Every Heating Installer Should Know This
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- NRG Awareness
www.nrgawarene...
With over a century of combined team experience in the heating industry, NRG Awareness is the gold standard for all designers and installers.
NRG Awareness is a pioneer in the heating industry, offering energy-effective heating system design combined with ongoing support for installers, resulting in successful partnerships throughout the construction or retrofit process.
The NRG Awareness story
Our story began very early in the technological heating age; we realised that despite all the new devices in the heating, ventilation, and hot water market, the same old issues remain.
Installers are overwhelmed by the need for up-to-date, better and more technical information and know-how, but their target continually moves with every additional innovation.
Their real-world experience in the heating industry confirmed that the same topics repeatedly lead to customer dissatisfaction and profit-wasting callback hassles for designers and installers despite the horrendous energy wastage with inadequate circulation and inaccurate heat delivery.
The problem applied to all fuel-type systems, and the newer, more technically advanced appliances highlighted the difficulties even more to the end-users.
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#heating #plumbing #heatpump
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I love this channel! My wife doesn't '' why you always watching that Roger guy all the time'' because he's really interesting, clever and has a great sense of humour... Night night
What is your wife's first name? I am going to giver her a shout out.
@@SkillBuilder That would be amazing! Miriam. Can't wait to see her face! 😂 You're a true gent!
I'm going to be using this exact system for my 27,000 sqm house. Thanks guys!
Rishi.
Don’t forget to claim on expenses. Even better…connect your stables to it..wink , wink ❤
@@billy4072 and the pool
It mightnt be safe and effective though - little Rishy boyo.....
😂😂😂😂😂
This is why I subscribe to this channel. Harry has just blown my mind. I think I will be going back to my books and reminding myself about all of those fundamentals he was talking about.
This man might have just single handedly just upped the game of all the plumbers watching this video 😂, great video love the technical stuff when it come to heating systems 👍
I’m a heating engineer, and I’ve just finished installing a system using a lot of these components from NRG Awareness. The people talking about the extra cost and materials need to bear in mind that this isn’t competing in the 3k combi swap space. It’s the 15k heat pump installation space where a lot of the extra plumbing work is required anyway. But for me the really exciting part is that it's a great option for adding heat pumps to the energy mix of the roughly 50% of UK housing stock where a fully heat pump driven system is just not currently feasible (regardless of what the Heat Geeks would have you believe.) My house is one if these. Old, single skin, stone built 3 bed.
When designing the heating system, the goal was to have something that is always operating at the lowest price per KW, regardless of the outside temperature.
The system is basically a hybrid that involves a large battery (to be installed when the extension is finished) to allow us to use economy 7 and solar electricity to power a 6kw heat pump, a wood burner with a back boiler that can add an extra 4kw into the heating / hot water system (again, adding this when the extension is finished), and a gas boiler. The system switches between calling for heat from either the gas boiler or the heat pump based on the external air temperature, and the wood burner just always adds heat to the system whenever it is being used.
Basically as the temperature drops and you require more heat, at a higher temperature, all heat pumps actually make less heat, less efficiently (you pay more for less as the temperature drops). You have to size both the heat pump and heat emitters accordingly. Bigger heat pump means bigger plumbing, bigger electricity supply, bigger costs all round, and it will never be running efficiently when the temperature is low.
My system uses a 6kw heat pump. But that’s 6kw at -2. At 6 degrees it’s actually outputting more like 8kw, which heats the house just fine without even having to upgrade the radiators. I’v currently got it set so that the gas boiler will kick in below 5 degrees. Over the last few months, the heat pump has been heating the house, the vast majority of the time. Without the battery system (and therefore economy 7) and the wood burner installed yet, it costs about the same as gas. With the battery system and economy 7, it should cost half that much.
The heat pump is basically always operating as efficiently as possible, and the house is never cold. I haven’t had to upgrade the electricity supply or other plumbing outside of the HW cylinder. It’s a tight fit but I’ve managed to fit everything (NRG Zone, cylinder and all the controls etc) in a corner cupboard. I run max 45 degrees through the radiators when the heat pump is operating and 65 when the gas boiler is operating. At some point I will upgrade the rads to allow me to reduce the the flow temperature and increase efficiency further.
System works great, NRG Zone and NRG Lex are great products, and NRG were very helpful (they actually did bespoke wiring diagrams to help me implement this, at no extra cost), and I would highly recommend.
