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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 พ.ย. 2024
- Insulate your pipework to increase efficiency... right? In this video, Adam explains why that might be bad advice and how you can increase the efficiency of your home heating system by simply removing the right lagging.
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Totally makes sense and I especially agree with the insulation through brick walls (including internal ones). This truly cannot be said enough and yet heating engineers leave pipes unprotected laying gains masonry all the time ...
My one and only addition is that in certain cases, when a pipe is enclosed in a service cavity i.e. under your floor and the house has sufficient insulation (sound or thermal) you absolutely want to insulate the pipe. The reason is not thermal performance but rather protecting the building materials and your floor coverings. You can raise the temperature of an enclosed cavity to a point when it's drying up timber too much and in essence create a hot pocket. Your flooring and other timber materials can warp because of the lower humidity level at that location compare to the rest of the floor. All of this is easily avoidable by insulating the pipework in cases where you might be creating a localised "heat chamber". On and this does not apply to 15mm pipework. There's usually not enough heat from them to cause issues like this.
I agree. I guess that's a reason why we run heating pipework through the hallway as a type of underfloor heating. The heat is better and more evenly spread throughout the room rather than be co centrated in one location too
In the UK, if you read the Part L building regs, you'll find the need to insulate any exposed pipes, including those in voids; inside the 'thermal envalope' - granted thats for new builds though
Yep. Loads of even poorer regs and standards in the uk too
That's what I thought I had read (during one of those exciting bed time BR reading sessions). Thought it seemed bull shit to me.
After watching a previous heatgeek video, I insulated all the exposed pipes immediately between my boiler and the void in the ceiling where the pipes went off to feed the house . This area has a radiator in the near vicinity and so I would argue the loss of exposed pipes was irrelevant in that area. Anyway, the efficiency of my boiler has increased and I've been able to drop my flow temperature down from 65 to 60 degrees even in the recent cold patch. However, watching this has helped me decide not to bother insulating any more of the remaining pipes in voids etc. (I think!) It's never b & w is it!!
Do insulate and see the benefits further.
One of those it depends answers really. Voids sometimes have little insulation and although they are “inside” the thermal envelope they can be larger heat loss emitters. For example between my 1st and ground floor I have a void and it is blocked off with very thin wood at the end of the void. Wasps also cut through it and left a hole so my pipe work drops in winter from 75 deg at the boiler to 65 by the time it gets to the zone valves. It’s an old non condensing boiler so 75 is fine. So in my case the space between the floors is outside the thermal envelope technically. It’s a very leaky house and I’m fixing that prior to either new boiler or heatpump.
Makes worlds of sense not spending extra money on unneeded instulation, or hacking away at the building fabric to reach it.
I think this idea is for a very specific type of installation where there are short runs of well designed and thoughtfully located pipework. In most scenarios all services including hot and cold domestic pipework is run alongside heating. I would suggest that uninsulated htg pipework would risk heating up cws pipework and cause legionella risks even if the cws is lagged. Bear in mind that cold water and chw pipes are at risk of condensating where not correctly vapour-sealed. This situation could be greatly exaggerated in your scenario.
We advise to insulate Cwm in the video...?? Can't be warmed.
Unfortunately you do need to zone a house heating because you don't sleep in your living room or spend the day in your bedroom, so these will need different temperatures during the day. And it's not just about the savings in energy but also about comfortable temperatures, and that depends a lot on what you are wearing while in a specific room. So by default is better to insulate all pipes and oversize the radiators.
the poin t of the video is that the savings from higfher efficiency outweigh the energy saved from zoning
In my case the floor between the ground and 1st floor is not "within the insulation envelope" because I live in a 30's house with a howling gale running between the floors. I also found that the cold water pipes were running alongside the heating pipes, meaning that I had to run the tap for a while to get cold / fresh-tasting water.
My rooms are all separately timed / zoned from each other (my heat moves around the house with me, on a schedule) so i feel that insulating the pipes was a good move, overall. It was not expensive and I was pulling the floors up anyway, upgrading the pipework for a possible heat pump installation (on which I am yet to be convinced, though I am still thinking about it).
