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I'm just putting this out here in case I am missing something.

Can anyone think of a valid reason why a plumber would install a completely new S-Plan CH installation (apart from the boiler)
but NOT install the necessary electrical control system to to allow the CH and HW to be turned on and off independently.
A digital timer has been fitted but all it does is turn everything on and off in line with its programmed schedule.
I am looking for a valid reason why the installer would make that decision.

I will keep it short and leave it at that. If you want more information let me know.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
 
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If this was a straightforward domestic installation, and your description is accurate, the system doesn't comply with Building Regulations. Broadly speaking, the CH zone needs to be controlled by its own thermostat and programmer.

Of course, it does depend on what you asked the installer to do and what it said on they'd do on their quote. If you said you wanted 'just the plumbing' done and would get someone else to install a smart control system, like Nest, then you're looking at an incomplete system that needs to have the controls fitted.
 
If this was a straightforward domestic installation, and your description is accurate, the system doesn't comply with Building Regulations. Broadly speaking, the CH zone needs to be controlled by its own thermostat and programmer.

Of course, it does depend on what you asked the installer to do and what it said on they'd do on their quote. If you said you wanted 'just the plumbing' done and would get someone else to install a smart control system, like Nest, then you're looking at an incomplete system that needs to have the controls fitted.
But you can't think of any technical reason why a complete S-Plan system couldn't be controlled as intended?

I have examined the installation in depth and I am about to recommend that the current timer be replaced with a control unit that provides the CH/HW control required to take advantage of the S-Plan installation as well as the timing functionality that currently in place. This will also require the system to be rewired in accordance with a typical wiring layout for an S-Plan installation. This will need an EIC when completed so it will be installed by a registered electrician.

It's just that I have this nagging curiosity as to why the original installer didn't go down this path when they installed the system which was about 2 years ago. It seems to me to be the sensible thing to do and makes me wonder what, if anything, I am missing.



.
 
But you can't think of any technical reason why a complete S-Plan system couldn't be controlled as intended?
Nope, AFAIK there isn't one. The essential purpose of an S-plan configuration is to allow independent control of CH and DHW.

It's just that I have this nagging curiosity as to why the original installer didn't go down this path
I am also a fan of the "Chesterton's fence" approach to strange things. In this case, however, the explanation is probably fairly banal. E.g. the installer needed to test the system so did something 'temporary' and forgot to finish the job.
 
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Is it s plan and not hw priority?

Who wired it ?
 
Nope, AFAIK there isn't one. The essential purpose of an S-plan configuration is to allow independent control of CH and DHW.


I am also a fan of the "Chesterton's fence" approach to strange things. In this case, however, the explanation is probably fairly banal. E.g. the installer needed to test the system so did something 'temporary' and forgot to finish the job.
An interesting idea.

I'm not exactly sure whether the wiring was done by the plumber of by someone else.
The quality of the plumbing works suggests someone with high standards in my opinion.
The same can't be said for the electrical work.
I would be surprised if it were the same person
Swapping out this crap for a purpose build junction box is also on the job sheet.
 

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Yep standard s plan

What control / prog do you have ?
 
Maybe the installer bought a single channel controller by mistake and hoped you wouldn't notice

Where is the controller versus the wiring centre and more importantly how many cores does the cable have that connects them?
 
Yep standard s plan

What control / prog do you have ?
I'll be replacing BOSS Therm BUT2 timer with BOSS Universal TPSE201.
Also replacing the existing tatty junction box with a Honeywell.
Then it's a matter of rewiring.
 

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Maybe the installer bought a single channel controller by mistake and hoped you wouldn't notice

Where is the controller versus the wiring centre and more importantly how many cores does the cable have that connects them?
I haven't pulled the wiring center apart but looks mostly twin and earth flex. It's not currently wired for S-Plan configuration.
 

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That’s a single channel clock
 
I haven't pulled the wiring center apart but looks mostly twin and earth flex. It's not currently wired for S-Plan configuration.
My guess, based on the components visible in the picture, is that the original intention was to have the CH controlled by the wireless receiver with a remote smart thermostat (i.e. thermostat and programmer combined) acting as the sender somewhere else in the house. The single channel programmer should have been wired to to control just the DHW.

If I'm right, all that's happened is whoever wired the wiring centre made a mistake and didn't check/test their work carefully enough. Depressingly common these days...

Is this the same system you asked about roughly a year ago?

 
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My guess, based on the components visible in the picture, is that the original intention was to have the CH controlled by the wireless receiver with a remote smart thermostat (i.e. thermostat and programmer combined) acting as the sender somewhere else in the house. The single channel programmer should have been wired to to control just the DHW.

