After almost 12 months since I started digging that god forsaken trench, my heat pump was finally commissioned!
Alex, from Solaris Energy, drove all the up from Kent on a cloudy Tuesday morning to finally turn on my (rusty) Kronoterm Adapt. In this post, I want to outline the few steps he took and the results.
You can read My Heat Pump Installation – Part 1 and My Heat Pump Installation – Part 2
Initial checks
At this stage, the heat pump had never been powered up. After confirming my wiring was correct, he switched the heat pump on at the isolator. There was a brief gurgle and then *nothing*. “That’s a good sign” he said.
He then made a few changes to the temperature curve, and the system came to life, the grass bending in the wind as the fan did its job. More gurgling from the radiators this time, but there was heat! A low 25°C, but heat nonetheless!
Alex then spent a few hours checking everything and taking readings from the heat pump’s internals. He finally reported that everything was A-Okay.
Hot Water
With the heating working, next up was the hot water. As I discussed in My Heat Pump Installation – Part 2, my Mixergy tank required some additional hardware to function. I wasn’t 100% sure this would work first time, but amazingly, it did.
I hopped into the Mixergy app and hit the boost button. This was my first surprise. Rather than showing me an amount to boost to (usually a percentage), it jumped straight to 100%. After my confusion wore off, I realised this was normal. It’s more efficient to heat the *whole* tank, rather than try to do a small part.
After about 20 minutes, I had a full tank of hot water!
Unfortunately, we hit our little bump at this point. The heat pump, whilst heating the water, started emitting a weird sort of gurgle. It was just audible just above the fan. Alex popped some of the panels off and found the noise emanating from the evaporator.
He also checked the compressor compartment. Check out the sound proofing around the compartment!
Whilst he couldn’t diagnose it there and then, he promised he contact Kronoterm and get back to me.
VDI 2035 Water
The last step was to treat the water to make it neutral. This is a practice that I believe is growing more common. Rather than adding inhibitor, the water is treated to ensure it’s pure and essentially neutral. This required the use of a hefty deionizer!
He said our water wasn’t too bad, it’s quite soft, so it didn’t take too long to de-ionize all the water in the system.
No More Gas!
At the start of the week, I emailed Octopus Energy about having my gas disconnected and the meter removed. We were already using electricity for cooking, and the boiler was the last gas burning item we had. The replied saying that Cadent needed to come and disconnect the supply after which they’d remove the meter. I contacted Cadent and they quote £1600 for the disconnection!! Yikes.
After speaking to my brother-in-law, who had his supply disconnected, he said they initially just had the meter removed. After a year, Cadent rocked up and disconnected their supply for free. I checked some forums and others reported the same experience.
I went back to Octopus, revising my request and within an hour an appointment was scheduled for the end of the week!
Having the meter removed will save me approx. 30p a day, reducing my total standing charges from 87p to 57p and saving me ~£110 annually.
Monitoring
Anyone that knows me, will know I’m all about the monitoring. Over the next month I’ll be getting my own monitoring setup, in addition to Open Energy Monitor.
One this winter is over, I’ll be able to make some very direct comparisons between my gas boiler and my new heat pump.
Next Steps
Now I just need for the weather to turn 🙂
Stay tuned!
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Thanks,
Tom!
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