Geothermal energy

carlowplayer

Am considering switching to this to reduce energy bills.Am wondering who can consult on the potential of geothermal in bunclody,wexford (and the cost of that)also what are the savings on a yearly basis.what are the setup costs,savings etc.
Can anyone direct me to any sites that can help me on this

fclauson

switch from what ?
what is you overall thermal envelope performance today ?
have you looked at limiting losses before changing the way you add heat to the building

GSHP are expensive to install and the pay back can be 10 to 15 years - you move your costs from opex to capex - a lot of you heating system will need redesinging if you go this route

kilowhiskey

carlowplayer wrote: »

Am considering switching to this to reduce energy bills.Am wondering who can consult on the potential of geothermal in bunclody,wexford (and the cost of that)also what are the savings on a yearly basis.what are the setup costs,savings etc.
Can anyone direct me to any sites that can help me on this

Hi Carloplayer,

I don't have direct links to any Geothermal sites but a websearch should provide a host of them. I have a ground source heat pump geothermal (GSHP )heated house near Rosslare, Wexford and have been operating this for about 10 months now. I have been tracking the electricity consumption for this time and so far my predictions for the annual cost of my total electric bill is ~€1200. This is for all my consumption, heating, lighting cooking, washing etc. However the cost depends on many factors the most important being that the house is designed for geothermal heating. I have a high insulation level (which good be improved further) and under floor heating throughout, and fully sealed double glazed doors and windows.

You would be better to make all improvements to your insulation and air tightness that are possible before considering GSHP. This will give you better value for your spend than moving to geothemal. If you do go with GSHP you'll have to do this insulation anyway as it's pointless trying to heat a house with poor insulation and draughts this way.

Our system works quite well but struggles if the outside temperature stays below 6C for any time, so we also have two woodburiing stoves as backup ( and for effect, I like the wood fires in winter ) and so far I've spent about €300 on wood.
The system I have is by Neura, an Austrian company ( http://www.neura.at/en/) but I hestitate to fully recommend as their support in Ireland is very poor and there are many other good supplier of GSHP, but do check the qualiity of available support in Ireland before deciding on one as you will need it.

I hope that's helped give idea of what a typical system can do for a 2300sq. ft ,two level 4 bed house in wexford and generally I am well pleased with it. But my worst fears are the continuing escalation in the electricity prices which have risen 3 times since I moved in, so you'll never fully get away from rising prices!!. Good luck with the search anyway...

Capt'n Midnight

Just make sure you max out on insulation first

kboc

don't put the cart before the horse.

I have one too, heating (and hot water) bills on 320 sq metres is approx £500 - £600 per year. This is a good figure but only because the house is/has;

good airtightness
HRV
stuffed full of insulation
a huge run of glazing south facing


Any house should at least have the first 3 on the above list before HP's will make financial sense.

good luck
K

fairwind

Hi
Hoping to put geo borehole in 250sqm house.
I. Note u wouldn't really recommend this Austrian company
Have u heard any good things re others?
Have a quote from midlands co useworsch Bosch and thinking re cork co ash grove or heliotherm galway.
Any info greatly appreciated
Also this may sound mad but need to know if u can turn it off for periods ?
Occas use at first.i believe u can set it to around 15 degrees or 5 from usual heat.
F

kilowhiskey

Hi Carlo,

I don't know much about other geothermal companies as the system I have ( Neura) was installed and commissioned before I bought the house. I was left with no information and no support, I had to figure out by trial and error how it needed to be set up and work. Neura wouldn't even reply to emails and the Irish agent when bust.
Having said all that the system itself has worked well for nearly a year now.

The controller for the system has 5 unique "profiles" in each I can programme the three temperature levels for different times of the 24Hr day. I have 2 profiles I've used mainly, a "summer" setting and a "winter" setting. They are similar but the "background" temperature and "comfort" temerpature are lower for summer. Another fixed setting which I use when we go away is "Frost", the heat pump stays off until the outside temperature falls below 5C then it will go to standby and maintain the internal temperature above 6C. I never have switched the whole thing off, but it is possible to do so. It was off when we moved in (in winter), it took a week to get the temperature inside the house right. It has a very large thermal inertia. Hot water is on a separate timer unit which can use the heat pump or boost with electricty this is set to use the night rate electricity.

