The Good News / Bad News Thread

[Mr Larrington]

GN: My fixer frame is back from the powder coaters.
More GN: It looks Very Lovely.
[…]

Is this the M Steel?
What colour?

It is. Some kind of Ultramarine blue, gloss finish. I've got a RAL number somewhere. I wanted IKB but that's somewhat tricky ...

Chain's a bit slack

[Cudzoziemiec]

This may be a hereditary deficiency and can be solved by observing the shower head before turning the water on.  How's your boy, by the way?

He doesn't do such a silly thing! He does - hopefully did - lots of other silly stuff. Given the choice, I'd have a dousing every time!

He's out of rehab and going to AA/CA meetings. Early days, but cautious optimism. Thanks for asking.

GN!

[Peter]

Good News indeed.  Fingers crossed.

[Tim Hall]

GN: My fixer frame is back from the powder coaters.
More GN: It looks Very Lovely.
[…]

Is this the M Steel?
What colour?

It is. Some kind of Ultramarine blue, gloss finish. I've got a RAL number somewhere. I wanted IKB but that's somewhat tricky ...

Chain's a bit slack

Now there's a thing. I painted my bathroom in Dulux's closest to IKB*. I also have an IKB** rubber duck in my bathroom.

* A colour
** A engineer

[Diver300]

BN:  The new boiler has its own proprietary wireless thermostat/timer.  There isn't anywhere convenient to wire my Shelly for internet-of-shit control.

Can you fit a small Peltier cell to the temperature sensor of the proprietary thermostat, and drive that from the Shelly? Depending on the construction of the thermostat, that might be possible in a non-destructive way.

[SoreTween]

BN:  The new boiler has its own proprietary wireless thermostat/timer.  There isn't anywhere convenient to wire my Shelly for internet-of-shit control.

Rtl_sdr & reverse engineering?

[Wowbagger]

We're going for a new boiler, one of these, I think. https://www.baxi.co.uk/our-boilers/heat-only-boilers/baxi-800-heat Chap is coming to fit it on Tuesday. It's going to be cold next week.

We've been managing for the past week or more with a couple of oil-filled radiators, a fan heater and a rather good convection heater borrowed rom by good friend Penelope. We've only been heating two rooms but it's been ok, except that I haven't felt like playing the piano when the temperature in there is only about 14°C. We take the fan heater up to the bedroom about half an hour before we go to bed.

Our Man is here now. He drained the system, has fitted the boiler, and the time came to refill the header tank in the loft. But ... it still had water in it, with a covering of ice (our loft seems to be pretty well insulated), despite him draining the system. There's a blockage to the pipe somewhere between the header tank and the boiler. Which could prove to be a right bugger to remove. I'm sure it can't be ice. There is no mains connection to this tank - it has to be filled manually. I went up there late Oct/early Nov Nov 14th and checked that it had plenty of water in it.

[Kim]

BN:  The new boiler has its own proprietary wireless thermostat/timer.  There isn't anywhere convenient to wire my Shelly for internet-of-shit control.

Rtl_sdr & reverse engineering?

I did google around the subject and it seems ominous that nobody seems to have had a crack at the RF side.  Most of the work, quite reasonably, seems to be concentrated on speaking the EMS bus protocol that the boiler uses to communicate with wired thermostats (and, presumably the internal RF receiver).  There's a lovely mature project to MQTTify them with an ESP32, but that doesn't support our specific boiler yet.

But that all means opening up the boiler to install wiring/widgets, and removing it whenever someone from the agency comes.  If I were inclined to do that, I could just disconnect the receiver and wire the Shelly across the legacy thermostat input.

So yes, it's either reverse-engineer the RF protocol or hack the thermostat^[1].


_{[1] Possibly through the magic of buying a sacrificial one.  I can see what appears to be the thermistor, but it's the sort of fiddly SMD stuff that I can't reasonably solder to without leaving a trace.}

[Kim]

Our Man is here now. He drained the system, has fitted the boiler, and the time came to refill the header tank in the loft. But ... it still had water in it, with a covering of ice (our loft seems to be pretty well insulated).

This is why you're supposed to put the insulation around water tanks, and leave the underside uninsulated to allow heat from below to keep the water from freezing.

