Ronski's Solar & battery DIY build with whole house backup

[Ron-ski]

It really does my head in, what with stuff going on at work it really was head space overload, I lost the plot a few times.

Yes it's tricky getting the insulation done correctly, but you'd think that as that was one of my complaints they'd get it done correctly the second time round, but no, there's still gaps, and stupid mistakes (the breather that will fill with water). In the end I've bought some insulation, mastic and the breather vents, and will do the job myself, for a quiet life. With the Primary Pro all joints should be a snug fit and sealed / glued together with the mastic, and the cable ties removed once set.

I had my wife and daughter giving me a hard time due to lack of hot water, so there was that as well.

I think these sorts of problems happen all the time with most trades, but most people are clueless at what is right or wrong, so they have no idea that something has been done incorrectly, which could cause problems later, or cost money.

 

[randal]

It really does my head in, what with stuff going on at work it really was head space overload, I lost the plot a few times.

Yes it's tricky getting the insulation done correctly, but you'd think that as that was one of my complaints they'd get it done correctly the second time round, but no, there's still gaps, and stupid mistakes (the breather that will fill with water). In the end I've bought some insulation, mastic and the breather vents, and will do the job myself, for a quiet life. With the Primary Pro all joints should be a snug fit and sealed / glued together with the mastic, and the cable ties removed once set.

I had my wife and daughter giving me a hard time due to lack of hot water, so there was that as well.

I think these sorts of problems happen all the time with most trades, but most people are clueless at what is right or wrong, so they have no idea that something has been done incorrectly, which could cause problems later, or cost money.

I get that there will invariably be some snagging items with most trades and most jobs, but how the company and indivdual deals with that is the make or break for a great experience I find.

The problem these days is nobody seems to care let alone know (or admit) they've made a mistake, the apathy towards customers is palpable and that's not just for the trades. Feels a bit oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg saying that, but nearly every interaction beyond a simple transaction I've had with companies of late (with the exception of City Plumbing) has irked me good.


I've had an uphill struggle convincing the Mrs about UFH and a Heatpump, if anything like what you went through happened to us I'd never hear the end of it.

 

[rtho782]

@Ron-ski ron who installed your heat pump? Was it a heat geek install? They are supposed to be really good!!

I have 2x9kW A2A multisplits at the moment but really want an A2W ASHP before doing underfloor insulation and heating. That was my drive to get a new epc as they all seem to base quotes on them!!

 

[Ron-ski]

It was a local installer, a Vaillant Advanced installer, no idea what qualifies them as that though. The guy that came to do the snagging and fitted the replacement heat pump was supposedly a Heatgeek trained engineer, although I'm not sure how much training he'd had

I wanted to get a Heatgeek quote, but the nearest one was an hour's drive away, and he didn't respond to the email he asked me to send, or texts I sent to follow up, just blanked me.

 

[Ron-ski]

I've had an uphill struggle convincing the Mrs about UFH and a Heatpump, if anything like what you went through happened to us I'd never hear the end of it.

The main issue with the wife and daughter was the lack of hot water, and that was due to using the UniTower, in most case they can get the tank in and wire in the immersion and you have maybe two days without hot water, but the UniTower needs the outside unit to pump the water round, as the immersion isn't in the tank, it's in the heating circuit so can boost the heating, which no one realised.

So I had the manufacturing fault with the heat pump, which my installer really tried hard to get resolved, and pushed Vaillant for a new one.

Then we had the installation issues, which they weren't so keen to acknowledge, and seemed to keep forgetting, and think all the problems were down to the faulty unit.

 

[Ron-ski]

ASHP + Induction hob costs for May, last May we spent £27.70 (324 kWh) on gas for the hot water and the gas hob (doubt there was any heating), this may we've used 102 kWh for the ASHP (just hot water) and 10 kWh for the induction hob, that's £7.84 for both.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

You may well have had some heating in May last year, it was pretty grim at the start on odd days.
Eg 3rd May 2024 I produced 2.6kWh
This year 0 days under 10kWh vs 7 in 2024.
For me 10kWh is kind of a benchmark point, almost certain to be no peak units on a 10kWh generation day even if its oven on for a roast or something.

 

[Ron-ski]

It does look likely, looking at June we spent £18.61 (away on holiday for a week) and July was £23.24, so that does suggest the heating came on in May. Gas hob was removed 22 July.

 

[Ron-ski]

I've got a Victron 250-85 MPPT which gets quite warm on these summer days. It doesn't have an internal temperature sensor so I've sat a Ruuvi Tag on top of it, yesterday it reached 45.8c.

So I've set up a fan, with a Shelly Plug and that's turned on by Node Red when the Ruuvi hits 40c and off at 35c, which then ends up with the saw blade effect.

Now I'm wondering if the temperature fluctuating up and down is worse than the warmer temperature, although we have to remember the internal temperature may not be fluctuating as much.

I'll turn the fan speed down, and see what happens tomorrow.

