Mark Ballard LTD Heating Engineer. I've been a gas engineer for over nearly 30 years.
The aim of my channel is to help you with your Gas boiler and Central Heating. From the general operation and maintenance to the more advanced fault finding, installation and repairing of your systems.
I explain in clear and easy to follow step by step instructions how to fix problems, understand fault codes, how to operate boilers and controls, how to install or replace parts of your heating system and lots more.
Products like, Vaillant, Baxi, Glowworm, Ideal and Worcester, Hive, Honeywell, Nest, Drayton, Grundfos and lots more.
Links to products and other videos can be found in video description.
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Thank you so much!! Saving this ready for next winter when it'll probably happen again! You've saved me a call to my landlord and a weeks wait in the cold for them to do this simple fix. Thank you!
Mark, Brilliant, answers all the questions I have ever had about leaking heating - easy to listen to, easy to understand and it is clear you are an expert. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, you are a gentleman and a scholar!
Recently moved to the UK and boiler systems are all brand new to us. It’s been months trying to sort how our heating and hot water are managed since the water buttons on the boiler seemed broken. This FINALLY makes it all make sense. Can’t thank you enough!!! Am sending gratitude to your tool box fund and will look for your other videos too!
Hi Mark, we're in a but of a pickle. We have the Vaillant Ecotech pro 28, and did have a Salus room thermostat which has recently broken. We have a new thermostat coming but it won't arrive until we'll into the winter, so we've had to buy a temporary solution. We've bought the vaillant timeswitch 150, as we understood we didn't need a thermostat and could just switch the heating on as and when needed. I've followed your instructions in the video for the timer, but when I've switched it to on or waited for the time we don't get a flame on the screen. Nothing is happening, any help would be much appreciated! Thank you
Connect your Wiser system up to Home Assistant and you can take real control of your heating, including adding Passive Mode that will set the TRVs to only come on when the rest of the system is heating.
Thx for the video. I had my pump replaced by my plumber at the end of last year. Since then, i replaced the sensor. I did a powerflush myself but I still cant get all 10 radiators in the house to warm up. Can do one by one or like 5 at the same time but not all of them. Is it possible they fitted the wrong pump?
I got the f75 but my electronic reader says 3.6 bars while the little dial shows that’s its so low that’s it’s gone below the grey bar. Do I still try opening the tap?
At 17:45 what do you mean about a variable pump conflicting with the boiler? I have a late 90s Glowworm Ultimate non condensing boiler and a new variable speed (proportional or constant pressure) Grundfos pump. I also have a manual gate bypass valve (quarter turn open) which I presume isn't really needed any more due to the pump and the fact that I have 2 rads that don't have TRVs (so sort of act as a bypass). It's 22mm between the boiler and pump then changes to 10mm microbore hidden away out of sight.
THANKS EVER SO MUCH!!! Your Very Clear Video helped me SO MUCH today!! We Lost the Wifi connection and had NO idea What to Do! Subscribed to channel immediately! :) Thank You SO MUCH!
Hi, thanks for the explanation. I have a different problem, though, both units seem to be talking to each other, no warnings or red lights, however, the boiler sometimes it doesn't start at all, other times it gets started and then stops after a while and never re-heat again, even when the temperature has dropped below the expected one. Any thoughts?
I followed the instructions and thought there is a lot to go wrong if a novice starts dismantling the thermostat. I thought about this and assumed that the screen needs heat to repair itself. I didn't dismantle, but I got my wife's hair dryer and carefully warmed the screen. After around 30 -60 seconds of heating the screen was worse than before. However, leave it a few minutes to cool down and all the figures appear as good as new. Very pleased as it saved me the hassle, but thanks for the video that assisted me.