As a heating engineer, what this allows is the opportunity to give customers who can’t afford to upgrade everything, all at once, the option to spread the cost of fully decarbonising their heating system over a longer period, while immediately massively reducing their reliance on gas. I’m one of those customers. I bought my heat pump directly from China. It cost less than a middle of the road combi boiler, delivered. It’s modulating, quiet, works to specification, and is actually MCS certified. You can’t get a grant for a hybrid system, so that’s not really relevant, but it’s nice to know.
At the moment the heat pump market in the UK is broken. As a heating engineer, I look at the prices being charged for heat pump installations, and I literally cant work out where all the money is going, other than into the back pocket of the people who run the medium sized companies that install them (you basically need to employ someone just to do all the grant paperwork). The MCS and grant scheme has almost completely excluded the vast majority of small heating and plumbing businesses from the market, and as a result you’ve got tens of thousands of gas engineers in small businesses and one man bands who customers trust and have used for years, telling customers that heat pumps are a waste of time, and to just install a new gas boiler.
If we really want to decarbonise the heating industry, this needs to change. They will only become affordable when normal heating engineers are able to install them. Heat pumps are simple technology. They are more like installing a fridge than a gas boiler. The key is sizing them correctly, and ensuring that the plumbing system is adequately sized to deliver the lower temperature heat that they produce efficiently. These are skills good plumbers should already have.
Every 5 years gas engineers go back to school and spend a week renewing their qualification. This should be expanded to include the installation of heat pumps.
Government support should be expanded to include hybrid systems, made possible by products like the NRG zone, which potentially make heat pumps affordable for more people, and appropriate for more properties. Customers worry that they will be expensive to install and run, and that their houses will be cold. Hybrid systems are the solution in many of these instances.
The Heat Geeks, to me, make something incredibly simple, seem incredibly difficult. Because it benefits them.... Heat pumps are not rocket science.
I'm UK Based, had to import from Ireland.
MG Plumb
Great comment and a good addition to the debate. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Interesting design that is !
Impressive!
I'd have liked to watch this but too long considering the topic and the complexities of the system, featured in diagrams.
This is a first miss for me. Sorry!
If I lived in that house with 3ft thick walls ….
I’d likely have enough ££ to do all that
But knowing what I do …I wouldn’t
Big low loss header
Why does it have to be so complicated, expensive to build and very difficult for service and maintenance. Not economic not convenient. Its only design, definitely NOT GOOD ENGINEERING.
yeh but just look at it, and it doesn't work its all shit i wouldn't want to look at that 4 mile of copper pipe and pumps every day in my home
Crazy stuff - a maintainance and breakdown nightmare - like today's cars - unnecessarily overcomplicated.
Probably one of the best educational videos you have released… I have really learned a lot, but also realise how little I know! Thank you
Great to hear!
Worked in many 100 year old systems without pumps at all, 293kw and bigger (1million btu old money) always amazed at some of the connections to some rads with flow and return connected to single pipe within a foot , we have lost the wisdom of the old days brought about by the introduction of sealed systems and combi boilers where anyone can install rads and they work no matter how they are piped up hence the onslaught of diy installs . They even had to invent a bi-directional TRV so the DIYs could make them work .
DIY your car do you or have you got money to spare not everyone has spare cash to take the chance that the plumber knows how to fix it just like your car.I have had my pants down a couple of times not in a gas way.
Bi directional valves make plumbing easier for us. What you goin on about
If you were a proper heating engineer you wouldnt need them know which pipe if flow and return all the way through your installation by the way its not plumbing .
@@poorfordtransitowner1627
Your fault employing a plumber horses for courses you needed a heating engineer .@@Allegedly2right
He is talking about one pipe systems not 2 pipe reverse return.
I think we all need to stop thinking that investing 10k minimum into a system that works well (Gas oil system) is the answer, you will need to wait 7 years minimum to even think about getting a return and then you need it installed correctly. Madness people.
I could listen to Harry for hours. I've done loads of solid fuel installs and I've learned like Rodger today! Love skillbuilder keep it up guys
Roger.
I must say, seems to me, heat pumps are a technology that doesn't give you much of a margin of tolerance to play with? How much are you talking for a system like this? Does look cool though,
Are you kidding me they have made a system that costs more in copper pipe and valves than a combi boiler not to mention you need to be a rocket scientist to keep it running they have done to heating what has been done to cars made it so complicated it is broken most of the time.
Lol... you missed the point. Copper is just for the pictures/artwork: the flow and design using any material for piping is the key here.