Why is there a howling gale running between the floors?? Shouldn't you deal with that?
@@ChrisLee-yr7tz I may be exaggerating... but the walls have cavities (filled, but still), they also have vents, the joists penetrate the inner brick line, this joint is far from perfect, therefore any strong wind that blows at the building penetrates the void beneath the floor. I would not, therefore, say that this is a fully insulated space.
Further, even if i did wish to fully seal these joist entry points, I would have to pull up several floor boards to get to them, and foam the gaps, which would likely result in rotten timbers. This is an old house, it's not supposed to be fully sealed. I have removed the worst of the ingress of air into the living areas but the structure needs ventilation.
@Possibly Interesting ifnyou have howling gales between the floors of a filled cavity property you have bigger problems. And your rads have to work much hotter currently then they should do.
Cold pipes should never run along side hot pipe work because of heat gain into the cold.
Makes sense. Says me after fully lagging. I had a memory where you said to lag the pipes - 28mm pipe work video. With that in mind lagging was a better option, for me. Or, how wrong am I? - could have used bigger pipes for all the effort!
Trying to explain this to building control after the Part L changes is not fun as they practically insist at times that anything not a radiator should be lagged. Next time I get a difficult one I'll send them to this video, it's faster than digging out the literature.
Thanks 😊 .. what literature is there though???
@@HeatGeek The Part L document itself, I normally have it printed in the van along with BS7671, the gas regs and pressurised hot water to throw at them when they're being daft. Though I find most of them have a little knowledge of all areas, very few are up to speed on everything they're actually looking at.
@Effer Vescence This isn't in part L interestingly!
@@HeatGeek That's exactly the issue, they tend to come on site and make assumptions. One site we even had a chap that wanted us to put LPG in a basement (4 inches below grade) rather than sticking to oil (due to being near a river). You have to spoon feed them information like first years. The video will be preferred compared to having to sit pulling teeth.
@@effervescence5664 the struggle is real!
I've always wondered about this in floor spaces and have yet to do it. I was considering starting to do it with heat pump installs so I'm glad you've cleared this up.
Full marks for English.
Are you English and middle aged?
…apart from “installs”
@@paulgrieve7031 do you search the Internet in pursuit of grammer mistakes? Does it make you feel big to correct people? If so you really need to find a better hobby.
Similar argument over incandescent light bulbs. Heat and light at the same time. The heat may not be considered efficient as it's not light energy but in the UK, certainly for half the year, needing to use lights and heating go together :)
Is there an argument for insulating pipework to help radiators/rooms further away on the circuit get warm more quickly?
If a disproportionate amount of the uninsulated pipework runs through a particular part of the property, then won’t you get a disproportionate amount of heat coming in to those areas, making the rads further away struggle?
I think I have this problem - despite my best attempt to balance the system I have a room at the end of a run that just struggles no matter what. Long exposed pipe runs are nowhere near it even though inside the envelope.
Interested to know your thoughts on this. Thanks for your video and looking forward to the vid on balancing.
Yes if you aren't stable state heating for some reason. Most should though
The heat from boxing in doesn’t just “end up in other areas, as the temperatures equalise”. The boxing is being kept at a toasty 35c, while the room is colder than it would otherwise have been had the pipes been lagged (for the same amount of gas burned)
Untagged boxing does not reach 35c. If your boxing was 35c it would work as a radiator, so the rads in that room would work less hard and you could run them cooler.
@@HeatGeek how would it run as a radiator when the material of the boxing is plasterboard and wood, with a much higher thermal resistance than metal? The external face of the boxing is never much higher than room temperature unlike a radiator which is 30c+ warmer than the room it is in
@From the Ashes clearly its not as good as metal but if it's that good and insulator that no energy would pass then why do we bother with cavity filling?
The point is it easier to pass through a peice of plasterboard then it is to go through cavity double skim.
As the boxing warms the pipe will emit less heat as the delta decreases.