[Wowbagger]

Our Man is here now. He drained the system, has fitted the boiler, and the time came to refill the header tank in the loft. But ... it still had water in it, with a covering of ice (our loft seems to be pretty well insulated).

This is why you're supposed to put the insulation around water tanks, and leave the underside uninsulated to allow heat from below to keep the water from freezing.

Indeed. But our insulation pre-dates us in this house (we have been here sine 1994). My concern is that the blockage isn't ice. I topped the tank up on 14th November and the level doesn't seem to have changed. On 21st December my pal Jon noticed how damp the outside wall was around where the boiler was mounted. that water must have come from somewhere and I can't think of anywhere else.

[mrcharly-YHT]

We're going for a new boiler, one of these, I think. https://www.baxi.co.uk/our-boilers/heat-only-boilers/baxi-800-heat Chap is coming to fit it on Tuesday. It's going to be cold next week.

We've been managing for the past week or more with a couple of oil-filled radiators, a fan heater and a rather good convection heater borrowed rom by good friend Penelope. We've only been heating two rooms but it's been ok, except that I haven't felt like playing the piano when the temperature in there is only about 14°C. We take the fan heater up to the bedroom about half an hour before we go to bed.

Our Man is here now. He drained the system, has fitted the boiler, and the time came to refill the header tank in the loft. But ... it still had water in it, with a covering of ice (our loft seems to be pretty well insulated), despite him draining the system. There's a blockage to the pipe somewhere between the header tank and the boiler. Which could prove to be a right bugger to remove. I'm sure it can't be ice. There is no mains connection to this tank - it has to be filled manually. I went up there late Oct/early Nov Nov 14th and checked that it had plenty of water in it.

That seems very very unlikely (no mains to the tank).

I strongly suspect that either:
- The tank isn't connected to any plumbing that is in use anymore.
- Or, (most likely), there is a filling loop for the boiler, and the header tank is merely used for overflow/pressure maintenance of the heating circuit.

If it is the second, then there is probably a pipe into the tank (from the heating circuit) part-way up the tank.

[Wowbagger]

Well, we've lived here for almost 29 years and it hasn't changed.

It would be extremely annoying if there were a mains feed, as, apart from the cold tap in the kitchen, all our water goes through a softener and my understanding from more than one heating engineer is that you don't want softened water in central heating as it eats its way through the heat exchanger much faster than unsoftened water.

Besides, the heating engineer expressed concern that there must be a mains feed and it took some convincing by me that there wasn't. He drained the system and we weren't flooded.

[robgul]

As suggested no mains feed to a CH header tank is very, very unlikely.  If it's header tank of the era you state then it would in all probablity have a ball-valve/float.

Question: since 1994 how much water have you had to add to the header tank, manually?

[Wowbagger]

As suggested no mains feed to a CH header tank is very, very unlikely.  If it's header tank of the era you state then it would in all probablity have a ball-valve/float.

Question: since 1994 how much water have you had to add to the header tank, manually?

Quite a bit. I check it every year. Unlikely or not, it's what we have.

The good news is that we have a new boiler which gives all the outward symptoms of working.

The bad news is that the radiators are not getting hot.

Other bad news: it seems that the leak I had attributed to hte old boiler and its heat exchanger/condensing system is in fact from somewhere else. I've been a queue for the insurance co's claims mob for 25 minutes.

[Kim]

GN: Boiler man has returned and managed to stop the condensate leak.
BN: Using a cable tie around the rubber condom bit that fits onto the drain pipe, which didn't work.
GN: I had a jubilee clip in my collection of tqt, which I handed to him along with an appropriate screwdriver, which did.
BN: I didn't get a plumber's call-out fee.
GN: He's going to WTF at Worcester as this level of bodgery shouldn't be necessary.

[robgul]

As suggested no mains feed to a CH header tank is very, very unlikely.  If it's header tank of the era you state then it would in all probablity have a ball-valve/float.

Question: since 1994 how much water have you had to add to the header tank, manually?

Quite a bit. I check it every year. Unlikely or not, it's what we have.

The good news is that we have a new boiler which gives all the outward symptoms of working.

The bad news is that the radiators are not getting hot.

Other bad news: it seems that the leak I had attributed to hte old boiler and its heat exchanger/condensing system is in fact from somewhere else. I've been a queue for the insurance co's claims mob for 25 minutes.

