I’m delighted to announce that I am now fully Heat Geek qualified.

The company, Heat Geek, run advanced heating design courses and are considered to be the pinnacle of practical engineering heating design. Their residential and on-line courses cover all the technical aspects of specifying, sizing and designing boilers, heat emitters, cylinder and heat pumps for domestic and commercial use. This includes whole house / building heat loss calculations done from first principles and detailed heat source design parameters such as flow rates, specific heat capacity of different media and advances controls such as weather compensation.

The qualification has underpinned much of my learning from becoming an engineer in 1985 and given me new skill and knowledge in a industry that is constantly changing and demands higher levels of technical understanding as we strive to make our heating systems carbon free and more efficient.

Some background

Many people will have heard of heat pumps and certainly AC – air conditioning units? Firstly a heat pump IS an air conditioning units and IS a refrigeration unit.

The function of a heat pump (the generic name for all 3) is to extract heat from one source and use it in another source. With a fridge, it’s job is to take heat from the warm air in the fridge and deposit it outside the fridge, leaving the fridge cooler. The heat pump does the same but takes heat from outside a building and sends it into a building to heat the living space.

We call this process a reversible refrigeration cycle because it uses no fuel such as oil or gas and all the energy it creates it reuses.

The process requires an electric pump (compressor) to circulate a fluid (gas and liquid) round the system from indoors to outdoors, it is this pump that requires energy in the form of electricity.

A heat pump is very efficient because it is using free heat from outside (as long as it’s above 7°c) and often has an efficiency of 500%. We call this efficiency a COP or coefficient of performance, which in essence means that for every KWh of energy consumed (in electricity) the heat pump produces 5KWhs of heat energy. Unfortunately the great drawback of heat pumps is two fold. 1) they run on electricity which is about 40p/KWh at current (June 2022) prices and 2) they are much less efficient on cold days so reducing the benefit.

So how can we use that efficiency in heating our homes? One approach is to us a gas boiler and a heat pump in tandem. The heat pump works during the cooler, spring / autumn months (6-8 months) and then the gas boiler takes over during deep winter (December and January). This is believed to reduce the gas consumption by over 80% which of course means a reducing in greenhouse gases.

This technology can be further advanced by installing a system where the electricity used is obtained for free*. If a property is capable of supporting solar panels (PV) then a good proportion of the heat pumps annual electricity usage can be supplied by a modest PV array.

The solar panels can also be linked to a battery pack that will store the electricity until it is needed, say in the early morning when the sun is still in bed! The battery pack would then charged up during the sun light hours when the heating system is switched off as the occupants would be out of the house at work, in many cases.

I am starting a project at home to link all of these technologies and will be updating my blog with progress. So far I have partly installed the buffer tank.

More progress this week. Heat pump out door unit brackets fabricated and the heat pump is due to be delivered and fitted this Tuesday (2nd Aug), very excited

Another little milestone this week (4/8/22) as I manage to get the heat pump lifted and mounted on the wall outside, not easy given it’s 4m up and weighs 200kgs.

Pipe work now installed outside but insulation and trace heating still to do

We had electricians install the cables and wire up the charger / inverter and the indoor and out door unit so that it’s now ready to be switched on when the pipework is complete.

With the insulation phase now completed I’m ready to connect the heat pump into my existing central heating system and wire up the electrical controls so that heat is pumped at the right time and to the right place.

Electronic control (Nov 2022).

Unfortunately the Viessmann 150a does not have integrated software to allow inter-heat source control; ie. It won’t talk to my Viessmann 200W system boiler and work out the best way to heat the house and hot water. I’m told by Viessmann that the software is being developed and so waiting to do what they come up with in that area. Meanwhile…..

I’ve had to design and configure my own external hybrid switching circuits to allow one unit to work at certain times when it’s inefficient/ expensive (£) for the other unit to work.

In principle, above 5°c the heat pump should work 100% of the time, save for the hot water demand (come back to that later). When the heat pump is working we don’t want the gas boiler coming on and so I have designed some relay circuitry to switch the boiler off.

The above circuit diagram deals with the switching off of the boiler but not switching off of the heat pump, that’s is still under development.

The relays and wiring is now in place and ready to test

One more step close to the battery installation. The batteries are charged up on the Octopus Go night time rate of 12p/KWh and then the Victron Multiplus does the sharing of energy from the batteries to the house loads (heat pump) until the batteries are exhausted or the loads are reduced.

With the hardware installed it’s now a question of setting up the systems to optimise the energy available. The 48v battery pack is converted into 230v via a Victron inverter which also charges the batteries with off-peak electricity at 12p/KWh.

The cheap electricity is designed for people to charge their cars with lithium-ion batteries but there is no reason why you can’t charge a battery pack that powers your home heating system.

It’s early days but you can see how my gas usage has reduced from 620kwh in September to only 221kwh in November so far (1 week to go) and a much cooler month. This is massively reducing my CO2 output.

The real time data from the Victron VRM system can be seen here:

Finally managed to get my heat pump working again after fitting a second “multi” (inverter – charger). I needed more watts at night to get the batteries back up to 100% so had to parallel a second multi which is about 1000x more difficult to setting up than weather comp 😂. The Victron Community were very helpful in diagnosing and assisting the set up so big thanks to them. Using that sort of technical help was new to me and took some getting used to but in the end it worked. Above 5°c my house heating is costing about 4p/KWh below that the old Vitodens 200w kicks in. Happy New Year everyone!

I was asked by the customer to investigate further and found, as expected, that the internal pipework had come loose and that the boiler was burning it’s own exhaust gases, creating high levels of carbon monoxide.

I don’t know how long the flue pipes has been disconnected but I am sure the ah-hoc installation was an original feature back in 2001 when the boiler was installed.