And if the heat can't leave then it will take a matter of watts yo initially heatbthat space then almost nothing to maintain...
The truth is however some energy passes in to the room
@@HeatGeek i see your point if the heating was on all the time and the boxing allowed to reach equilibrium. However, heating may only be on for a couple of hours each time, during which the boxing many never reach max temp.
@From the Ashes that goes against our ethos generally as you can see here th-cam.com/video/kGs_biFA87Q/w-d-xo.html
If there’s a soil stack in the same ‘boxed in space’ as heating pipes, inside the thermal envelope of the house, the soil stack should be insulated, but I wonder how many are? In my case I insulated the soil stack, boxed it in with ply, and ran the heating pipes up the outside, then boxed over them.
How about during the summer time when we run air conditioners. It will try to cool a room that is being warmed by an uninsulated hot water pipe. Also to get hot water to the upper floors, we will have to run the tap much longer before hot water comes out. This will be a waste of water. Our hydro bill will go up.
Really looking forward to your balancing radiators video. Looking to replace the all the knobs with thermostatic ones. Would you recommend the Heimeier Eclipse system over the normal one?
Midway through a refit in my house and up to this point have pretty much insulated all pipes, I will think twice though when doing the rest. However given that a lot of the electric cables are running in the same voids as the pipes and in some instances the cables cross pipes as they do their merry dance to sockets, I see some benefits of insulating given that I don't want transfer to the cables.
Great video, I only lag cold water inside properties so I don't have warmed water when I brush my teeth etc
Really looking forward to your balancing radiators video 07:55.
I'm not a heating engineer, and my main concern with NOT insulating inside the thermal envelope, is frozen pipes
When it got very cold a couple of weeks ago, my washing machine couldn't drain. Yes, the waste pipe connects into a pipe that's not actually used for heating, however at the same time, other pipes could also freeze.
I did notice I had to restart my boiler a couple of times too which *could* be due to frozen pipes too
That would be waste pipe. Lutrally no one on the planet insulates waste pipe inside the thermal envelope.
One of the problems with calculating output of radiators is that the manufacturers/retailers stated output can be as much as 40% exaggeration over the real output for a given delta T. A recent yt video exposing this I'm sure you're aware of. All fine and dandy doing the calculations but if your emmiter outputs are wrong it throws it all out the window and systems may not perform as well as expected. Are we to overspec the emitters to compensate for errata or is something in the industry going to change through legislation?
But what happens when I use the air condition function in the summer?
Would water droplets forming on all the inside pipework?
Good vid though 🙂👍
This is an issue if a heat pump is going to be used for cooling. Radiators and radiant floors are not ideal for cooling. Fan coil or airhandlers with condensation trays and drains are much better suited to cooling. So the correct solution, if the system is to cool as well as heat, is to insulate any pipes that might carry chilled water (to prevent condensation forming), and don't lag any pipes that will only carry water for heating.
One exception to "not insulating the pipework within the thermal envelope" might be the plant room. In my case, it's a fairly small space (1.5 x 2.5 meters and 2.4 meters high), which we obviously don't live in and which happens to have a lot of pipework between the boiler, the indoor unit of the heat pump, the buffer tank, the expansion vessel, the UFH manifold, and so on. In this very small space, the pipes would emit a lot of heat that isn't really needed there, causing it to overheat. I'd much rather have that heat/energy stay in the water in the pipes so it can be emitted in other parts of my house.
Guessing you still going to want to insulate your hot water system pipe work to avoid losing unnecessary heat into the envelope during the summer.
Yes, Adam said this at the start of the video. He also mentioned about insulating the cold water supply pipes which can have a number of benefits: slightly warm water isn't as nice to drink, it might get warm enough to allow legionella bateria to start to multiply, and it might promote condensation in damp rooms such as bathrooms.
Could you do a video about having pipe clamps above the lagging and below and compare the cop? Mine seem to be clamps under the lagging and i suspect it should be the other way round!