Have you been flushed? - you may need to be power-flushed to get all the sludge out the bottom of the rads

[Wowbagger]

We were some years ago. Can't remember - 4 perhaps? I probably mentioned it on here somewhere.

The problem with this house is that when we had the granny annexe built in 2000, the builder tagged on an extra 5 radiators in a loop. It means that it's a right pain in the arse whenever we get anything done that involves draining the system.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Almost certainly some airlocks.

Usual cure is to attach a hose at the lowest drain point, check that there is an overflow (for non-pressurised systems; yours is probably an overflow from the header tank) and turn the hose on. Go around all rads and keep letting water/air out.

Do this for 3-4 hours.

[SoreTween]

2nd to what mrcharly said.
Our system is standard open header (though does have a supply pipe & float valve).  When we moved in it had to be drained several times (loft tank replacement one at a time as I insulated up there) and each time it was a couple of days of fiddling, bleeding and faffing to get heat moving properly.  So one day faced with that again I connected a hose pipe to the drain point next to the boiler & filled the system bottom to top instead of top to bottom. I left the header tank shut off and used a camera to see when to stop filling though the header tank does have an overflow. Everything worked first go, minor bleeding over the next few days obviously but I'm dealing with a couple of cold inches at the top of the rads not stone cold airlocked ones.
Later I had a filling loop added at the lowest point to make it even easier.

[robgul]

We were some years ago. Can't remember - 4 perhaps? I probably mentioned it on here somewhere.

The problem with this house is that when we had the granny annexe built in 2000, the builder tagged on an extra 5 radiators in a loop. It means that it's a right pain in the arse whenever we get anything done that involves draining the system.

I feel your pain with the draining . . . .  our house has ground floor radiators that are fed from a commom circuit that goes around the house at first-floor skirting board level . . . so each raditator on the ground floor has a flow and return down/up the wall to/from the rad valves forming a loop . . .  BUT there are no drain cocks on the bottom of the radiators!!  WTF, that's mad.    We wanted to make an alteration to one rad (actually add another in the circuit) and had to drain the whole system by cracking the valve on a rad and taking out the water bucket by bucketful.   One of the jobs on the list is to drain the whole lot and retro-fit a drain cock to all ground floor rads - that may get done this summer when I want to retro-fit electric elements to the bathroom towel rails for summer use.

[SoreTween]

I feel your pain with the draining . . . .  our house has ground floor radiators that are fed from a commom circuit that goes around the house at first-floor skirting board level . . . so each raditator on the ground floor has a flow and return down/up the wall to/from the rad valves forming a loop . . . 

Does that work ok for you?  We have the same system and get naff all heat to the ground floor rads until the upstairs TRVs close.
We do have drain cocks on all the downstairs rads thankfully.

[PeteB99]

Good news - I was booked in at the local hospital for an ultra sound scan of my leg next monday. The hospital have just rung and asked if I can make it for tomorrow.

Bad news I'll have to walk through the picket line. Where can I get one of those full cover hoodies the perps wear for going in and out of court?

[robgul]

I feel your pain with the draining . . . .  our house has ground floor radiators that are fed from a commom circuit that goes around the house at first-floor skirting board level . . . so each raditator on the ground floor has a flow and return down/up the wall to/from the rad valves forming a loop . . . 

Does that work ok for you?  We have the same system and get naff all heat to the ground floor rads until the upstairs TRVs close.
We do have drain cocks on all the downstairs rads thankfully.

It's not that efficient (and the downstairs rads except one are all tall, narrow "designer" ones that aren't very effective) and heat takes a while to arrive on start up - it does work as upstairs we only have the 2 bathroom towel rails on and the rad in one small bedroom (office) and that's choked right down as it keeps warm. 
One bedroom has a Hive TRV that's used as a time switch (I've described that elsewhere) for 2 short periods each day - the other bedrooms have the rads off and doors closed as we don't use them.

[Kim]

GN: The new boiler continues to work and not leak.
BN: We got the inevitable letter from the agency putting the rent up this morning.

[Basil]

GN: The new boiler continues to work and not leak.
BN: We got the inevitable letter from the agency putting the rent up this morning.

Bastards.