As I said in the previous post my projected ESB total bill for the 12 months is €1200, which is better than I though it would be for a 230sqm house. But I do believe that this is mainly due the high insulation levels and the way the house uses solar energy via the large south facing windows. So credit must go to the architect here as the house was designed from the start to use geothermal.


Hope this helps, good luck with your project.

KW

fairwind

Hi
About turning heat pump on and off kilowhiskey
Was it difficult to turn on again ?
Any ideas re remote automation ?
Ff

kilowhiskey

HI Calow,

I only have turned the system completely "off" when we had an electrical fault repaired. It's switched off with 3 main switches, one for the controller, the back-up system and the hot water system. So it's very easy to shut down.

But the controller resets itself and then has to re-learn the house thermal characteristics. This is not good for consistant temperature regulation, as I said if we go away we just set the "Frost" setting and turn off hot water demand.

The contoller unit has a serial interface port so a computer can be used to supply commands and therefore in theory could be accessed via internet for remote operation. Is this what you mean?.
The later type of controllers have an RF units which mean they can be placed and used anywhere in house, if this is what you mean.

KW

Biffo83

Hi folks

Totally new to this, literally at the end of my wits here. We bought a house with neura hp. Only manual we got is in German. We have had no heat for past two months. Control panel not working at all. Not getting much help from the installer as we weren't his client.

Anyone know of someone who can help us. House is very cold!

kilowhiskey

Biffo83 wrote: »

Hi folks

Totally new to this, literally at the end of my wits here. We bought a house with neura hp. Only manual we got is in German. We have had no heat for past two months. Control panel not working at all. Not getting much help from the installer as we weren't his client.

Anyone know of someone who can help us. House is very cold!

Hi Biffo83,


I'm sorry to hear about your Neura HP problems. I've also had many problems trying to contact Neura and get service in Ireland. But a few weeks ago Neura did reply with a contact for the Irish service agent, I haven't contacted them yet as I want to wait until the temperature is lower and see if the problems we had last winter still exist then get them in to check it out. So I can't say whether they're any good or not, but they're the only offical Neura agents in Ireland.

Information from Neura is below:-
"the name of our service agent in Ireland is Eco Green Energy Services Limited! Phone: +353 (5997) 737271"

I also have an english manual in pdf form for the Neura Europa HP system with TRS8 controller. If this is any use I can send it to.

KW

Biffo83

kilowhiskey wrote: »

Hi Biffo83,


I'm sorry to hear about your Neura HP problems. I've also had many problems trying to contact Neura and get service in Ireland. But a few weeks ago Neura did reply with a contact for the Irish service agent, I haven't contacted them yet as I want to wait until the temperature is lower and see if the problems we had last winter still exist then get them in to check it out. So I can't say whether they're any good or not, but they're the only offical Neura agents in Ireland.

Information from Neura is below:-
"the name of our service agent in Ireland is Eco Green Energy Services Limited! Phone: +353 (5997) 737271"

I also have an english manual in pdf form for the Neura Europa HP system with TRS8 controller. If this is any use I can send it to.

KW

Neura are replying to emails now and are very helpful. They saw they hope to have another engineer in Ireland in November.

miracle2012

can i get advice on which heat pump is more effeicent and straight forward to use the air source or the geothermal???

Kenbmore3

Hi. I notice this is an old thread but just wondering if anyone can help me. We have the Neura underfloor geo thermal heating system and it is currently not working. The heating panel is displaying an error F 33. Does anyone know what this means? Also would anyone have a manual for the Heating panel as I only have a manual for the thermostat. I am a few weeks without heating now and as you can appreciate, the temperatures have dropped significantly. I am based in Tipperary and the original agent for Neura, Eco Energy are gone out of business. I have tried re-booting the whole system but now this error is showing and I cannot get it going. Any help appreciated.

Biffo83

Kenbmore3 wrote: »

Hi. I notice this is an old thread but just wondering if anyone can help me. We have the Neura underfloor geo thermal heating system and it is currently not working. The heating panel is displaying an error F 33. Does anyone know what this means? Also would anyone have a manual for the Heating panel as I only have a manual for the thermostat. I am a few weeks without heating now and as you can appreciate, the temperatures have dropped significantly. I am based in Tipperary and the original agent for Neura, Eco Energy are gone out of business. I have tried re-booting the whole system but now this error is showing and I cannot get it going. Any help appreciated.

