Geothermal Heating

galwaytt

anon1 - good points, all.

I agree about the electrician/ufh/plumber 'interface'..........definately needs major improvement.......

finbarrk

Would it be better to let the company that is fitting the geothermal system fit the ufh as well? Any recommendations for the Clare / Limereick area.

yop

Dunstar down your region are good.

Getting same company to do both is not really necessary, at the end of the day there will be a flow and return from your cylinder (which is feed by the geo) which feeds the manifolds, your plumber will actually put that in place.

jasgrif11

I also found Ashgrove engineering quiet good aswell. They are based in Kanturk and they installed both my UFH and Nibe heat pump

Do-more

anon1 wrote:

This would include reviews of the various heat pumps e.g. IVF, NIBE, Helio.

:eek: IVT

Qwerty?

billy_beckham wrote:

Qwerty how have you your ufh set-up, ie how long per day is the water circulating through the floor?

It's circulating 24/7 if the Zone is open the stats control that. Obviously the heat pump only comes on a few hours during the day and night as needed.

also as Anon1 said

Anon1 wrote:

Do heatpumps really try to optimise the use of night rate electricity as some installers claim. I can't see how they can if thermostats are going to limit the air temperature increase in a room.

I agree totally, whats the point in restricting the heating to night rate, when you need it in the evening, surely the heating will work more efficently if it maintains a constant temp in the house 24/7.

martin-sligo

Hello all, great reading about your experiences with this technology. I would appreciate any comments on the suitability of this way of heating in stone buildings. I am renovating a traditional Irish long house, built from cut stone, and would like to have uhf to minimise damp etc by providing a constant low level heat input, possibly with solar for water heating, or can I use the geothermal for hot water too ?

Id also heard that the specs for these systems are for Scandinavian countries and might not meet these in an Irish climate ?

Any recommendations for contractors in west sligo / north mayo appreciated.

Regards
Martin

Wacked

I got a NIbe 1240 geothermal system installed last year. My house is new, about 3000 sq ft and well insulated, but my esb bill for nov and dec was €800. I have the thermostats set at about 20C.

Nearly all of the rooms have thermostats. Is it more efficient to have just one or two thermostats for the whole house? Obviously if just one room is demanding heat then the pump is working.

Does anyone know of a way to make the water only heat at night on this system? My night usage by the system seems very low.

Cheers

Wacked

Longboard

Hi Wacked.
To confirm the draw is from the heat pump, a cost meter could be fitted to pumps mains supply.

How is the house zoned? (Space/DHW). Are these zones just temperature controlled (thermostats) or is there a time clock fitted as well? A time clock would be responsible for ensuring the system would run more at night. If the time cock is split into zones then it would be possible to "make the water only heat at night"

Do you have UFH or rads fitted (both)?

Wacked

There are stats in the bedrooms and one in hall, living room, kitchen. There are two rooms upstairs. These have radiators and no stats. The stats each have a very simple time clock which can set a lower temp for a particular period. The system itself doesn't have a time clock and isn't seperated. The manual says that the system prioritises water heating when it is required. It seems quite stupid that it doesn't just heat water at night as there is a 300L tank.

On a different note, is it difficult to integrate a solar collector system into this sort of setup?

Longboard

The hot water system probably runs off a stat built into the tank n tank setup. If there is no time control on the display on the pump itself then I'd imagine that it runs every time the temperature in the 160l DHW tank drops below the setpoint.

These systems also use electrical heating elements (cartridges) to boost the KW output (and consumption) of the system by 6KW (single phase) during times of peak demand. Depending on the system you have, the normal consumption when running on geothermal alone is claimed to be between 1 - 2.5KW. When the element comes on, the consumption jumps to 7 - 8.5kw (at full capacity, This could be higher if you purchased a 3 phase system) Could the element be running more than it should?

http://www.nibe.co.uk/NIBE-Heat-Pumps/Ground-source-heat-pumps/Product-range/FIGHTER-1240/

The bad news is it looks like a tank in tank setup. Normally when fitting solar a dual coil or combination tank is used where there is an additional coil for the solar collector to be plumbed in. With a tank in tank, an extra solar coil is usually not fitted as this requires the manifacturer to either plumb the solar coil down from the top (less space for the anode (unless s/s), mains water in & DHW out connections) or make life difficult and try to plumb it through 2 tank walls to get to the inner dhw tank.

Try going back to your supplier or NIBE and enquire about what setup/add-ons they would propose? Also talk to a solar supplier to see what they recomend. They might say an extra dhw tank with solar coil is required or to plumb in with a plate exchanger on the mains feed into the heat pump.

(sorry about the bad spelling)

Wacked

Thanks for all the advice Longboard. I don't have space for another tank so I think i will leave it and try improve efficiency by better use of the thermostats timing feature.

Cheers