water underfloor heating

[ss]

Anyone got experience with under floor hot water central heating. Trying to balance ground floor and 1st floor heat.

[Adrian]

Not in setting up, but in living with.

If you've got rads upstairs, and underfloor downstairs, put them on SEPARATE ZONES. Underfloor takes a LOT longer to heat up, and a lot longer to cool down, because of the thermal mass, so you want them on quite different times to give similar actual effect.

I really must investigate separating the zones here - there's three. One is the "old bit" (up and down, roughly 60% of floor area), one is the "new bit" (up and down, 40%), one is a single solitary towel rail, ffs.

[ss]

The link for plan of heating may give a better idea, house is in Holland (sons). The issue appears to be roasting hot downstair and much cooler and feels draughty on the 1st floor. There are no rads all underfloor. I suspect it just needs balancing, but how?

House is 7 years old.

[Roger Mills]

Have you got wet underfloor heating on both floors, or are you trying to balance underfloor on the ground floor with something different on the first floor?

How is your setup currently configured?

[ss]

Wet on both floors, configured as in previous post. another link.

I am not sure if this is ground floor or 1st floor, or covers for both. I can find out though.

[Andrew Mawson]

We have three zones of water under floor heating in our house, (kitchen, dining area, and hall) and on the manifold each has a separate tweaker for flow rate, and a flow gauge. It's debateable whether they needed to be three zones as they all interlink virtually open plan. But each zone has it's own wall mounted thermostat. As for balancing it just a case of setting the appropriate thermostat and ensuring that the flow rate is adequate without hogging all the flow.

Andrew

[Tim+]

Pretty sure that the switch you've labelled "channel selector" is just a pump speed control.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes.

Use separate pumnps and controllers - they respond too differently to be any use on same timer

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've ended up with separate radio stats on various loops essentially creating different zones

My manifold allows valves to be screwed to its top to 'cool down' various overheated parts. These are then driven by radio status in the affected rooms.

[Roger Mills]

It looks as if there are several circuits on each floor, each supplied by a common pump through a manifold system. The thing which looks to you like a channel selector is actually the speed control for the pump.

The row of white knobs look as if they could be for balancing the circuits on a single floor. Probably best not to disturb them unless there's a problem within a floor as opposed to between floors. The valves are presumably controlling the temperature of the water going to each floor. Valve 1 (at any rate) appears to be thermostatic - with a sensor connected to the pump outlet. I can't see how many ports it has but, in the uk, it's usual to use a 3-port blending valve which blends hot water from the boiler with cooler water coming back from the UFH in order to achieve the desired flow temperature. I've no idea what valve 2 is doing.

Is there a similar setup on the other floor? Are both floors fed from a single boiler? If so, there may be scope for slowing down the ground floor's pump and/or reducing that floor's flow temperature in order to achieve greater uniformity between floors. But that's only a guess, based on less than complete information. Your son really needs to get advice from someone who understands the system. If this sort of system is common over there, there must be a few local experts around!

[ss]

Yes a similar set up on both floors, No boiler the hot water is fed from wherever on the estate to all houses.

[Roger Mills]

Ok, so it's a district heating setup - about which I know next to diddly squat!

But if all the houses are heated in the same way, there must be people around who know how to adjust the systems. Is your son charged a flat rate for the heating, or is the heat input metered in some way, and charged accordingly?

[ss]

Apologies for being vague but son is in the process of moving in, apparently other people just pay to get things done and havent a clue. He got this reply from I think a supplier of system (broken english).......

"Valve nr. 1 is the supply and volve 2 is to limit the return temperature. Both valves are locked, due to regulations of ?NUON Stadsverwarming?. (nr. 2 must be locked at 4 anyway)

The white/yellow box is a maximum temperature security box. It breaks the electric circuit of the circulationpump at > 60 degr. C. to protect your underfloor. Sure you can try to balance out temperatures with both manifolds. Empirical fact is that it is very hard to balance out with only one thermostat but, it is worthwhile to try. To change the instalation into a system with two wireless thermostats (one for each floor) will cost you approx. ? 1400,00 - ? 1.500,00 incl. V.A.T."

[ARW]

I would expect there to be 11 room stat on that set up.

[Roger Mills]

And what would you expect each stat to be switching?

[Tim Watts]

Normally actuators on each circuit.

[Tim+]

Motorised valve for each zone?

Tim

[Tim Watts]

Usually thermal wax actuators rather than motor - but same difference.

[The Natural Philosopher]

the zone valves on the UFH manifold

[The Natural Philosopher]

In my case they are actually wax capsule switches. Add electricity wax heats up pushes plunger stops flow...