I am so sorry to hear this. Unfortunately I don't have a good story for you. We spent all last winter (with a new born baby) with no heat. We contacted Neura in Austria directly and replaced a part with a cost of over 1k it lasted 6 days. We spent months researching and found that we had no alternative to replace the heating system.

I have a PDF form if the manual (Neura sent it to me) if you want I can email that to you. Or try googling heatpumptroubleshooters they might just be able to help you....although I know they were beginning to stop working on Neura pumps as it was more hassle than it is worth.

Hope some of it helps. I feel for you! We were freezing last year.

Kenbmore3

Many thanks. Yes I would appreciate that manual if you can send it to <snip>please. I have had a refrigeration engineer look at it and he said if he could reference what the error means he might be able to look at it so the manual would be a great help. Thanks

Ken don't put your email on a public forum, write a few more posts and then PM (private message) the person

sheff the ref

Air source is the cheapest to install as there is no collector. However in terms of efficiency I would like to see ESB bills as that is the ultimate test of efficiency assuming two houses are the same size, have the same BER and one has ground source, and the other has air to water

miracle2012 wrote: »

can i get advice on which heat pump is more effeicent and straight forward to use the air source or the geothermal???

Northern lassie

Kenbmore3 wrote: »

Hi. I notice this is an old thread but just wondering if anyone can help me. We have the Neura underfloor geo thermal heating system and it is currently not working. The heating panel is displaying an error F 33. Does anyone know what this means? Also would anyone have a manual for the Heating panel as I only have a manual for the thermostat. I am a few weeks without heating now and as you can appreciate, the temperatures have dropped significantly. I am based in Tipperary and the original agent for Neura, Eco Energy are gone out of business. I have tried re-booting the whole system but now this error is showing and I cannot get it going. Any help appreciated.

Dear Kenbmore3,
We have a Neura underground system and underground heating inside - have never really got to grips with the workings of it but my own fault - we have this error as well F033 and we are led to believe that we need a new inverter which we were quoted Eur 1,400 last year but just did not have the money but feel we need to something about it now. However a short term fix was to switch of the pump on the control panel (Optima Control Panel) and then power down the system - we have three switches to power off and then wait until the display panel (where the F033 is showing) goes blank - then power up the three switches and turn the pump on - you have to repeat this three or four times before the pump kicks back in. We did this for approx three months and we had another error message but cannot remember what it was but all we need to replace was a part that cost Eur 10 and we are up running again. We are now going to look at replacing the inverter and may look at contacting <snip> - good luck. please discuss the product not the stockist thanks

shamcfc

Family member is also having problems with this system now, we just changed the inverter, Which seemed to be gone after five years of service,

The guy who installed the system was able to replace this but there is also now a problem now with the compressor, before we would have <SNIP>and they were able to get it going again,But now with them seemly out of business we were put in contact with PLEASE USE THE PM FUNCTION IN FUTURE

What a waste of time that was,One of their lads called to the house said the compressor was fine said the system was air locked,About an hour after he left the house. The error light came back up, Over a week now since he called to the house no one in there office will answer our calls, secretary just keeps saying everyone is out of the office and to leave a message. terrible customer service

bazual

Woke up this morning to find a cold house and crossed fingers that it would not be anything to do with the heat pump but of course its Christmas and this kind of stuff always happens around this time. Had to replace a hot water cylinder about 3/4 months ago that could only come from Austria because of this stupid system that we have and now it looks like no heat for Christmas.
So i went outside and didn't hear the familiar buzz of the heat pump running. Went into the garage to see if the system looked to be working from the control panel and it seemed to be doing what is was supposed to but just nothing happening with the heat pump outside.
Decided to take the cover off the heat pump to see if anything was odd and low and behold there was a pool of something at the bottom, whether its water or coolant or what I have no idea but its definitely the problem.
Have 6 month old in the house now and unlikely to get this sorted until January and not sure where even to start as like along with most people that have these Neura heat pumps, the installer is gone bust and now have to deal with Neura's new agents.
If anyone has any suggestions or ideas It would be appreciated, I am debating on getting in an oil burner to start heating the underfloor pipes instead of this cursed system.
A friend has had to replace compressor 4 times since installation in 2009, I have been lucky in that regard and mine is a 2009 build as well but of all the people I know that have had similar systems they have all had issues.

sheff the ref

Some form of backup is essential so.