This is not for a 2-3 bed terrace. Have you seen the plant room behind him? This is merely design considerations which for a smaller house would be minimal as the pipework is minimal anyway. Everything is much smaller and costs less as such
Assume you’ve brought a modern diesel and do a lot of short journeys. Modern cars are super reliable.
When they first developed combi boilers it would have been a load of different units stuck on the wall - doesn’t mean a manufacturer cant package it up for consumers
Wow! This guy is incredible! What’s his background?
decades of experience probalby
I would love to say I fully understood everything Harry said about the system, but being from Ireland, I can translate that the Hot Press is an airing cupboard and an Attic is the loft !
What a facinating and engaging man I could listen to all night . Thank you, learnt a bit too !
Me too gibbodive. I told Dylan I thought he was interesting but Dylan didn't understand a word of it.
We need both sides represented in these discussions invite heat geek on at the same time and let’s hear them debate!
There are no sides in this. Heat Geek is using much the same ideas. They just aren't dealing with multi fuel hybrid systems but the rest of it is the same idea using different components.
Did he just say that he fitted two 100KW boilers “because it was an old house” then fitted three heat pumps which are 20KW each, and after it was up and running found that the heat pumps were actually heating the building without the need for the 200KW from the boilers?? If thats true, then this shit is exactly what is wrong with the heating industry🤦♂️
When I designed my system 30 years ago. I strategically placed adjustable beads so I could adjust it. The plumber's all (it will hydraulic ( bang)) never has & recently I up graded to a sealed system with a stainless steel hot water tank & the water from the stove & range/ heating is always clean with no problems.
How did you connect the open vented stove to the sealed system?
This guy really knows his work, learned so much in this video (and I am not in the industry myself). In the hybrid system though I wonder why they design the heatpump to attempt heating for 1hour before having the oil kick in. Two things:
1. Surely its more efficient for oil to kick in first to bring water to temp. Besides, a heatpump will do very little in 1hr vs oil.
2. Could there not be logic in the controller that checks outside temp and inside temp, then decides if the difference is great enough for oil to kick in or if heatpump will suffice.
This is just an observation from someone who has little experience in heating systems (apart from owning a hybrid system myself)
excellent call with someone who is clearly an expert
I'm definitely looking forward to seeing him back on the show again. Thanks for always bringing high-quality content. We appreciate it. It was a great video.
We need Adams input, Roger organise something with Harry & yourself so we can discuss any opposing views on principles in a little more detail if they are both up for it…
Keep the challenging questions going…
I am sure Adam will add comments to the bottom of the video
Excellent!
I fitted my own system based around a thermostore tank which has inputs from a solar heat array, solid fuel stove and an oil boiler..
The issue I have is that the system, which is open vented, expands regularly so I get hot water coming out of my header tank overflow.
Obviously this means the tank gets topped up with fresh cold water every time the system cools down which is adding air and diluting my inhibitor.
I have either fitted my over flow pipe to low or my inlet ball valve too high or my system is badly designed... i'm concerned that over time I am going to have issues with the boiler or my radiators rotting out, in the meantime I keep my mag filters clean and top up the inhibitor additive once a year but I feel its just a band aid.
You might simply need another expansion tank. You can couple two side by side
Trouble is.. the thermostore tank is all piped and brazed and insulated so I wouldn't know where or how to add a vessel but this has prompted me to get into contact with the manufacturer to see what they suggest..
I have a self-build project coming up this year and I will definitely look into the system designer in your interview.. it was very interesting
@@SkillBuilder
Telford tanks designed a thermal store tank for me. Brilliant. It does the work of a Dunsley. It is connected to our wood burner and oil boiler. It supplies our hot water which is potable and heats our radiators and under floor heating. I explained the system to my plumber and he fitted first time and done a superb job. For the first 26 years the oil boiler was a simple 14/18 Worcester oil boiler. It is now an18/25. I will connect to the tank a thermodynamic panel system soon, the best system you will ever find. It heats water 24/7 day or night.
"Dipping" the cold feed is nothing new, old drawings for the myson aerjec in the 80's showed it IIRC.
I have taken loads of those out, all blocked solid. I still have a new one in my lockup and keep thinking it should be in the scrap.
@@SkillBuilder Aerjec's were a good bit of kit and blocked for the following reasons.
Back in the day people never flushed systems and most didn't use inhibitor, so magnetite was a ever present problem.
The Aerjec caused turbulence of the water so the air would come out of suspension and go out up the open vent.
Unfortunately this turbulence meant that the magnetite also dropped out of suspension and blocked the Aerjec!