If I'm right, all that's happened is whoever wired the wiring centre made a mistake and didn't check/test their work carefully enough. Depressingly common these days...

Is this the same system you asked about roughly a year ago?


Yes. Exactly. It's a loooooong story that I won't go into in full depth.

But this tale might be of use to others who come here so I will document the problem.

I will be as brief as I can be.

The complaint can be summed up by the phrase : The CH seems to be doing what it likes. Coming on even when the timer has it switched off.

I initially suspected a wifi RF frequency conflict and altered the dip switches and that seemed to make a difference according to the owner.

But just recently, end of summer, she complained about the amount of oil being consumed even in the summer. She also complained about the heating coming on in the middle of the night which was annoying for two reasons i) too hot in bed and ii) the noise from the boiler which is located below her bedroom.

So I decide to do a full survey of the system.

First thing that revealed is that the room thermostat receiver and the timer are connected to the installation in parallel so they are capable of making independent demands on the boiler for heat. The owner was expecting the timer to be in total control of the boiler ie: when the timer is OFF, in accordance with the program settings, the boiler was OFF and when the timer ON the boiler ON.

I had verified that the timer was working as it should during the previous intervention btw.

The owner's perception or expectation is not unreasonable by any means from a consumer's perspective. It makes sense.

What she had discovered by trial and error was that turning the room stat to ECON mode turned off the boiler. She didn't understand why but she became accustomed to using that as an ON/OFF switch so to speak.

That still didn't completely eliminate the problem of the boiler coming on at night. And it got worse as summer turned to autumn and so on.

But once you understand this independence between the timer and the room tstat you realise that the equipment is not at fault and it is just doing what it is supposed to do.

In ECON mode the default room temp setting is 10C. So the reason the boiler was coming on at night, even in ECON mode, is because the room temp was falling below 10C.

Now there is an ANTI-FROST mode on the tstat unit that has a default of 5C. Had she happened upon that as her ON/OFF choice that would no doubt have stopped the overnight boiler requests.

That's the way she has been manging the CH for almost a year.

The upshot of this is that the way the controls were at the point, due to the parrallel wiring, the room tstat is in charge as it overules the timer settings.

So what I decided to do was to replace the room tstat, which was only controlled by temperature, with a programmable one that controls room temperature on a time line.

This is what I did and it. Replaced BOSS TPSRF31 with BOSS TPSRF51.

The TPSRF51 works by letting you control the room temperature on a time line. The temperature range is 5C to 30C so
setting the temperature to 5C for a period of time is tantamount to switching it off. If the room temperature happens to fall below 5C during that time it's probably not a bad idea to turn the heating on. So it makes sense.

In order to test the new room stat I switched the timer to MANUAL OFF ie permanently off, and just observed over 24 hours.

The new room stat worked fine with the boiler coming on and off according to the new tstat time schedule.

It was next day that revealed the HW wasn't working.

So I dug deeper and determine the CH is S-Plan, looked at the programming capabilities of the existing timer, looked at the wiring of the rest of the equipment and reached the conclusion documented above.

As I said earlier I was a little bewildered as to why it wasn't installed as an S-Plan installation initially.

That lead me to the forum to see if anyone could point to something I was missing.

But now I know what's going on the above changes should bring it to normalcy.

Having said that the owner will still need to understand that in the summer the room tstat will still need to be switched to OFF mode in order to have just HW.
 
Having said that the owner will still need to understand that in the summer the room tstat will still need to be switched to OFF mode in order to have just HW.

Not sure I agree with this.

If you install a 2 channel programmer and make sure its wired correctly then your statement isn't relevant.

Or have I missed something?
 
Not sure I agree with this.

If you install a 2 channel programmer and make sure its wired correctly then your statement isn't relevant.

Or have I missed something?
Not sure myself to be honest.

But here's my rationale.

I have looked at the S-Plan wiring diagram and timer and RF receiver are still wired in parallel so they will still be able to operate independent of each other.

You can't actually wire them in series because they are both rated 240 VAC and you only have 240 VAC available.

If they were in series you could consider the timer to be in overall control because there are four permutations for two switches only one of which (ON + ON) allows current to flow. So when the timer is off everything is off. This has been the basic perception of the owner, not unreasonably, until I explained it to her.

When they are parallel the RF receiver can override the timer as it does at the moment.

If you remove the RF receiver from the picture, and just have the new timer, you can switch the HW and CH on and off independently with the new timer unit. CH only, HW only, CH + HW or neither.