Also that would suggest that as much of the system as possible needs to be standardised and sourced locally.

mchammer

Hi All,

I too have a neura heatpump and it has been running fine until recent lightning storm around xmas where it is throwing the f033 error "Autorestart tries" on startup. As OP said above resetting the power to the inverter powerflex unit will clear the error and let the system run again without error. It should be noted that the F033 is only the restart error and there is another error which occurs before the system tries the restarts

Check the fault history parameters.

• d007 is the previous fault. It will be “33”
• d008 is the fault that occurred prior to the fault in d007. This is the cause of the fault F033 fault. Check d008 and refer to that fault for tips to repair the problem.
• d009 is the fault prior to the d008 fault.

At the moment I have put in a din rail timer on the fuse board which shuts off power to system until around 10 o'clock at night automatically and I am able to use with out any pesky resetting at the fuseboard. I found this info out myself but I have to say very unimpressed with communications from austria and from the partner co. in ireland. PM me if you want any more info,

Basically, my unit is throwing a f5 error which is an overvoltage error on startup. I am hoping that I will be able to fix the inverter once the heating season is over but I will work it as is for the moment. I will post back if it can get it fixed

all the best
Mc

bazual

bazual wrote: »

Woke up this morning to find a cold house and crossed fingers that it would not be anything to do with the heat pump but of course its Christmas and this kind of stuff always happens around this time. Had to replace a hot water cylinder about 3/4 months ago that could only come from Austria because of this stupid system that we have and now it looks like no heat for Christmas.
So i went outside and didn't hear the familiar buzz of the heat pump running. Went into the garage to see if the system looked to be working from the control panel and it seemed to be doing what is was supposed to but just nothing happening with the heat pump outside.
Decided to take the cover off the heat pump to see if anything was odd and low and behold there was a pool of something at the bottom, whether its water or coolant or what I have no idea but its definitely the problem.
Have 6 month old in the house now and unlikely to get this sorted until January and not sure where even to start as like along with most people that have these Neura heat pumps, the installer is gone bust and now have to deal with Neura's new agents.
If anyone has any suggestions or ideas It would be appreciated, I am debating on getting in an oil burner to start heating the underfloor pipes instead of this cursed system.
A friend has had to replace compressor 4 times since installation in 2009, I have been lucky in that regard and mine is a 2009 build as well but of all the people I know that have had similar systems they have all had issues.

An update on the above, I rang the new agents for the heat pump in Ireland and to be fair when they called back in the afternoon they would have had someone out on Christmas eve to look at unit for the 150 call out charge. In the meantime though the water appeared to drain itself from the heat pump down to a reasonable level for me to try turn it on just to see would anything work and it came on after a few minutes. So I spent the day digging around the heat pump where the loops enter to allow water to be released and dug a shore to leave it off away from the pump as it appeared to be getting in here. Once i got under where the pipes went in i cleared out all the sludge and put some expanding foam in to seal the area. It seems to be ok at the moment but between where the pipes go into the pump and into the earth they are a bit exposed. There seemed to be an awful amount of water coming up from each pipe going into the earth but after a day it seemed to stop.
I have now noticed looking at these pipes that there is a frozen block at each point where the pipes are coming up from the ground. See pics below. Does anyone know if this is normal. I presume gas is in these pipes or possibly some sort of antifreeze solution so would not have expected them to be like this? Could this also be the reason why in the last couple of weeks the Neura heater attached to the front of the cylinder that also goes to one of the loops doesn't appear to be heating the hot water cylinder.?

sheff the ref

What you have photographed is the collector and there should not be frozen ice. Where are these pipes in relation to the manifold?

That seems to be a very wet area for a collector. Would the collector be undersized, therefore not warming up the water/antifreeze mix sufficiently, and then sending it into the heatpump at a lower temperature than normal, causing it to overwork and send out out the water/antifreeze mix at sub zero temperatures? The water inside the pipes will not freeze at immediate subzero temperatures due to the antifreeze, but it will freeze any water outside the pipes.

bazual

sheff the ref wrote: »

What you have photographed is the collector and there should not be frozen ice. Where are these pipes in relation to the manifold?