I also still have one in my garage in a box and doubt I will ever use it up before retirement......................
Many of todays low loss header recognise this historic problem and have a drain at the bottom to flush any separated magnatite and a auto AV on the top.
The other thing from these times past that springs to mind, talking of neutral points and magnetite: is the SMC pump-pack instructions:
Mainly when piped as per there diagram with the cold feed in the cylinder return, blockages always occured at this point, with no dhw as the symptom.
I sorted loads and used to close couple the feed and vent on the flow,directly before the first pump.
Never any issue thereafter.
Those cheap and nasty automatic air vents are the weak point on that system get rid fit a proper air bottle or a quality aav
A perfect illustration of why I went all electric 17 years ago, and recommended it to family and customers. My 'system' is extremely simple, 100% reliable, silent, and takes up no space at all. It costs at least twice as much to run as gas (which was there before), but requires no servicing or maintenance, and never requires any parts. Each room is time & temperature controlled. It was the best thing I did as part of the refurbishment.
Great point! I reckon you could put the £15,000 paid for a heat pump installation into a high yield ISA and it would close the gap between gas and electric even more.
I started doing the inverted cold feed loop about thirty odd years ago. Simply because that's how the Glow Worm boiler installation literature showed it installed on their boilers. I did question whether it was more likely to get blocked though.
Hi Mark
I am not sure why it blocks in that spot but it seems to happen a lot.
A truly interesting and logical concept highly commended,
Good practice to dip cold feeds.only problem they can block up over time
You are not wrong. I always do them as compression fittings.
That tends not to be an issue when the system is designed not to have system expansion problems. Still, having the loop removable for maintenance is a very good suggestion.
Cibse recommend using tees at the bottom instead of elbows with the outer ends with copper to iron connections with a stop end/plug to make water tight.Easily removable and can rod between each tee as straight through
Hi Roger, I have used NRG manifolds many times and found their product, and more particularly, technical support has been 100%. Its only going to be useful to a small number of applications, like larger houses , multi fuel input options and commercial. I did one guest house that used 4 manifolds, 2 oil boilers, 2 single phase HP, 2 floors of U/F with multiple manifolds and radiator circuits
That is great to know. I am assuming you are in Ireland?
Yes, we get a lot of farmhouses that that will have an oil boiler and wood/turf stove or external gasifying wood burner linked, and feeding 3 or 4 zones. they also do a wiring control box and wiring schematics.@@SkillBuilder
What's up friend! I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on my recent video. Your feedback means a lot, so please don't hesitate to share your positive or negative comments.
Good technical discussion. Thanks!
There's a harsh ringing/buzzing on Harry's audio which is making it a struggle for me to listen to. Not sure if audio could be improved in edit? 1khz cut off?
A brilliant exposition, but as non plumber, most of it I failed to grasp or understand. His explanation only served to reinforce my ignorance.
Well l am convinced if we listen to the same sad tales repeated over the past 40 years of heating systems installed into brick built homes that we may as well just build furnaces. The systems are so complicated or specialised that no heating engineer will be able to fathom them out.
The only time having heating on saves money is if you have cheap energy overnight rather than switching the heating off.
You use more energy per day but save money!
Everyone is trying to outdo one another about how complex they can make a system to just heat water.
What does 'NRG Awareness' mean?
eNeRGy
@@paul756uk2 Mystery solved. Not sure this helps awareness though.
isn't this just a fancy low-loss header?
yes but it avoids the turbulence. Low loss headers are unpredictable
@@SkillBuilder what would the price difference be...
Got lost on some of the technical stuff. However, is this only for 'dual' fuel systems or would a domestic combi boiler installation benefit from a NRG manifold? 🤔
It is really for systems with more than one source of heat. That could be a gas boiler and heat pump or any other combination. It is also good for two gas boilers which larger homes sometimes have.
Reminds me of my first property, it had been ‘professionally’ converted,,,,every time the boiler fired up water circulated through the header tank then dragged air in through the expansion once the flow established.😆😆
I have seen a great many of those in my time.
Thank you for bringing this to product and the company NRGawareness to my attention. Fantastically informative, loads of information and Harry is a pleasure to listen to. Thanks Roger.
Great to hear! I like this video and I hope it continues to get views.
Absolute genius. How is it that we understand so little about central heating after all these years (?). I looks simple. The principal is simple. But to make the best system requires a genius.
To be fair this low loss header is for mult-fuel options and larger buildings. You wouldn't need this for a 3 beroom house.
