OV9

Simon, it is a thermal store but they don’t sell it as that for some reason.

Basically you have 250l of water constantly sitting there at 70C or so. A heat exchanger pipe runs through it from the mains and the water coming through is heated up by the 250l of stored water. You’re using the energy from the stored water, not the water itself.

Similar to how a combi boiler heats the water as it comes through.

OK got that.

But 250l of water will go cold pretty quickly, with mains water rushing through those pipes at the speed it can do. And 'normal' hot tap water is only about 60C or so, (so states the thermostat on my HW cylinder), so the amount of thermal energy in 250l at 70C is only about the same as approx 290l at 60C.

So how much HW in a 'normal' HW cylinder? 250l doesn't seem much?

My old copper cylinder held about 140l. 250l is quite a bit more. They do 150l and 200l as well.

The 250l of stored water doesn’t go cold that fast; good modern insulation prevents it leaking much heat, and if your boiler is keeping it warm you can’t consider it as simply being used up.

It’s effectively a reservoir of energy. Seems to work really well so far, though I can’t monitor the temperature of the stored water with my Evohome system; it does it’s own monitoring and Evohome just acts as a time switch.

Jobbo wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:37 pm Simon, it is a thermal store but they don’t sell it as that for some reason.

Basically you have 250l of water constantly sitting there at 70C or so. A heat exchanger pipe runs through it from the mains and the water coming through is heated up by the 250l of stored water. You’re using the energy from the stored water, not the water itself.

Similar to how a combi boiler heats the water as it comes through.

They won’t sell it as a thermal store as the water in a thermal store is heated direct by the boiler- it’s actually central heating water in the store, as opposed to yours which is indirectly heated- so if you wanted to class it as something it would be an indirectly heated thermal store

Jobbo wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 4:12 pm My old copper cylinder held about 140l. 250l is quite a bit more. They do 150l and 200l as well.

The 250l of stored water doesn’t go cold that fast; good modern insulation prevents it leaking much heat, and if your boiler is keeping it warm you can’t consider it as simply being used up.

It’s effectively a reservoir of energy. Seems to work really well so far, though I can’t monitor the temperature of the stored water with my Evohome system; it does it’s own monitoring and Evohome just acts as a time switch.

The house I bought in McScotland a few years ago was unfortunate enough to be in a village that had no access to English gas so we had a wet, electric central heating system and it was superb. The main large tank (180-200l IIRC) contained hot water for the radiators and within this tank was a smaller one for the DHW. The main tank was heated by immersion heaters and worked wonderfully well. The radiators in the house heated up really fast and there was always lots of hot water. Sadly it died after about 5 yrs of us being there so we replaced it with a Heatrae Electromax https://www.heatraesadia.com/products/h ... electromax and it was brilliant. Loads of mains pressure hot water and really fast response times for the rads.

Lifting it up through the loft hatch was a cunt of a job though Dead easy to fit got a good few quid scrap for the old tank as there was so much copper in it.

Jobbo wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 4:12 pm My old copper cylinder held about 140l. 250l is quite a bit more. They do 150l and 200l as well.

The 250l of stored water doesn’t go cold that fast; good modern insulation prevents it leaking much heat, and if your boiler is keeping it warm you can’t consider it as simply being used up.

It’s effectively a reservoir of energy. Seems to work really well so far, though I can’t monitor the temperature of the stored water with my Evohome system; it does it’s own monitoring and Evohome just acts as a time switch.

So how was your shower Jobbo, or haven't you had one yet?

I spent the weekend sorting the garage. For the first time since I moved in 18 months ago...!

I had lots of Rapid Racking delivered last week and spent all weekend clearing up the garage, assembling the units, getting them into place and getting all my boxes of stuff onto them. I still need a order a new workbench from them, but thanks to the vagaries of their pricing it was cheaper to order this lot first, then get the £50 with my receipt then I'll order the workbench next week.

Still need to get the bikes mounted on the wall, ditto the ladder and finally sell an old washing machine. Then I'll have a proper amount of space in there. A new electric sectional door will follow, along with new LED lighting. Finally, I'm going to paint the walls and floor.

Heh, we also sorted the garage last week for the first time since moving in 15 months ago. Oddly, despite chucking out a massive amount of stuff it doesn't feel significantly more spacious; I think we'd stacked it well the first time. Did find some useful bits which I'd thought were missing though.

