The Lemon Fool

The more I read, the more convinced I am that as things stand the best policy so far as this house is concerned is to replace boilers when necessary with gas, preferably convertible to hydrogen, boilers. Air pumps may be OK for new or rebuilt houses specially designed to accommodate them but I think it was premature for the government to promote them in existing properties and they must ensure that other alternatives remain on offer for situations such as mine. Building standards should ensure that new or extended properties have adequate insulation. Our old house had 13" thick brick walls and once warmed up in the autumn they were a bit like a storage heater and the house was always warm. My bedroom is in the newer part of my current house. It is supposed to be properly insulated everywhere but if I touch the wall behind me when in bed, it feels cold and the heat is not retained for very long once the boiler goes off at night. I dread to think what my heating bills will be when my present fixed rate comes to an end in April.

The only decision now is what type of boilers to have next time and to look into the pros and cons of combis versus those with h.w. cylinders but I must do my tax return first.

I have just been made aware of richlist's post. I presume blown air makes a noise and I would not want that. There was a fan heater which worked off the c.h. on the kitchen wall in our previous house. It didn't look nice and I hated the noise it made.

Bouleversee wrote:The more I read, the more convinced I am that as things stand the best policy so far as this house is concerned is to replace boilers when necessary with gas, preferably convertible to hydrogen, boilers. Air pumps may be OK for new or rebuilt houses specially designed to accommodate them but I think it was premature for the government to promote them in existing properties and they must ensure that other alternatives remain on offer for situations such as mine. Building standards should ensure that new or extended properties have adequate insulation. Our old house had 13" thick brick walls and once warmed up in the autumn they were a bit like a storage heater and the house was always warm. My bedroom is in the newer part of my current house. It is supposed to be properly insulated everywhere but if I touch the wall behind me when in bed, it feels cold and the heat is not retained for very long once the boiler goes off at night. I dread to think what my heating bills will be when my present fixed rate comes to an end in April.

The only decision now is what type of boilers to have next time and to look into the pros and cons of combis versus those with h.w. cylinders but I must do my tax return first.

I have just been made aware of richlist's post. I presume blown air makes a noise and I would not want that. There was a fan heater which worked off the c.h. on the kitchen wall in our previous house. It didn't look nice and I hated the noise it made.

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re wall insulation , i have 21" solid walls, to which i have nailed pine tongue and groove cladding .

quite easy and cheap to do , and although in theory should make little difference , in practice it FEELS warmer and drier .

The air to air heat pumps are quite sophisticated with all sorts of gizmo's one of which is a quiet setting. Nowhere near as noisy as a fan heater can be. We have one of the devices fitted above the bed and its very quiet.

richlist wrote:This thread seems to be focusing on wet systems. Air sourced heat pumps that provide blown hot or cold air are excellent & don't require radiators or pipework. They can also be used as air conditioners in the summer months. Worth consideration.

That's because air-to-air heat pumps don't provide any hot water. Air-to-water heat a hot water cylinder too, thereby saving the massive electricity bills associated with heating HW.

richlist wrote:The air to air heat pumps are quite sophisticated with all sorts of gizmo's one of which is a quiet setting. Nowhere near as noisy as a fan heater can be. We have one of the devices fitted above the bed and its very quiet.

The primary noise issue with air to water heat pumps is the racket that they make outside your house**, where your neighbours are more likely to have to put up with it. I'm not sure whether air to air pumps are any quieter?

A friend's newly-installed system sounds, from inside her house, as though a neighbour had left her car engine running on the drive, all night, every night. Personally, I wouldn't do that to people who I liked. But they'll get quieter as the technology improves.

BJ

**45 to 60 decibels is usual (measured at a one metre distance). A vacuum cleaner typically puts out 70.

bungeejumper wrote:

richlist wrote:The air to air heat pumps are quite sophisticated with all sorts of gizmo's one of which is a quiet setting. Nowhere near as noisy as a fan heater can be. We have one of the devices fitted above the bed and its very quiet.