Having said that I agree that they have been made way too complicated and unreliable. Complicated technology is not suitable for the building industry.
Harry and David designed and supplied my system to combine a boiler and heat pump. It works great!
That is good to know
As cures for insomnia, the subject and that guy are up there with the best of them, sorry👍🙂
I think it depends on what interests you. I am happy that not everyone likes the same thing, it would be very crowded at the bowling alley.
We haven't all got plant rooms for all that gear and I wouldnt want all that in my Kitchen
Well that is fine because you wouldn't need it in a small house
But does it really matter if you've got antifreeze antique corrosion added to the system You're not going to get any corrosion.
You have to be careful with aluminium and copper a lot of gas boilers have aluminium I think in the heat exchanger, this will cause corrosion with the aluminium and copper in the water you need an inhibitor a anti-corrosion additive. Otherwise the aluminium will just rot.
I don't understand why you need so many pumps on the system? surely one pump is enough just use valves to control the areas you want flow or not I can't see adding more pumps is beneficial.
Isn't it just a manifold this NRG? I've got two boilers oil and a twig boiler I made, both connected to each other one is on top of the other utilising the boiler container in the oil boiler, the twig boiler just heats up a coil of pipe at very high temperatures about 300° c using the flow from the oil boiler water container and then out into the system and a valve for the merchandiser what I had real issues with I'm getting too hot, We're talking like boiling I had to put a valve what he was suggesting to restrict the flow but the valve keep failing under the heat so I had to use the oil boiler tank to control this and just switch off the radiators and limit the amount of fuel I'm burning, what I could do with a program system something like a raspberry pi measuring the heat don't know anything else that could work it's not like gas where it's instant on and off even if I stop the flow of wood there's always a burn period even restricting the air the only other thing I thought about was taking a large pipe and feeding it through an exchanger car radiator outside of running cold water and using an electrical valve to regulate it through a thermostat. But that is a bit of a pain and is awkward. I need to get a high temperature steam valve I think is my solution maybe. I've made the boiler to efficient and producing too much heat it's still an experimental stage.
You could do something like that with the cold water feed into the tank or back into the system just put it through a oil radiator from a car that would cool it down enough
What you need to do mate is to connect it to a turbine driven generator and export to the grid. Just make sure you have a plentiful supply of dilithium crystals.
@@normanboyes4983 yeah there is tha I did think about that connecting it to a turbo when everything is sorted out I probably will can't have them too many irons in the fire at the moment excuse the pun 😉
Very interesting.
So is this cold feed set up with the loop like that just for solid fuel? I always thought that if we were 150mm within each other we would be good? I know we install shower pump supply from 3rd way down from the cylinder
I think it would be beneficial on all systems at least to drop the cold feed out of the bottom of a tee and then take it up. It makes sense to prevent warm water rising to the f&e tank. The problem I see is the tee blocking up at that point which is why I do it with a compression tee. Having said that I am doing sealed systems now so it is rare to put an f&e in these days.
@@SkillBuilder totally agree with the blockage. Often when you try to drain an f and e and nothing moves. Will keep thos in mind. Interesting chap and enjoyed the conversation
Surely it's just a neutraliser, nothing new there.
I was thinking , Low loss header with baffle ? But yes, similar to a Dunsley.........
True to say but it is a nice looking bit of kit
Try putting a heat pump in a hybrid system together in a low-loss header or a neutraliser and I think your question will be answered.
There are hundreds of hybrid systems working perfectly with an NRG Zone and zero issues. Obviously, there must be significant differences.
Heat pump = turn off
Anyone manage to get on the resource tab as I click on what says resource hub and nothing happens?
Just hover your mouse over the button (Don't click), and a list will appear. Click on whatever subject you wish.
A woke system for fools.
top notch really interesting educationally once again exhalant training vid. well done Rodger.
As soon as Roger said heat pump I lost all interest. Off to watch Sssniperwolf.
That is a shame because he said it could be anything from a boiler to a solar thermal to a heat pump.
So he did mention “heat pump” @@SkillBuilder thanks for confirming 👍
@@pigswillbepigs
You really do not get this.
And just what business is it of yours. @@johnburns4017 if I get it or not, I clearly stated I stopped watching within seconds and I made no comment regarding the video.
I used to work for Carrier for about 15 years and sold thousands of heat pumps. I understand your frustration as nowadays heat pumps are used inappropriately and they are not made for any situation like they want to tell you, but this system can be used with any heat source and it is just about a well-done hydraulics design.