The shower is immense. It's going to be down to your cold water pressure, but not having bothered to upgrade the supply pipe to 22mm hasn't mattered.

My builders started this morning - I had a thoroughly hateful weekend getting the house cleared and setting up in the new house. I don’t plan on moving or doing any large project again for a very long time.

The shed was awesome though!

It starts....

Ceilings out to allow the steels to go in, then I can get rid of all those pesky walls!

3 room's knocked through, old back door bricked/blocked up , lintels in and extension floor leveled up

French doors coming Wednesday being fitted to an opening to the right of the camera position and it should start getting better or certainly less messy from there. I haven't done much other than knocking down and clearing up but still pleased with the week and a bit of progress.

Similar project! The race is on matey!!!

Rich B wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:04 pm Similar project! The race is on matey!!!

Are you doing much yourself ?

Carlos wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:23 pm

Rich B wrote: Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:04 pm Similar project! The race is on matey!!!

Are you doing much yourself ?

nope, I’m cheating!

Last time I did all the kitchen, bathroom, decs, Flooring, carpentry, etc myself.

This time I’m only doing the flooring. I’d love to do it all myself again, but time is the issue with a one year old child in the mix.

IanF wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:32 pm On call, so painted our 8m by 6m kitchen ceiling and walls, with bastard down lights, white when they were previously white; I may be fucking cross-eyed now..

Looking at a new house on Saturday that needs a fuck-ton of work; if I’m successful, I’m planning on splitting the house in two (so I don’t have a nervous breakdown! ) and take it one half at a time.

It’s a really complicated buy though; cash buy With a charity-selling-after-probate-with-two-years-sat-empty twist.

FAILED! A developer is buying it, demolishing it and putting a £4m house on the site.

IanF wrote: Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:55 pm

IanF wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 9:32 pm On call, so painted our 8m by 6m kitchen ceiling and walls, with bastard down lights, white when they were previously white; I may be fucking cross-eyed now..

Looking at a new house on Saturday that needs a fuck-ton of work; if I’m successful, I’m planning on splitting the house in two (so I don’t have a nervous breakdown! ) and take it one half at a time.

It’s a really complicated buy though; cash buy With a charity-selling-after-probate-with-two-years-sat-empty twist.

FAILED! A developer is buying it, demolishing it and putting a £4m house on the site.

Pretty standard round here isn’t it!

Has anyone here ever had to deal with their local water authority over water pressure? We only get just about the legal minimum (0.7 bar) and when I measure the flow rate from the downstairs taps I only get around 5.5 litres per minute. If they’re hitting the minimum, will they even bother to help? It’s especially annoying as I live a few hundred metres from the water tower that supplies the whole of Liverpool so it’s not as if there should be a shortage of a pressure head.

You sure you don’t have a throttle at your stopcock Rev? (Ooh err missus).

Something that looks like this.


When we moved in here I complained to the builders about low pressure. Plumber arrived and just turned it up.... felt like a bit of a berk but every days a school day. It sits around 2.5bar usually, but without the throttle he advised we’d have 4+ which would cause issues.

Paid deposit on floor work. No pictures yet, work starts in a couple of weeks.

Council managed to lose next door's planning application (joint with us) so recommended we merge the two into one. Seems quite incompetent as they've managed to cash the cheque for the fee, but they're refunding one fee as there is only one application now.

They've stipulated that work has to commence at the same time on both properties, but as that was always the intention I'm not bothered.

NotoriousREV wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:12 am Has anyone here ever had to deal with their local water authority over water pressure? We only get just about the legal minimum (0.7 bar) and when I measure the flow rate from the downstairs taps I only get around 5.5 litres per minute. If they’re hitting the minimum, will they even bother to help? It’s especially annoying as I live a few hundred metres from the water tower that supplies the whole of Liverpool so it’s not as if there should be a shortage of a pressure head.

I haven't had to deal with a water authority over such an issue, but if you don't get anywhere I'm sure there are still things you can do to improve things in the house. I take it you're measuring at the kitchen tap or whichever is the first tap after the stopcock? Are the downstairs taps definitely run directly from the mains rather than loft storage tank?

Bigger diameter pipe from the point the water supply enters your property could be a good idea; even if pressure is a bit poor, it'll allow more volume flow rate.

Kitchen taps should never come from a loft tank. All drinking water should come from the fresh main...