Adam, you have no idea how grateful I am know that I don't have to rip open my ceilings and floors to insulate the heating pipes! (This isn't sarcasm btw)
Your SAP/EPC score will suffer a tiny bit for this.
Also if you are running the pump for hot water only during summer wont this contribute to overheating?
We cover hot water at 2.15 - 2.35
Sap is different from real world efficiency. If sap doesn't agree with physics sap needs to change. Sap also down rates heat pumps over gas boilers as it uses figures from 2010.
@@HeatGeek SAP can't follow real world physics it's not designed for that.
Doing an install in a basement, haven’t seen an air brick, should I insulate?
Another reason to insulate cold water pipes is to reduce the risk of condensation forming on it.
It occurred to me, there are a couple of other reasons to insulate heating pipes, which help from a controllability point of view.
a. My boiler has approx. half metre long flow and return pipes, running up to the ceiling. I noticed after lagging these a year ago that the behaviour of the boiler changed when it restarted after the room thermostat called for heat. Before, the boiler used to start at high power (i.e. high fan noise); after the lagging it started up more gently. My assumption is that the water in the unlagged pipes had cooled down to room temperature, and dumping a slug of cold water into the boiler confused its burner control logic. Not an issue with a continuously running pump and weather comp., but will affect on/off systems like mine.
b. Heat tends to drift upstairs and overheat the bedrooms, and the hot spots I can feel on their floors from the unlagged pipes below them doesn't help in that respect. Nothing I can do about that without lifting the floorboards etc. so I'm stuck with the problem.
@@roberthuntley1090 we cover thus in the video
Why over heat corridors?
What about for protection against condensation leading to mold in the walls for the refrigerant line when in defrost cycle?
How about when the system is also used to cool? Insulation will stop or greatly limit condensation.
If you had uninsulated CH pipes under a vented insulated suspended flooring (GF old Victorian ), would that would be considered outside the thermal envelope.
Also say you had boiler/cylinder in a small extension room to the kitchen, no 2nd floor above, you may want to insulate the pipes as it would be additional heat loss in the room which already will be warmed from the boiler/cylinder, pump etc that is in that room.
My cat found where the central heating manifolds were as soon as we moved into the house. Upstairs in two bedrooms. I wondered why the cat lay on the floor. Yes, many people have been doing what you advise for years but I think the large pipes in my airing cupboard could do with insulation although my wife like a warm cupboard in which to store linen and towels. The cylinder is spray insulated foam.
I'm with your wife on this. The heat isn't "lost" - it's being used to warm an airing cupboard.
I totally agree.... But this is against new building regulations. I think.... 🤣. I've just lagged everything in the last three jobs much to my annoyance.
How long can the external pipework run be or the maximum length before being detrimental to the air source system?
Can the external pipework be underground and at what depth should it be placed?
My 1947 2 bed bunglow converted into a 4 bed dormer style house has complicated heating pipework runs. As the suspended timber floor is uninsulated my heating pipes should be fully lagged. Where the heating pipework runs under the Kitchen base units is not straightforward? The whole of the ground floor should be thermally insulated including under staircases and underneath kitchen/ bathroom fitings. So a surface run pipe in a void above drafty floorboards, could insulate floor area in void, or insulate pipework can't see much difference. Equally where the heating pipework runs up the partion wall between dwellings. Don't really want to heat up next doors house, but their house is fairly well insulated and can afford the heating! Is therefore best to concentrate on the thermal barriers and heating pipework within the cold unheated spaces.
What’s your opinion on radiator pipework running through screed above a concrete slab, none of which is insulated? Octopus are installing a ASHP and I I can’t get a straight answer on whether the loss of efficiency makes it worthwhile changing the radiator pipework to run up the walls and into the first floor void. My rough calculation is that there’s currently 30 meters of pipe currently running in the screed.
Not having insulation under the slab or under the screed isn't going to meet part L of the Buidling Regs. So you could ask them to show how the installation complies with Part L and leave them scratching their heads.