That seems to be a very wet area for a collector. Would the collector be undersized, therefore not warming up the water/antifreeze mix sufficiently, and then sending it into the heatpump at a lower temperature than normal, causing it to overwork and send out out the water/antifreeze mix at sub zero temperatures? The water inside the pipes will not freeze at immediate subzero temperatures due to the antifreeze, but it will freeze any water outside the pipes.

Thanks Sheff. The collector is about 3 meters from the garage where the controller unit is and then from the garage to the manifold which is under the stairs in the house is about a 10/12 meter run. The collector I think is in a wet area, just above it the grass always seems to be wet and boggy.

The garage also contains a 400l cylinder with a neura immersion type pump connected to the flange which also has a loop going outside via the collector.

Would love to get someone out to review the setup as I really don't believe it was setup correctly for the house. If anyone can recommend someone in the south east area that I could get out to inspect the setup, that would be great. The collector is a Neurotherm Pro-D 5/10Wi, pictures attached, house is 2400 sq ft.

Thanks,
B

mchammer

bazual wrote: »

Would love to get someone out to review the setup as I really don't believe it was setup correctly for the house. If anyone can recommend someone in the south east area that I could get out to inspect the setup, that would be great. The collector is a Neurotherm Pro-D 5/10Wi, pictures attached, house is 2400 sq ft.

Thanks,
B

hi there - from my limited knowledge i can see possibly one or two things with setup which i hope might help you understand more than resolve the issues.

The gas in the pipes is propane r290 and should be at around -5 deg Celsius at the cool side. This is normal but where your soil type is not free draining and doesn't allow the water to pass through it can create cavities around your collector (from freezing/thawing) and this wouldn't be too good in terms of the collector able to absorb heat from the ground around it. This is down to a combination of poor soil type and poor installation (possibly) i.e. when the earth was put back on top of collectors a base of sand/quarry dust should have been put around the collectors and then the earth placed slowly and gently on top of them. If the earth was heaped on top quickly and the soil type is not very free draining, the water in the soil can collect in the cavities and create the ice build up you see here.. to be honest you would need to dig a few trial holes in your collector area to see if this is the problem. I notice also your heatpump is rated at 12.9kw heat output for a 2,400 sqft house. my house is 2,700 sq ft timberframe house with high levels of insulation - i have a 18kw neura europa heat pump and i only run the underfloor heating in the downstairs area which cover about 1550sqft. I have rads upstairs and rarely switch them on. I suppose I am trying to say that perhaps the heatpump is undersized and combine that with the collector issue i can see why it is struggling.

best of luck with it and hope you can get it going.
MC

bazual

mchammer wrote: »

hi there - from my limited knowledge i can see possibly one or two things with setup which i hope might help you understand more than resolve the issues.

The gas in the pipes is propane r290 and should be at around -5 deg Celsius at the cool side. This is normal but where your soil type is not free draining and doesn't allow the water to pass through it can create cavities around your collector (from freezing/thawing) and this wouldn't be too good in terms of the collector able to absorb heat from the ground around it. This is down to a combination of poor soil type and poor installation (possibly) i.e. when the earth was put back on top of collectors a base of sand/quarry dust should have been put around the collectors and then the earth placed slowly and gently on top of them. If the earth was heaped on top quickly and the soil type is not very free draining, the water in the soil can collect in the cavities and create the ice build up you see here.. to be honest you would need to dig a few trial holes in your collector area to see if this is the problem. I notice also your heatpump is rated at 12.9kw heat output for a 2,400 sqft house. my house is 2,700 sq ft timberframe house with high levels of insulation - i have a 18kw neura europa heat pump and i only run the underfloor heating in the downstairs area which cover about 1550sqft. I have rads upstairs and rarely switch them on. I suppose I am trying to say that perhaps the heatpump is undersized and combine that with the collector issue i can see why it is struggling.

best of luck with it and hope you can get it going.
MC

Thanks MC, I remember from installation that the sand or quarry dust was definitely not put on the loops and it was more than likely heaped on. Its also heating the full house as I have underfloor upstairs as well and a small manifold. I think its a matter of time before the collector gives in if its being overworked so looking to get an oil system in as a backup to heat the underfloor as well as work with the hot water cylinder. Thanks for your help.
B

mchammer

bazual wrote: »