I'd looked at electronic valves some time back and concluded what you found by experiment, deciding instead to go with good quality but standard trvs throughout, only the principal radiators (where the main thermostat is) are trv free. However, a few minor points Mark - It's all very well referring to radiators by their D50 specification, but when operating them on a condensing boiler they are at ca D20 - eg my Lounge rads combined are 5.1kW at D50 spec, but in the real world their combined power is ca 1.5kW at D20, and that's a HUGE difference to the boiler. - On balancing - I fitted the Heimeier version of the pressure agnostic control valve so that whichever radiator is open or shut, balance is maintained across all the rest, something which cannot be guaranteed with a lockshield. However, by setting them according to spec, they will pass higher flows at D20, something I didn't realise at the time, but explains why I couldn't get a Dt of 20 - By deploying a manual version of weather compensation, I managed to get my previous boiler (min. 8kW) consistently seeing a 30c return on a ca 18 minute cycle, even when running max temp at -16 outside. My own project - High thermal mass lower floor, low thermal mass upstairs, 100m2 floor space, heating runs 24/7 throughout winter as the high thermal mass is cheaper to maintain at steady state..... - Completed the last of the insulation this year, pulling heat losses down to 20% of the original. - This summer upgraded 2 rads and swapped others around to provide the same overkill on all of them on a new boiler (min 3.2kW) on load compensation ( I'll re-balance the system when heating becomes regular, another huge benefit of insulation ) - At -3 the REAL rad system capacity is 300% of heat loss, at -16 it's 200% - The idea is that the boiler will be maxing out condensing this winter, as it should be seeing a 21c return for most if not all the heating season.... A nice little project which didn't cost an arm and a leg, and has paid back handsomely - Last year's heating bill was 370 quid, next year's should be 270. ;)
Wow! You certainly know what you're doing there. Unfortunately for most people I find it difficult Just explain relationship between boiler temperature, radiator, temperature and room stat temp and TRV temp. My video was really just a point out. Don't just jump in and do something because we're told we should do it. Good luck with your project
@@MarkBallardLTD Had to learn as I went along as it's not my discipline (ret water engineer), but thanks for the compliment, I'm an amateur unlike yourself, but with a DIY monitoring system for utilities, temps etc.. What kicked off my interest was trying to figure out why the old Buderus boiler (min 8kW) had consumed 1.3m3 in dead of winter when a normal "55" cycle would be 0.5m3 at ca 20 minutes. Timed the next cycle at 40 minutes but why 1.3m3 ? - Clipped a couple of temp sensors on the feed and return, and the answer soon became obvious - My feed was actually 50 not the indicated 55, but the return ramped up in the second 20 minutes from 30 to 45, reducing the condensing advantage and increasing gas consumed. Tried increasing the Dt at the rads from an effective 5 to 20, and soon hit the brick wall of the boiler having a panic attack as it was unable to dump heat as you described - It was to much later before I was to realise the D50 was misleading me, that it was D20, 30% of the stated D50 power... Anyhow, set all the valves back as original (balanced), and started cranking the feed temp up until I got to a 20 minute cycle and observed the return at ca30c, recording results in a table - It was my introduction to the concept of weather compensation, and realising just how crucial the return flow temp was to efficiency irrespective of Dt - Effectively I was filling the rads up, then letting them dump kW, rinse repeat... A hydraulics equivalent would be plug-flow - Heating is treated as having a constant flow, but disregards the convective characteristics of radiators. - From vague recollection it used ca 0.75m3 at max out (display 82, real 68), but it wasn't 1.3m3 any more, and no brainfarts from the boiler either. Couldn't find a WC device for the Buderus, so was stuck with doing it manually until last March when the Buderus blew it's motherboard when it was -6 🙄 . Together with phased insulation, it saved a small fortune over the next 6 years, cumulatively ca 6 grand at today's rates.... Load compensation is a new one to me on the new Viessmann, but in the short time it was in play, it seems to be reacting to the return temp and keeping it under control. The boost in rad capacity should build on that capability, but will find out this winter. I'm not knocking what you're doing at all, you have a wide ranging audience to cater to, and your caution over electronic trvs is fully justified as you've found out yourself. - Now I'm going to throw a bit of a spanner in the works over heating in a high thermal mass building - It is pointless shutting down heat overnight, as it uses more energy to re-establish temps in the structure than you saved, trust me I tried and measured it - In a low thermal mass building you can get away with it as you're heating the air, less so the mass, but I'd hazard a guess most of your audience are in the former category.... Thereafter, I only ever turned the heating down if I went away for a few weeks in winter, but after one such break landed me a huge gas bill, I no longer whacked the heating back up on return, but stepped it up in increments with a gap to let the rads dump heat - It took exactly the same time to return to normal function, but used a fraction of the gas ;) The Viessmann may rewrite that rule, but we'll see... Anyhow, keep up the good work...