But regardless of which state the timer is in when you bring the RF receiver back into play it can request heat from the boiler
independently and switch it on. As it does at present. Irrespective of the timer status.

So the way I envisage it going when the new timer is fitted is to leave the CH permanently off on the new timer ie: HW only and using the programmable RF receiver to control the CH status all year round switching it off in summer.

That's the plan at least. I will monitor it as usual and see how if it behaves as I anticipate.

This is unlikely to happen until summer.

At the moment, weather being what it is, both CH and HW are in demand and if anything goes wrong it might as well be
in summer when you don't need CH.
 
So best find somebody competent because having ch and hw seperate is the whole point of the S plan - when wired properly with the correct components

I thought this was your home, not a customers!
Exactly what part of what I have posted on here leads you to conclude I am incompetent? Be specific.
 
Exactly what part of what I have posted on here leads you to conclude I am incompetent? Be specific.

Based on the way you worded your last post and as your profile is private I have no idea who, or what you are, and what you do for a living?

Please don't take this the wrong way but little in this thread has suggested you are competent at wiring central heating systems
 
Based on the way you worded your last post and as your profile is private I have no idea who, or what you are, and what you do for a living?

Please don't take this the wrong way but little in this thread has suggested you are competent at wiring central heating systems
Going back to comment #3, if you had bothered to read it, you will see that I wrote :

"This will need an EIC when completed so it will be installed by a registered electrician."

Because this isn't actually a plumbing issue it's an electrical issue. An electrical issue that just happens to involve
an electrical system installed alongside a plumbing system.

Are you a plumber or an electrician? I'm a mechanical and electrical engineer.

So let's see what we have here .

It's clear from what I have written here so far, to anyone reasonably informed that is, that I am competent enough
to conduct a technical survey of both the plumbing installation and the electrical control installation of this site,
accurately determine the type of CH installation (S-Plan), the electrical control requirements and the fact that the latter is not
up to the necessary standards required for the control of an S-Plan installation. In addition to that I have put forward a solution to remedy the current electrical control system shortfalls and bring it in line with Building Regulation Part L for the minimum standards for the control of heating systems specifically with regards to the hot water circuit.

If you wish to offer alternatives to what I have presented her go ahead.

But don't call me incompetent.

BTW, I could do this job myself and get a registered electrician to issue the EIC after the job completed.
That's an option.
 
Doesn’t need a eicr for heating wiring aslong as there’s a fcu already installed if there’s not at best a minor works cert is filled in

Have you noticed the part g fault with the system?

Also atm it still complies with part l eg independent control of each system timer for the hot water and wireless prog room stat for the heating
 
Doesn’t need a eicr for heating wiring aslong as there’s a fcu already installed if there’s not at best a minor works cert is filled in

Have you noticed the part g fault with the system?

Also atm it still complies with part l eg independent control of each system timer for the hot water and wireless prog room stat for the heating
I understand that under Building Regs Part P a rewiring of a CH system, which this involves, is considered a new wiring for the purposes of the regulations and will need to be covered by an Electrical Installation Certificate (EIC). You can do the job yourself but in order to comply with the regulation you will need to call in an electrician to inspect the installation and issue an EIC which you should keep with your most recent EICR. One could, of course, ignore the regulations entirely but that's not an alternative in my opinion.
 
No your statement is wrong
 
Going back to comment #3, if you had bothered to read it, you will see that I wrote :

"This will need an EIC when completed so it will be installed by a registered electrician."

Because this isn't actually a plumbing issue it's an electrical issue. An electrical issue that just happens to involve
an electrical system installed alongside a plumbing system.

Are you a plumber or an electrician? I'm a mechanical and electrical engineer.

So let's see what we have here .

It's clear from what I have written here so far, to anyone reasonably informed that is, that I am competent enough
to conduct a technical survey of both the plumbing installation and the electrical control installation of this site,
accurately determine the type of CH installation (S-Plan), the electrical control requirements and the fact that the latter is not
up to the necessary standards required for the control of an S-Plan installation. In addition to that I have put forward a solution to remedy the current electrical control system shortfalls and bring it in line with Building Regulation Part L for the minimum standards for the control of heating systems specifically with regards to the hot water circuit.

If you wish to offer alternatives to what I have presented her go ahead.

But don't call me incompetent.

BTW, I could do this job myself and get a registered electrician to issue the EIC after the job completed.
That's an option.

everybody who hides their profile has something to hide

you still very clearly don’t understand central heating wiring and also an EIC isn’t required

and if you look at my profile / badge it’s clear what I am too
 
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