The new flue has taken a similar route to the old one but, as you can see, has been secured firmly to the building structure to give it many years of excellent performance and life.

We were asked to look at the hot water system at a big house in Gosforth and found a terrible mismatch of poorly configured and installed high pressure unvented plumbing.

Virtually none of the pipework is secured to any of the structure and the electrics are politely dangerous, never mind prone to failure.

What was called for was for a complete removal, redesign and reinstalling of the cylinders with new valves and pipework.

The two cylinders had a combined capacity of 500L but when we tested them the hot water ran out after 183L. Clearly things weren’t right and so we set about proposing a complete removal and reinstall.

With the clients at home more often now due to the lockdown we needed to ensure they had heating and hot water at the end of each day. Consequently we organised to remove one cylinder at a time and replumb it while leaving the other cylinder able to keep the bathrooms going.

Having removed the left hand cylinder it was possible to built a proper level base and start rerouting the pipework around the walls and down the back so that they could be effectively supported to prolong their service life.

The right hand cylinder was then moved to the left position to enable the repiping to continue while keeping services on in the house.

While we had access to the pipework behind the cylinder this was insulated and pressure tested before the remaining work was done to the right hand cylinder pipework which included the repositioning of the pump and electrical control box.

This was again tested for safe operation and the right hand cylinder refitted into the very tight space!

And that’s it folks! The cylinders were plumbed to run in series so no issues with balancing the two cylinders working against each other and now that all of the pipework is firmly fixed to the walls it should last a good century or two!

We are delighted to have reached the wonderful milestone of 800 reviews on Checkatrade.

We’ve been really luck to have very appreciative customer who’ve taken time to give us positive feedback, so thank you all 😀

It’s been a very stressful summer and as winter approaches we traditionally get much busier with breakdowns as people switch on their heating systems. As before we are committed to attending to your needs but we do ask that you maintain a safe distance so that we can work in a risk and stress free environment.

If we can embrace the governments hands, face, space guidance it would be great for everyone.

Looking forward to the end of the pandemic 😀

It’s been a busy few months at Boiler Bee. There’s been the usual array of breakdowns and repairs needed for my regular customer, for whom I always make time; but as well as them I’ve been extending my portfolio by becoming trained on mobile coffee machines so that I can install, service and repair said machines and keep the mobile vans selling coffee (other drinks are available) to the general public.

It’s become evident that there is a great shortage of qualified gas safe engineers able to complete work on mobile coffee vans. Without boring you with the detail, the law states that any gas appliance must only be worked on by someone who is trained and competent. Any machine, such as a gas powered coffee machine, with a gas element is therefore a gas appliance and requires a gas engineer with the appropriate qualifications which are CMC and Comcat2. These are the qualifications I am seeking to obtain.

The governing body, UKLPG has issued codes of practice to allow engineers to interpret the British Standards and comply with the gas laws.

This qualification will allow me to service and maintain coffee machines as pictured above.

With the increase in street trade and mobile food vendors it’s a growing market that needs skilled people.

Once again, Derek and I look forward to being of service to the wider business community in the very near future 🐝

Tricky little job today for Derek. Like a lot of kitchen located combis there isn’t much space below the boiler to fit a jug sized magnetic filter and so at this house in North Shields it seemed possible to fit it in a cupboard next the the pipework boxing.

There was already an access hatch so all the was needed was to drain the system, cut into the pipes and connect the filter – simple!

The first job of draining went well and so Derek started cutting into the 22mm copper pipes. There wasn’t much room but since he’s only the size of a bee, he managed to get it done.

The next stage was to accurately mark out where the pipes would go and cut the holes and adjust the side of the kitchen cabinet to allow the pipework to come through. With that done the pipework could all be connected up and pressure tested before filling the system. Again this was tricky job as it required assembling the pipework in a specific order as it couldn’t be adjusted or tightened in situ.

The job turned out to be really neat and we then proceeded to flush the system to clear out all of the years of debris running round the rads. The boxing cover was replaced and hides away all of the pipes. The filter is a mini Worcester Bosch unit which is very well made and sits neatly behind the cupboard door.

Another great bit of team work with Derek🐝

I am delighted to be sporting our new Boiler Bee work shirts.

The old shirts had been in circulation for about 15 years and, although they were still fine, were due a replacement.

The new shirts have been custom made by Canterbury of New Zealand and embroider by Global Image in North Shields

I hope you’ll agree they look fantastic!

…and so the saga of boiler flues continues.

It’s every good heating engineers job to inspect flues. Sometimes this means getting your step ladders out with your torch in hand, inspecting what’s hidden in the loft.

Sometimes flues are more accessible but can also be at fault. Today’s job was just to service a Main water heater which is a relatively simple task. However, on inspection of the flue I found that the plasterers had left some of their product where it shouldn’t be.

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We are increasingly being asked to look at boilers that have developed leakage problems from the flue joints. 9 times out of 10 we find that the clues have not been placed at the correct angle of 1.5-3.0° depending on manufacturer and so condensate liquid (carbonic acid) collects in the seals and destroys them.

This time the faulty flue was on an Ideal iMax 60kw commercial boiler and so made the whole job a lot more complicated.

The whole flue system was replaced and then fitted at an elevation necessary to create a 2.5° fall. This meant lifting the flue terminal from its original position so that it has sufficient gradient.

The flue was then effectively supported with clamps at ensure there was no movement and that it stayed at the correct angle and the angle of fall checked with a laser.

Unfortunately, for the church, the second boiler’s flue has also been installed at the wrong angle and this will need replacing soon.

But for now the boilers are up and running and the church is once again a warm place to worship.