Thanks Tony, I’ll give that a try 😂
@@tlangdon12 Part L is not retrospective. Imagine the chaos of all the uninsulated concrete slabs being dug up.😳
I have a question…..my parents have a detached house with a fairly new Ideal boiler heating 13 not very big rads and a megaflo water cylinder. They had the boiler temp set to 70. When the heating is on the return is about 68 so no condensating going on there. I lowered the boiler temp to 60 which made the return about 53 and with a few tweaks to the rads the house was still warm even in these current very cold conditions. My father is worried about the hot water temp as the cylinder stat is set to 60. What are your thoughts please? By the way, great videos, very interesting.
If you have a combination boiler it doesn't matter. Turn down the hit water temp tho. If noy a combi the boiler needs to be at least 5c higher than the cylinder.
@@HeatGeek thanks for the reply. Not a Combi. I will set the boiler temp to 65 so at least it’ll condensate for a while at least until the return comes up. House needs bigger rads really which is what I’m currently fitting to my house after watching your videos.
@@laurencelagden watch out hotbwater temperature video before you do that!
If the DT across the boiler is 2C they probably do not need the heating on.
@@normanboyes4983 not necessarily, it could also be that the radiators are all fully open across their lockshields, as seems to be common now when installers fit TRVs (I have had a few tell me it's not necessary to balance rads if TRVs are fitted). The problem there is water flows through the system too quickly, reducing heat loss significantly, which is not what you want! This in combo with an low ratio modulation, oversized boiler and small rads would cause this situation IMO.
"and lastly, please do always insulate [pipework going through] brick walls". I don't see why you should *always* do that. Depending on the construction style (varies by region/country), brick walls can be used inside the thermal envelope. Why would you insulate those?
Other than that, love the video -- makes complete sense!
I think Adam was really talking about "external walls" when he mentioned insulating the pipework passing through brick walls, but as he was wrapping, he just called them "brick walls" so he could slip in the reminder about sleeving pipework going through any brick or block wall, which is done to allow the copper to expand and contract, and to avoid contact with any mortar than might have a high sulphur content.
Hi Adam,
I highlighted key bullet points to help me understand your video more:
- Pipe work within the thermal envelope that only contributes to heating does not need to be insulated
- Insulating pipe work that does not contribute to heating within the thermal envelope can increase efficiency
- Thermal envelope is anywhere in the property where the main insulation is, not the boundary between inside the property and outside the property
- Heat lost into boxing in doesn't just disappear, it moves to cooler areas of the property
- Mass flow rate zoning should be minimized
- Pipe work should be insulated if it will result in higher thermal output for a space
- Pipe work should be insulated to prevent noise and ticking
- Pipe work should always be insulated when passing through brick walls
Would you agree with me that these points some up your video?
Kind a.
More interested as to why your asking?
@@HeatGeek I am testing something out and see if a program works for summarising videos for educational purposes. Gas Engineering + Heating are all areas where I have a lot of interest in.
@@mrproductivity3261 I'd be interested to learn more! Sounds cool
@@mrproductivity3261 that is very cool! I would love a bullepoints feature for videos! how is the project going? how can I find more info about it?
I have a new condensing boiler, tanks in the loft and airing cupboard with water cyinder. Should I insulate the pipes in the airing cupboard?
Yes
I've watched many off grid stuff, especially North America. For years on wood stoves. When it comes to chimneys. Now they are making the chimney routes even longer inside the building. If the chimney is still warm, what's the point putting it outside the building. When it could radiate the hear inside. So not insulating pipe works make sense. It's simply making you system bigger.
Need to be aware of thermal bridging between floorspace and exterior walls in some properties, e.g. old stone walled buildings with insulation on wall interiors. Exterior insulation would be better in these cases to better use the thermal mass of the building but not always possible due cosmetic concerns, listed building etc.
Very obvious, but very well explained 👍
Okay. Just pulled all me lagging off me pipes and they froze and burst, flooded me house and drowned me cat. You happy now?
Oh and you did that before the video was posted, what a genius
Cats are wankers anyway
They froze inside the thermal envelope? You probably have many more problems than frozen pipes!