Thanks MC, I remember from installation that the sand or quarry dust was definitely not put on the loops and it was more than likely heaped on. Its also heating the full house as I have underfloor upstairs as well and a small manifold. I think its a matter of time before the collector gives in if its being overworked so looking to get an oil system in as a backup to heat the underfloor as well as work with the hot water cylinder. Thanks for your help.
B

What you could do is:
1.sort out the collector situation (pain in the ass) but if you want any heat from the heatpump it would be worthwhile doing especially if your hot water is dependent on this also
1. setup a large buffer tank (thermal storage not for)for your underfloor and combine the heat output from the heatpump and the oil heating then use this thermal store for your underfloor.

it costs money but running the underfloor with oil alone would rob you

good luck

bazual

mchammer wrote: »

What you could do is:
1.sort out the collector situation (pain in the ass) but if you want any heat from the heatpump it would be worthwhile doing especially if your hot water is dependent on this also
1. setup a large buffer tank (thermal storage not for)for your underfloor and combine the heat output from the heatpump and the oil heating then use this thermal store for your underfloor.

it costs money but running the underfloor with oil alone would rob you

good luck

Thanks for the suggestions. We are getting heat from the collector so it appears to be working at the moment but I am not sure we are getting any heat from the heat pump attached to the hot water cylinder so I have the immersion coming on for a few hours on the night saver to heat the cylinder.
Will talk to a few people about it and see what I can do.
Thanks.

sheff the ref

There should also be a manifold for the outside pipes

bazual wrote: »

Thanks Sheff. The collector is about 3 meters from the garage where the controller unit is and then from the garage to the manifold which is under the stairs in the house is about a 10/12 meter run. The collector I think is in a wet area, just above it the grass always seems to be wet and boggy.

The garage also contains a 400l cylinder with a neura immersion type pump connected to the flange which also has a loop going outside via the collector.

Would love to get someone out to review the setup as I really don't believe it was setup correctly for the house. If anyone can recommend someone in the south east area that I could get out to inspect the setup, that would be great. The collector is a Neurotherm Pro-D 5/10Wi, pictures attached, house is 2400 sq ft.

Thanks,
B

bazual

sheff the ref wrote: »

There should also be a manifold for the outside pipes

Not that im aware of Sheff, the outdoor pipes are all going to the collector, unless its in that.

JD6910

overall i feel really sorry for this person and this story.

seems to be alot of mixed stories Re: Heat pumps. i reckon anyone considering HP technology - play it safe and insulation the crap out of the house and then pop in a simply boiler, solar panels and a good stove.

might be worth considering making the HP redundant in this particular case and bite the bullet and pop in a boiler. the saying "putting good money after bad" comes to mind....

bazual

JD6910 wrote: »

overall i feel really sorry for this person and this story.

seems to be alot of mixed stories Re: Heat pumps. i reckon anyone considering HP technology - play it safe and insulation the crap out of the house and then pop in a simply boiler, solar panels and a good stove.

might be worth considering making the HP redundant in this particular case and bite the bullet and pop in a boiler. the saying "putting good money after bad" comes to mind....

I really wish i had put in rads at the time of build even if they were not being used.
My current as far as I understand it involves ground source collector connected to the loops in the garden. The other side of the collector goes into the garage where its hooked up to water pipes and a circulation pump circulates this between collector and manifold under the stairs in the house. Another manifold is upstairs so the pipes run from one manifold to the other and the loops in the house go from there. I only have 1 thermostat in the hall in the house so this contols the unit in the garage when set to auto if its below target temperature it will kick in and the collector and unit in garage will turn on.

For hot water I have a 400 litre tank with a neura immersion heat pump attached to the flange. Connected to this is another loop going out to garden through same pipes as collector ones. Also connected to the hot water cylinder are tubular solar panels. Not sure if these were sized correftly either as I always have to use the neura pump to heat the water to the rewuired temp. Up to refently this was working when i was running it overnight and setting a target temp but in the last few weeks it hasnt been working and i have had to use the immersion switch on the neura heat pump to get to target temperature. I presume the frozen loops outside may be contributing to this. Note all this stuff is in the garage so has to travel about 10 meters to get to the tank.

