UFH and Rads for Holiday Let

[godsell4]

Hello,

I have just bought a Holiday Let property, there are some functions which are desirable for the remote control of a heating system which I am not sure are possible with the systems I have looked at.


I would be grateful for feedback on the following questions before I decide which system I will purchase in the next couple of weeks. The house is mostly a shell at the moment, so now is the time to get the right, the previous owner just had a single timer for the while house and relied on basic TRV's, there is just one loop for the CH, the F and R pipes go upstairs, with F and R pipes dropping down to each of the downstairs Rads, the house was let out in this state.


The property is heated with an oil combi boiler, some Firebird model output of 26kW I think, when the Firebird dies it will be changed to a Grant model, we hope this property will be where we retire to.

At the moment, upstairs there are many floorboards taken up, downstairs a new concrete floor has been laid and we are deciding on which UFH system to go for, NuHeat, Robbens, etc are being considered.

Hot water shall always be on demand at all times, I might make that simple timer based (no real point keeping it active between midnight and 6am), there shall be 2 zones heated by 4 normal Rads (total of about 4.5kW), and 2 zones of under floor heating (28sqm floor area, about 3.5kW). I am hoping to wire the system as close to a traditional S-plan system as possible without the need for 'wireless relays', like the Honeywell BDR91, I would need 4 of them I think, the cupboard where all this is going to not spacious, so not a lot of space for the, the UFH manifold, 2-port valves each with its own 'wireless relay' next to it.

I very much prefer to have wall mounted thermostats, we can place them anywhere we like, wall channelling not an issue. My view on TRV's is that they may make the installation 'easy' in a few ways, such as not needing to balance the radiators so carefully.


So there shall be 4 thermostats and I really want to be able to wire these in with out having batteries. Having to change 4 sets of batteries each year or two is annoying and not environmentally great, batteries contain metals which are rare and very nasty to produce.


So what solutions do not require batteries?

The Honeywell HCW82 and HCF82 look promising, and I think they will function with EvoHome. I've made my way through most of the Honeywell youlearn lessons this afternoon, did not learn much though.


For a holiday let, it would be great to allow people staying in the let to change the temperature between two given values, and to be able to extend the heating by an hour at the press of a button, but not to be able to change all the other schedule settings.

Which systems allow or support all these kind of controls? Looking at the manuals for many of the units I see, Heatmiser, MyGenie, EvoHome, etc, it is not obvious I can do this. I see a solution from Inspire Home Automation provides this and a few more features which are really great for a holiday let property.

But the Inspire solution has battery powered thermostats, which I just do not want, otherwise I would go with it.


And as you can see from above, I am tending to prefer an internet controllable solution, so a Web and App based interface is required. If my broadband dies or other internet related issue. How much control of the system remains possible from within the property?


Please just let me have it with both barrels on all this. Also if there are other features which we should be thinking about for use at a holiday let, please make them clear to me.

Think I covered everything, must have missed something though.

 

[magicno1]

Best to get a qualified installer in!

 

[godsell4]

Certainly we will get the system commissioned by a certified professional, we can do the donkey work though.

We have the questions because we know what we want and are in the process of asking the various UFH and thermostat/programmer suppliers on what their devices can do. But am asking in this forum for unbiased views on the same.

 

[Worcester]

If this is to be your retirement property and you are refurbing then there are three things you should do first that will pay you well
1) Insulate
2) Insulate
3) Insulate

If it was my property I would then go for (if the capital and land was there) a ground source heat pump, if not an air source heat pump (you say at present it is only 8kW heat load anyway so that will improve)

I would use emmeti underfloor heating and an emmeti manifold with point to point radiators, I would then put Heatmiser neo controls in every room.

 

[godsell4]

... with point to point radiators, I would then put Heatmiser neo controls in every room.

What do you mean by point to point radiators? I could make a guess, but prefer to be clear.

Yes, agreed I plan to put a neoStat in each room.

And about insulation, Yes I hear you on that, no point in generating excess heat energy.

The loft is fairly well insulated at the moment, it could be improved though. The property is of solid granite construction, all exterior walls are 60cm thick granite, there is slate cladding on the exterior on the upper floor. Of course the desire is have as much of the granite to be exposed and visible, which is of course the least insulated and so worse U value possible! Dealing with the walls is something we will deal with at some point, money is a little stretched at the moment as we have just removed all the timber flooring downstairs (it was rotten in parts) and cast a large concrete slab with as much insulation as we can and to still allow us to fit the UFH.

Lastly, some good news, there is a good size sun room, large enough for two sofas, a TV on a stand and area for kids to play, this is of mostly glass construction and has good 'solar gain', even at this time of the year and the heating was off it was 10C above ambient in that room. The property is in the south west of Cornwall.

So we are doing enough to the ground floor right now and putting in enough zones so we have something good to start with. When funds allow, though this might stretch until when we are nearer retirement, we will do something more in line with your suggestions about a heat pump, such as circulating air from the apex of the sun room to other parts of the house. We may also have reached an agreement on what we can do with the granite walls. The property will be sparsely furnished while it is being let, and upstairs shall have all floorboards exposed, so if nearer retirement we need to empty the property to do some work with the floorboards up will not be hard to do. The downstairs is being dealt with now because that is dirty work and difficult to do retrospectively once the UFH and flooring are laid.

Thanks for you feedback.

 

[stevetheplumber]

is underfloor a good thing for a hliday let with its long warm up times ?

 

[godsell4]

It is a good question, the UFH area is next to the sun room and gets an indirect benefit from it, so generally it does not get too cold anyway, but Yes in the UFH area, during the day I will have to keep the UFH set to 15C or something so it does not take too long to heat up when needed later. As this is a retrofit of UFH, it will be a low profile UFH design, the screed or levelling compound will be 40 to 50mm, so the warm up time will not be as bad as if it were 70 to 80mm.

 

[Worcester]

point to point; each radiator plumbed back to a manifold
if using lockshields and trv's: T1 Wall Hung Radiator Manifolds (WHR) - Emmeti read down for full description of point to point
or if using room by room controls - it's what we do, treat each radiator as a loop: T1 Wall Hung Radiator Manifolds (WHR) - Emmeti