The primary noise issue with air to water heat pumps is the racket that they make outside your house**, where your neighbours are more likely to have to put up with it. I'm not sure whether air to air pumps are any quieter?

A friend's newly-installed system sounds, from inside her house, as though a neighbour had left her car engine running on the drive, all night, every night. Personally, I wouldn't do that to people who I liked. But they'll get quieter as the technology improves.

BJ

**45 to 60 decibels is usual (measured at a one metre distance). A vacuum cleaner typically puts out 70.

Our whisper quiet ASHP is much quieter than our modern gas condensing boiler. Both inside and outside the house. A modulating gas boiler at full chat in cold weather is very noisy, especially the exhaust. You wouldn't want it in your bedroom!

Several neighbours have ASHPs they are also incredibly quiet. It's virtually impossible to hear them from the nearby road.

regards

Howard

Howard wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:**45 to 60 decibels is usual (measured at a one metre distance). A vacuum cleaner typically puts out 70.

Our whisper quiet ASHP is much quieter than our modern gas condensing boiler. Both inside and outside the house. A modulating gas boiler at full chat in cold weather is very noisy, especially the exhaust. You wouldn't want it in your bedroom!

Several neighbours have ASHPs they are also incredibly quiet. It's virtually impossible to hear them from the nearby road.

Decibels are decibels, and manufacturer-quoted decibels are what they are. Don't take my word for it, look it up. The chart on this page is typical, though: https://www.mittensheatpumps.co.uk/heat ... mparisons/

You are quite correct to say that the decibel count shrinks as you get further away, but it's nothing like as fast as some people would have you believe. Basically, for every doubling of the distance, the sound fades by six decibels.

So if a heat pump produces 60 decibels at one metre, it'll still be kicking out 42 decibels (the legally permitted maximum for neighbour nuisance at their boundary wall), at an eight metre distance.

That's your neighbours on both sides, of course. Totally problematic unless your garden is at least 16 metres in width (52 feet).

Just saying. But don't take my word for it, it's all there in the specification.

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:

Howard wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:**45 to 60 decibels is usual (measured at a one metre distance). A vacuum cleaner typically puts out 70.

Our whisper quiet ASHP is much quieter than our modern gas condensing boiler. Both inside and outside the house. A modulating gas boiler at full chat in cold weather is very noisy, especially the exhaust. You wouldn't want it in your bedroom!

Several neighbours have ASHPs they are also incredibly quiet. It's virtually impossible to hear them from the nearby road.

Decibels are decibels, and manufacturer-quoted decibels are what they are. Don't take my word for it, look it up. The chart on this page is typical, though: https://www.mittensheatpumps.co.uk/heat ... mparisons/

You are quite correct to say that the decibel count shrinks as you get further away, but it's nothing like as fast as some people would have you believe. Basically, for every doubling of the distance, the sound fades by six decibels.

So if a heat pump produces 60 decibels at one metre, it'll still be kicking out 42 decibels (the legally permitted maximum for neighbour nuisance at their boundary wall), at an eight metre distance.

That's your neighbours on both sides, of course. Totally problematic unless your garden is at least 16 metres in width (52 feet).

Just saying. But don't take my word for it, it's all there in the specification.

BJ

Looking at your link, in the fourth paragraph it says:

"As a matter of fact, all heating products generate noise, but compared to boilers powered with fossil fuel, heat pumps produce less noise."

Which is pretty definite.

Have you been in a house with a modern ASHP working in cold and hot weather?

I have practical experience of using a Mitsubishi ASHP for more than two years and it is incredibly quiet. I've been close to a massive house with a much larger ASHP and it wasn't noisy and none of my neighbours installations are audible.

But I do live in the South and know that further North these devices do have to work harder in lower temperatures.

regards

Howard

richlist wrote:This thread seems to be focusing on wet systems. Air sourced heat pumps that provide blown hot or cold air are excellent & don't require radiators or pipework. They can also be used as air conditioners in the summer months. Worth consideration.