I think a thorough review of the whole system is required. If I go the oil route, I need to make sure its not going to be more money wasted in paying a fortune for oil to heat the uf pipes and water system.

bazual

Something I have noticed this morning since the house is not as warm as it should be. Taking a look at the collector this morning, there are 8 gas pipes going into the garden which are blue. 4 of these have a white coating of frost this morning and when I look inside the garage at the neura heater connected to the tank the frost for lack of a beter word is coming up on one of the pipes leading from the collector. I will try take some pictures to see what your thoughts are on this.

JD6910

i suppose try resolve the current system within a reasonable amount of spend. if the remedial costs are crazy i would consider a new system altogether and there is expert help out there to find a solution to the problems. you have the solar already - so thats good.

i just hope that not too many others out there are in this situation.

bazual

JD6910 wrote: »

i suppose try resolve the current system within a reasonable amount of spend. if the remedial costs are crazy i would consider a new system altogether and there is expert help out there to find a solution to the problems. you have the solar already - so thats good.

i just hope that not too many others out there are in this situation.

Thats the plan hopefully. I added some pics of this morning to the post above. Its unusual that some have frost and others don't that I do not understand unless there are issues with some loops and not others. Would ye recommend getting the engineers down that represent Neura or go an independant route?

JD6910

i would get two opinions and 2 sets of cost and then decide after that....

mchammer

bazual wrote: »

Thats the plan hopefully. I added some pics of this morning to the post above. Its unusual that some have frost and others don't that I do not understand unless there are issues with some loops and not others. Would ye recommend getting the engineers down that represent Neura or go an independant route?

Hi Bazuall - this is normal to have frost on the cold side of the collectors. This is how the system works . Goes out a liquid in cold form and comes back in as gas after absorbing heat from the ground. your compressor compresses the gas and this releases the heat from the propane. I would say you have low pressure in your system (there should be a low pressure switch on these units but there isn't i believe) because the ground collector loops are having difficulty absorbing heat from the ground and therefore not creating enough gas or at least not creating it quickly enough to heat your underfloor system. To be honest I would say your issue is with your collectors in the ground(blue pipes) and not with your heatpump (green housing). I would go down the independent route if i was u... pm me for details

bazual

mchammer wrote: »

Hi Bazuall - this is normal to have frost on the cold side of the collectors. This is how the system works . Goes out a liquid in cold form and comes back in as gas after absorbing heat from the ground. your compressor compresses the gas and this releases the heat from the propane. I would say you have low pressure in your system (there should be a low pressure switch on these units but there isn't i believe) because the ground collector loops are having difficulty absorbing heat from the ground and therefore not creating enough gas or at least not creating it quickly enough to heat your underfloor system. To be honest I would say your issue is with your collectors in the ground(blue pipes) and not with your heatpump (green housing). I would go down the independent route if i was u... pm me for details

Thanks MC, after thinking about this before you posted it was logical to have 4 frosted going out and 4 incoming not. There is a pressure gauge in the garage attached to the copper pipes that are circulating the water between house and garage and when the unit is on its showing as around 1.5/2 bars which is about right. Not sure if that is what you are referring to. It sounds like the unit is working but the poor condition of soil or placement is causing the pump to be overworked and not producing what it should.

mchammer

bazual wrote: »

Thanks MC, after thinking about this before you posted it was logical to have 4 frosted going out and 4 incoming not. There is a pressure gauge in the garage attached to the copper pipes that are circulating the water between house and garage and when the unit is on its showing as around 1.5/2 bars which is about right. Not sure if that is what you are referring to. It sounds like the unit is working but the poor condition of soil or placement is causing the pump to be overworked and not producing what it should.

PM sent there now baz - The low pressure I am referring to is the low pressure of the refrigerant due to not enough gas being created - nothing to do with the water

Tommyboy08

bazual wrote: »

Something I have noticed this morning since the house is not as warm as it should be. Taking a look at the collector this morning, there are 8 gas pipes going into the garden which are blue. 4 of these have a white coating of frost this morning and when I look inside the garage at the neura heater connected to the tank the frost for lack of a beter word is coming up on one of the pipes leading from the collector. I will try take some pictures to see what your thoughts are on this.