 

[Ron-ski]

My winter generation is going to be a bit better now, my neighbours have cut down the tree which shaded my garage panels in the winter months, shame as it was a nice tree, nothing wrong with it, they just didn't like the mess it made. At least it has an upside for me.

 

[The Angry Welshman]

My winter generation is going to be a bit better now, my neighbours have cut down the tree which shaded my garage panels in the winter months, shame as it was a nice tree, nothing wrong with it, they just didn't like the mess it made. At least it has an upside for me.

im having the same luck tmrw as my father in law is finally having his tress topped and tidied up, which will help my winter production too.

 

[Tattysnuc]

bookmarked! Cant wait until we move house and I get to USE this stuff.

Is there a dummy's "how to" guide that you can recommend? I get overwhelmed researching this topic, and most of it seem quite US biased.

 

[Ron-ski]

Is there a dummy's "how to" guide that you can recommend?

Not that I'm aware of, I'd watched a lot of Andy's Off Grid garage videos, lots of reading and I do have a basic electrical background/understanding which I'm sure helped, not to mention my fabrication and DIY skills.

Have a read of Victron's wiring unlimited guide, that's quite informative.

DIY Solar forum is also a good source of information, although more US but a lot still applies.

 

[Tattysnuc]

Not that I'm aware of, I'd watched a lot of Andy's Off Grid garage videos, lots of reading and I do have a basic electrical background/understanding which I'm sure helped, not to mention my fabrication and DIY skills.

Have a read of Victron's wiring unlimited guide, that's quite informative.

DIY Solar forum is also a good source of information, although more US but a lot still applies.

thansk Ron-ski. It'll be a while before I get to implement something as we're 3-4 years off moving house, but I was thinking about doing a small scale trial on the roofs of our garden shed &/or kitchen roof to power my workshop.

 

[Ron-ski]

As most of you may have seen in the Solar Panels and Battery thread, one of my SolarEdge optimisers from my 2015 install has failed.

I've just been up on the kitchen roof, unless scaffolding was up to the roof line, it would be pretty impossible to reach the top mounting bolts, but we could take the right hand panel off from the main roof to gain access to the middle one, this I'm sure can be done without scaffolding, it'll just need a flat flatform for someone else to stand on to assist with moving panels.

Old picture, but the one on the left is the one with the issue, from the main roof we could remove the one on the right, then the next one along.

I'll have a word with my installer, see what they say, but in the meantime I've signed up to do the online SolarEdge training, which should give me access to the installer app

 

[Ron-ski]

My new optimiser has arrived, well it arrived over a week ago, and was waiting at work last Monday after a weeks holiday.

Was hoping to fit it today, but the weather was pretty bad this morning.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Yeh I don’t blame you, way too windy to be messaging around with solar panels.

 

[Ron-ski]

I finally got around to fitting new insulation to the antifreeze and isolation valves on the heat pump.





Main problem was the antifreeze valves have 50mm diameter nuts, and there is no way 35mm ID insulation is going to go around those, I could have bought larger diameter insulation had I realised, but that's only 42mm ID, although it would fit better. As I wanted to get the job done I decided to rebate the area's where the large nuts are, the end was easy to enlarge with 2" hole saw, the middle one I did with my Dremel. I know its not optimum, but its much better than the big gaps the installer left.

It is very tricky to cut the insulation correctly, and even more tricky and messy to seal it up, but I got there in the end.

Next job heating wise is to finish that loft insulation!

PS SCOP so far from installation for hot water is 3.57 according to the Vaillant App, heatings not come on yet. We did have the hot water at 55c but turned it down to 50c, when there is a free power hour I boost it to 60c.

 

[reef]

I finally got around to fitting new insulation to the antifreeze and isolation valves on the heat pump.





Main problem was the antifreeze valves have 50mm diameter nuts, and there is no way 35mm ID insulation is going to go around those, I could have bought larger diameter insulation had I realised, but that's only 42mm ID, although it would fit better. As I wanted to get the job done I decided to rebate the area's where the large nuts are, the end was easy to enlarge with 2" hole saw, the middle one I did with my Dremel. I know its not optimum, but its much better than the big gaps the installer left.

It is very tricky to cut the insulation correctly, and even more tricky and messy to seal it up, but I got there in the end.

Next job heating wise is to finish that loft insulation!

PS SCOP so far from installation for hot water is 3.57 according to the Vaillant App, heatings not come on yet. We did have the hot water at 55c but turned it down to 50c, when there is a free power hour I boost it to 60c.

Out of interest, what is your tank size and kWh used per DHW cycle?

According to the Daikin MMI, I'm only getting a rubbish SCOP of about 2.5 for the DHW, but it doesn't make sense.

I'm heating a 210l tank from about 32C to 48C and it's using about 1.3kWh per day. I've done a rough measurement and the Daikin is saying we've used 36kWh for the DHW so far in September, but my own monitoring suggests it's actually about 30kWh. This is including a legionella cycle to 60C every Monday morning, so I think it's just totally inaccurate.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

The Daikin MMI isn’t accurate at all and I expect hot water efficiency is impacted by how long your run is from outdoor unit to your tank given how little time it takes in practice.