work! What puzzles me is that whereas MyVaillant app provides hourly data you seem to be recording data by minute. That´s nice because you can capture system cycling and this kind of things… but where do you get the data from? Have you installed special measuring equipment ?
We have a heat meter installed and linked to Open Energy Monitoring, I've covered this in previous videos. Have a look here: heatpumpmonitor.org this is independent 3rd party monitoring of heating systems, mostly ASHPs. If provides the granular data and graphs you are referring to.
Great video as always - those Valiant systems look very nice.
Did you get a quote from Octopus Energy - - Daikin heat pump , Daikin compatible water cylinder, Any necessary new radiators and upgrades, Any necessary plumbing and electrical work
Labour and workmanship. Quoting just under £2000 (following the increase of the grant to £7500) for our 4 bed detached house. Which seems very cheap compared to your 15k bill ?
Thank you for watching.
I didn't get a quote from Octopus as I wanted a Heat Geek installation with a guaranteed COP for DHW and heating and a detailed heat loss survey. If our system does not perform to those quoted figures they will resolve it until it does at no cost to me. I also wanted a relationship with a local installer rather than a larger company.
Don't get me wrong I think what Octopus Energy are doing is great and fully support their approach. However, they are picking off the low handing fruit in terms of installations. At the time we got quoted I don't believe with our micro-bore pipework and long primary runs would have been entertained by them, this was certainly the case when they started, micro-bore was a non starter for them.
Hi John. Great video, again ! I have 2 questions: what is the distance between the heat pump and the fence ? It looks less than 1m for me. Isn’t it maybe too close, so that you will have recirculating the cold air?
Second one: did no-one recomend you to use an deaerator, like spirovent or zeparo ZU? I am thinking of installing one, just to be sure.
Thanks for watching Adrian. The distance is 760mm between the fence and the heat pump, hence the need for planning permission detailed in the first video of this series. Vaillant's minimum recommended distance is 600mm. The passage down the side of the house is a wind tunnel, improved by the changes to the fence to open slat over closed slat. I doubt there will be micro climating. If it does then we can simple raise it off the ground.
Air separators (Spirotech) don't work with low temperature heating systems so I understand.
Thanks John !
Hi
I just had a heat pump installed.its been on for 30 hours now and it still hasn’t reached 22 on temperature. It is now only on 20.5. The radiators are intermittently generally warm but I seem to be using a lot of kWh this last day 24kwh.is this normal in anew installation? I am a complete novice!
Hi Jane, tricky to answer without some more information. What is your design flow temperature and what is your heat curve (see below) set to? Are you using weather compensation? What size in kW is your heat pump?
Your installer should have gone through the system with you.
There's 2 variables which affect the amount of heat a heat pump will produce; the thermostat temperature you set (22ºC in your example) and the heat curve. The heat curve tells the ASHP the flow temperature to run at based on the outside temperature. The higher the heat curve the hotter the flow temperature. The downside is the more electricity you will use. The other variable is how you are running the system, ideally it needs to be on all the time and tick over low and slow. Ours runs at around 28ºC flow temperature at the moment and our house is a constant 20ºC with the current 7 - 10ºC outside temps.
There's a learning curve with an ASHP, unlike a gas boiler which blasts hot water around the radiators and cycles through hot and cold. ASHP use a different approach and run at lower temperatures and IF designed and installed properly will cost less to run than a gas boiler. 24kWh in a day is a lot to use with current outside temperatures. We have used 16kWh in the last 24 hours to give you an example.
What happened to LLH? Reasons for removal?
The buffer removal and reason why was covered in the previous video on this playlist.
Mark believed with the 35mm primaries we would get good flow rates 1200l/h. The buffer was installed as a safety net however we complained about it being noisy. So Mark removed it and said he should have trusted the maths; 7kW @DT 5 is 1200l/hr.
Hot water a tad on the low side ! To stop Legionella you need it above 50c, 48c and lower you run the risk of legionella growth in your system pipework.
It depends if you feel you need to run a legionella cycle. We don't bother. Why? The water in the 200L hot water tank is emptied almost every day. There's not enough time for it to grow. There's more risk from shower heads that are unused for weeks at a time.
The decision to run the cycle or not does depend on your lifestyle and hot water usage. Heat Geek have done a great video on the subject, link here: ruclips.net/video/oJeyc_cGIMU/видео.htmlsi=AURr4fqhwtKBK0VA
It's a shame the apps are so garbage you should be able to see and change everything that's going on not have to resort to the up and down arrows and a dot matrix screen. Also that's a heck of alot of attic and outdoor pipework your gonna be losing a chunk of efficiency in the winter (when you need it most!). Interesting vid though keep it up.
We had no alternatives on the location and primary pipe runs. This location was the shortest from the couple of locations.
Agree on the apps. Open Energy Monitoring is a godsend
I’ve instited octopus run my pipes internally
Still waiting for them to get back to me.
Good luck with that.
@@johntisbury it’s exactly the same distance
And a clear in obstructed pipe run. I’ve got new external wall insulation which is as fragile as an egg. I’m also a former qualified installer MCS buisness owner so I know the job.
@@rymoe6299 I hope that Octopus see that too then. Have they given you a default 'desktop quote' or did they visit and complete a heat loss survey?
@@johntisbury i had a survey done a few months back and the pay back didn’t justify the outlay. Band B EPC. I don’t need any radiator changed. But I do need a new unvented hot water cylinder.
With the now £7500.00 BUS payment
My contribution is £1500.00 £500 deposit and the rest over 12months interest free
For a Daikin 7kw plus 200ltr cylinder
Also found octopus were the only company to correctly size my system!! Few hundred watts difference on the hall stairs and landing.
There paperwork quote was A1
Had 2 installers demanding payment in full and they would refund the bus payments after install!
Complained to MCS and there were not interested
I guarantee a lots of SMEs will be ripping people off with the installs! Not all of them
But definitely a few
I would expect better lagging in an unheated loft space like that.
What aspects are you referring to?
No wonder theres not been another update, geezers probably frozen solid along the ASHP with those clearances from the fence, no buffer, massive external pipe run and prikary pipework size.
Oh ye of little faith. We have been fine. -1.6°C all day, average 33°C flow temp, including a 52°C hot water run. 2 defrosts an hour, maintaining 20°C indoors.
What a monstrosity..
Get back under your rock Greg
@@johntisbury
My boiler fits in a small kitchen cupboard...
That thing you got sticks out like a bulldogs bollocks
@@greg434 we removed our boiler and have freed up usable space indoors where it was located. The heat pump is outside in an area that was not used and cannot be seen unless you purposely walk round there.