The pipes with the frost are the refrigerant pipes leaving the heat pump which are the coldest pipes in the system, temps in these pipes could be as low as -20C
The other pipes are returning from the garden and after picking up some heat from the garden will be somewhat warmer and therefore have no frost on them, this is normal for these neura heat pumps, which are a shocking piece of kit I'm afraid!

Groundsource

Hi Mc
I have the exact same problem as you and having to reset on a daily basis. Had the Irish agent out and told me that compressor was gone. They replaced comp. at €2K and guess what same fault after 24hrs. Luckly I have the removed comp. and has been fully tested and deemed fully functional. That was 2 months ago and still no resolution.
Anyway I am interested in the DIN setup you installed, could you send me details?
I have been trying to debug the issue myself and have found a few loose connections and a dry solder joint on one off the high voltage capacitors all of which didn't solve the issue. I am looking at replacing the bank of 8 high voltage caps which would at least eliminate these. i guess the issue would then be with the powerflex unit.

mchammer

Hi Groundsource,

Not sure if i would recommend the din rail setup as my inverter blew entirely and trips out fuseboard. This happened in the past week and I have been without heat since then.

This error is without doubt with the powerflex which seems to be..

1. customised by neura (poorly I would say)so off the shelf replacement won't work. They seem to be altering the 230vac to 400vdc going into inverter
2. unit is also underrated for the size of the compressor, i would say.
3. costs and arm and a leg if you get the partner co. in ireland to replace

To be honest there seems to be a ridiculous amount of issues with the compressors and inverters on these units. Also, Neura seem to ignore any complaints, or refuse to communicate on any meaningful level. There seems to be no manufacturers warranty either.

I am at the stage where I would recommend anyone who is having problems submit a complaint to the European Consumer Centre Network. Not sure what effect that would have but it might at least get NEURA to start communicating and offering replacement parts at a reasonable cost!!

http://www.eccireland.ie/submit-a-complaint/

Groundsource

mchammer wrote: »

Hi Groundsource,

Not sure if i would recommend the din rail setup as my inverter blew entirely and trips out fuseboard. This happened in the past week and I have been without heat since then.

This error is without doubt with the powerflex which seems to be..

1. customised by neura (poorly I would say)so off the shelf replacement won't work. They seem to be altering the 230vac to 400vdc going into inverter
2. unit is also underrated for the size of the compressor, i would say.
3. costs and arm and a leg if you get the partner co. in ireland to replace

To be honest there seems to be a ridiculous amount of issues with the compressors and inverters on these units. Also, Neura seem to ignore any complaints, or refuse to communicate on any meaningful level. There seems to be no manufacturers warranty either.

I am at the stage where I would recommend anyone who is having problems submit a complaint to the European Consumer Centre Network. Not sure what effect that would have but it might at least get NEURA to start communicating and offering replacement parts at a reasonable cost!!

http://www.eccireland.ie/submit-a-complaint/

Thnaks MC for the reply. Looks likely Powerflex unit is at fault. Its seems irish agent haven't a clue regarding the wrorking of these units and Neura are less interested in resolving. I even emailed Neura's CEO with no reply as expected.
Good advice on the European Consumer Centre Network and I would advise further that anyone here with similar issues to do the same.

bazual

MC and Groundsource, I will PM you with some information.

mattchippy

Just wondering would a air to water heat pump sort out your problems once and for all?

Groundsource

mattchippy wrote: »

Just wondering would a air to water heat pump sort out your problems once and for all?

A possible option down the line when my current system gives up the ghost completely.

ab4248

Have a Waterkotte heat pump displaying F05 error. Says Failure Bad Evaporating. Any ideas anyone? Only have basic understanding of whole system. Have had in 7 years so have forgotten most of what I did know!

sawdoubters

it would cost too much to install and run

alfa_aficionado

ab4248 wrote: »

Have a Waterkotte heat pump displaying F05 error. Says Failure Bad Evaporating. Any ideas anyone? Only have basic understanding of whole system. Have had in 7 years so have forgotten most of what I did know!

Did you get things sorted?

This (or rather F015) has appeared on my DS5027 pump today also...I have mislaid the manual so would be interested if anyone can offer any advice. (I had the pump serviced less than 6 weeks ago so this is a bit annoying)