@@MiracleManMatt Sure. It is (or was) marketed as an 'Eclipse' valve and can be had in various configurations, comes with an orange protective cap. Heimeier (IMI) just happened to be on the market here at the right price when I was looking to replace the cheapos originally fitted, which heads stuck out into the room. They also made a "Halo" head which is marked in degrees C so that clinched it - With axial valves, all the heads are now all parallel to the wall... The same valves are fitted to the Lounge rads, just white capped instead of a thermo head. Honeywell, Danfoss and other quality brands make similar, sometimes referred to as 'auto-balance' valves. Hope that helps
Great video. Couple.of.points if you can advise Ive got radiator icon but not tap icon How can I read the pressure as it's showing me 3 dash lines not figure
Great video and some very valid points, but just a few things to note. The Drayton TRVs and Room Stats communicate with the Hub using Zigbee and not WiFi. The Wifi connection is only between the Hub and your router and this is the connection that can go offline, but it shouldn't stop the TRVs/Room Stats talking to the Hub and continre to work (assuming batteries not dead). It will stop you controlling the heating whilst you are away from your home using the App until that Hub-Router connection is restored. Also worth pointing out that when you only heat specific zones/rooms at specific times and/or to different temperatures, can cause additional internal heat loss from the heated rooms into the unheated rooms. This means the radiator from the heated room will need to work a bit harder to combat the extra internal heat loss. I personally do not like over zoning and only use two zones in my home - upstairs and downstairs. I also do not turn off the heating completely in zones, but just set it back 2-3 degrees, and I find this prevents big swings in heating the zone back up when required as we have a high thermal mass. Last thing is that there is no calibration on the Drayton smart TRVs which means if they are out of step with the correct room temperature you have to manage different schedules and either overheat/underheat the zone to get the temperature you want. I have no idea why Drayton do not include this feature as its pretty standard across every smart thermostat system on the market expect Wiser??
Again some excellent points. It's great to hear from people like yourself, what you're thinking, and how you're setting up your systems. To the layman who may be reading this. I hope you can see that setting up your central heating to work efficiently. There's way more to it than just adding a few thermostats.
Worth noting that if the boiler gives this error after the entire system was drained and filled up again, that you need to open up the boiler, and twist the tiny gray cap on top of the automatic bleed valve. This will purge the little bit of air that is stuck in the boiler itself, instantly fixing the issue.
Looking at Glow Worm 18R which is very similar to this. Going to Hot Water does not allow any adjustment. Just shows two dashes. Wondering if perhaps this is because there is a hot water tank which is possibly also heated by the central side of boiler. Problem is the complaint is the hot water coming out of the taps is too hot. So does that mean I have to turn the temperature on central heating down to get the hot water temperature down?
I have Drayton Wiser for the last ~3/4 years with a number of the smart TRV's. I have an oil heating system and fitted a smart pump with an auto mode to mitigate the effect of the pump cavitating - however the issue I found was that as the boiler is not modulating - I found the system started to short cycle - therefore reducing the efficiency of the condensing boiler as you mention. You are quite right with some of your recommendation's. I have actually manage to reduce the jet size (KW) of the boiler to help reduce the issue. So I have a mix of normal TRV's, smart TRV's and programmable TRV's to help balance the heat load. To me it would make sense if you could program the drayton TRV's to 'open/close' per the program - but NOT switch the heating on. i.e. if the heating is on anyway, the room heats up - but not if nothing else is. I found that I got round this by combining the system with programmable TRV's on some radiators - but its not ideal and seems like it could be a really easy addition in the app. I think for these sorts of systems to work optimally - you need a heat store type system - or at least a buffer tank to mitigate the short cycling.