Yes this is the kind I connected up once. The warm air just immediately started blowing out of it. Within a few minutes the annex was warm. I do suspect though that you'd need to install one per floor. Also it didn't do hot water.

I helped wire out a school recently and each room had an aircon unit (not wholly dissimilar to an air-source heat pump). This was ideal but of course there was a row of units down a whole wall of the school. Not likely to be suitable in a domestic environment as our bungeejumper was saying.

C.

Mike4 wrote:

richlist wrote:This thread seems to be focusing on wet systems. Air sourced heat pumps that provide blown hot or cold air are excellent & don't require radiators or pipework. They can also be used as air conditioners in the summer months. Worth consideration.

That's because air-to-air heat pumps don't provide any hot water. Air-to-water heat a hot water cylinder too, thereby saving the massive electricity bills associated with heating HW.

Whilst air to water heat pumps can provide hot water I don't believe it provides temperatures as high as 60 deg. Presumably they also need an immersion heater.

We have solar panels & an immersion heater.....running costs seem reasonable even in winter.

Bouleversee wrote:I did read that the Swedish state-owned energy group is marketing an air pump which delivers water at the same temperature as gas boilers do but not marketed here yet. Apparently, it needs a very large water tank installed on a solid floor which could be a problem.

Vattenfall.
Yes, I read about that.
Here it is https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2021/11/18/vattenfall-offers-high-temperature-heat-pump/
I would wait until it arrives here. There will be no need for bigger rads or worries about small pipes. The tank iirc is about 3'x5' so not impossibly large. But my goodness there's a lot of gubbins to go wrong.

Turning up the pump to push more water through tiny pipes would make the system very noisy, so dropping a standard air pump into a microbore system would probably be a bad idea.

Alrernatively I think the advice to buy another gas boiler is good.

Incidentally... or not... hard water should not matter. Provided the system has adequate water treatment.
If not, you get scale which makes banging noises in the boiler, and of course with untreated hard or soft water there is sludge which is a corrosion product that arises as your radiators rust into holes.
However, hard water does mean that the system should not be test fired without water treatment, otherwise the first firing will put a small flash of scale onto the boiler heat exchanger, and modern boilers are not tolerant of scale. Plumbers typically like to test fire without treatment, as it's expensive and will be lost if they have to drain down for leaks.... so you have to insist....

I do not think you could unite a smallbore system and a microbore system, balancing them would be pretty much impossible, so you are stuck with your two boilers. Looking on the bright side, unlikely that they will both go wrong at once, so you will never be cold.

V8

88v8 - When you say water treatment, do you mean Furnox type or are you talking about a water softener? I don't have the latter but the system had Furnox put in but I don't know whether it is ever checked and topped up. One of the questions to ask the service engineer. What number should I be running the boilers on? There is no room stat on the system in the newest part of the house, only thermostatic valves on the rads. I noticed the boiler on that system was only on 2 so i turned it up to 3 which made that part of the house a bit warmer apart from the bedroom with the stuck valves.

I'll stick with my oil boiler as long as I can, by which time hopefully heat pumps will be able to heat water to the same high temperature.

Bouleversee wrote:88v8 - When you say water treatment, do you mean Furnox type or are you talking about a water softener? I don't have the latter but the system had Furnox put in but I don't know whether it is ever checked and topped up. One of the questions to ask the service engineer. What number should I be running the boilers on? There is no room stat on the system in the newest part of the house, only thermostatic valves on the rads. I noticed the boiler on that system was only on 2 so i turned it up to 3 which made that part of the house a bit warmer apart from the bedroom with the stuck valves.

Yes, something Fernoxy.

The CH is or should be a closed system, but the concentration needs to be checked & maintained or the protection will wane.
If the rads ever need bleeding, there is something amiss with the Fernoxiness....

Boiler setting, 2 or 3... errm what does it go up to? 11?
In general higher in winter, and cooler in summer when it is only heating the hot water.
Running the boiler too cool in winter means there will not be enough heat to share out amongst the rads, so the boiler will keep cycling but the house will never get warm.

V8