Thank you so much, I saw the message and panicked because you can't get a plumber in our area for love nor money. Small donation left as a thank you. 😊
I am curious why it is worse to use smart TRVs than regular TRVs in these scenarios. Surely the same problem occurs with regular TRVs if they are set at different temperatures?
you are correct in that in theory it would be similar - however in practice most people have their TRV's set at similar settings and balanced so you get mostly even heat during normal usage (as your unlikely to go around individually turning TRV's on or off) - also TRV's generally have a slower and more gradual 'on/off'. smart TRV's you are trying to zone as much as possible so you end up with far less radiators on (take it from my experience) - hence the reduced heat load.
It's not worse, you just need to plan it carefully. You can't just go sticking them anywhere and expect your boiler to like it. Check some of the other comments people have made who've done an awful lot to make their systems work efficiently.
I have a Tado system with 12 radiators and 9 smart valves. I don't use smart valves on bathroom or cloakroom radiators. However I agree that you do have to be sensible with how you control the system - just turning one small radiator on is unlikely to work well for the reasons you describe. I tend to use the additional control provided by smart radiator valves to determine room temperatures in rooms at different times of the day. We tend to live in the kitchen during the day and move to a lounge in the evening so I adjust room temperatures to suit this behaviour. Batteries tend to last over a year when using alkaline. However I am moving to rechargeable since you can do that with Tado but I don't have much experience with these yet.
Good advice about how these things can potentially affect the efficiency of your furnace. I'm a smart home enthusiast but not a heating engineer of any kind; I just went ahead and tried a few things, trial and error. In the end I got it working fairly well: 3 thermostats (office, living room and bedroom), controlled from the hub on a schedule (or from an app). Radiators in those rooms are slaved to those thermostats. And some additional rooms without their own thermostat, where turning on the light will demand heat from the furnace if the room temp is low, and open the radiators. That way we no longer heat rooms we are not in, and we're saving a ton of gas. The whole system is set up so that we no longer even touch the thermostats (physically or in the app); every room in the house is at a comfortable temperature, or it is cold (15C) when we're not in it. That is what a smart home is supposed to do: fewer buttons and controls, not more. As for the cons of smart thermostats... Besides Wifi and Bluetooth (both crappy options for home automation), you can also get Z-Wave or Zigbee smart TRVs. These are far more reliable, but they do require a hub that can talk to them (which is more expensive). And they work independently of your internet connection... some of them can work independently of your hub as well, and be driven by a (smart) thermostat directly. Batteries: the TRVs I got have rechargable ones. Every few months I get a low battery poke from my smart home system, and I just plug in a USB cable for a few hours to recharge. About your example of the cloak room: that sort of stuff can usually be programmed into the hub. If you really want, it can even be programmed into the TRV itself (the ones I have allow for a locallyl programmed schedule) My advice for anyone interested in this: be prepared to start an entire new hobby! 😁
5:18 Boiler tries to run at 4KW, but radiator uses just 0.5KW makes the boiler run high then shut down is inefficient. OK, based on what? How does that boiler decide when to turn on and off? Isn't it based on outgoing and returning temperature? What in this process makes it inefficient? Could be that frequent on and off uses more electricity, as the starter uses some glowplugs or something like that. 14:30 Wifi and external (Chinese, well and USA) services is easy, but screamingly insecure and doubtfully and shorttime reliable. What I am planning - POE Raspi at each room, that controls the radiator opening and closing - this might be a challenge since they seem to be either open or closed, so matching the 4KW minimum of boiler might be impossible. Maybe I am completely Dunning Kruger here, but I want to try. This will be my training as a wannabe closet engineer. P.S. This one video even if creating more confusion for me made me subscribe. Sounds trustworthy and knowledgeable.
Set up the away mode with a min temp for heating , I have the same same system and so i put into away mode during summer so the heating wont come on but the hot water will .
Water coming out does not mean it's faulty could just be condescention in the vessel remove the Schroeder valve attached a hose to the whole then putting water into the system up to one bar mark see if any water come out of the hose if not then re pressure the vessel to see if it holds pressure and that your not pressuring the system check the gauge if it goes up you then have a faulty vessel.