You know, this is one of those titles that really could use a "when to" prefacing it.
@@lua-nya I don't think this important message would be spread enough with more info in the title
Just had our ASHP bill in for one month, £465,00 , take my advice, run a mile from them.
Run a mile from poor installs for sure!
Hi,
So is there a site or someone who I could go to to get an air source heat pump installed in a first floor flat in Cardiff?
I want to be good and get solar and a heat pump, I am just concerned that I will either be sold a pup or overcharged or both.
Does a granule burner have the same lower heat setting efficiently inceases?
Should any insulation be added when feed and return manifolds are close together? To prevent the hotter feed tubes warming the cooler return tubes and therefore reducing delta T across the boiler? You could just insulate the feed side?
I've been thinking about this as well. My flow and return run next to each other for a long stretch in a small space and I wonder how much the flow is heating up the return and effectively returning the heat to the boiler.
QUESTION: if you add a Heatpump to your fossil oil or gas burner to build a hybrid system (who wants to pay emptying 3000 L expensive oil from a 7000 L tank ?) which means feeding the warm water into the return flow of the oil kettle we can ignore this advice.
I wonder why no one in the UK is touching the subject of ADDING a heatpump to the existing system instead of replacing.
All the elderly prefer the "safety and experience of the past" with their existing heating systems and are not willing to make the full jump / leap into the new age.
And in case of a oil heating you can even save costs here cause based on the ratio of prices for oil versus electricity (which is incl. VAT right now a 0,80€ / L versus 0,33 € / kWh) heatpumps are becoming too inefficient around the -5°C excempt the 2 austrian made from LAMBDA and another company who have far better COPs and SCOPs.
If I pay 90 Cent for 1L oil with 9,8 kWh only 85% of that will reach the water (high efficient value added oil burner) which means 8,33 kWh in the water will arrive.
For those 90 Cents for 1 L diesel I can buy 3 kWh for 0,30€ current price.
When the COP is less then 8,33 kWh (oil input energy ) / 3 kWh (heatpump input energy) = 2,75 oil becomes cheaper
And that is usually the case around 0°C or -2°C
You would ease the life for the heatpump this way and both system supporting each other would run less and then last longer. Of cause Oil burner might dy and need a repair - here in germany we have millions of spare parts and now also used oil and gas burners which have been recycled on the way to the scrap yard so you do not have to fear anything till 2045 when oil and gas heating will be forbidden in private houses. ANd if the oil burner would collapse completely then not much has to be changed: Remove the old scrap metal and the heatpump is doing its job alone.
I like the notion, it’s pretty funky, but it is obviously bonkers (I love your usual logical stuff, but hands up eh?)
Yes, heat within the envelope is always within the envelope but the notion that having uncontrolled heat is a good idea is, to be quite frank, potty. Also, spot heat, where heating pipes run under timbers etc. can cause twisting and buckling of structural and decorative timber work due to the differential drying caused by having a hot spot where uninsulated pipes run their narrow route.
Who hasn’t even had to try to relay a cupped floorboard, dried hard on one side and buckled by the heat over an uninsulated pipe run in the landing of a Victorian property?
Could you design a property that utilised heat from uninsulated pipework within the envelope, yes undoubtedly so.
I’d also venture that we could manage without emitters / radiators by running great lengths of uninsulated pipework to a carefully calculated design . . . but I won’t because that would be silly too.
This is not your usual fare, you’re usually talking sense and educating folk but this is a space filler to get a video,out while bereft of useful content. You’re far better than this and you know it. Please give your head a wobble and then return to dazzle and amaze again. Thanks 👍
Finally someone who knows what they are talking about 👏
Some people insulate for fun. A college I went to had the cold water pipes insulated inside the building. Only reason I can think is health and safety insulation is soft but I see no other point to it.
If I’m running a cold supply within the same boxing as heating pipe work, I’ll insulate both pipes to prevent heat transfer to the cold supply
Ima smisla, osim ako kotlovnica ne radi cijelu godinu. Tada je potpuno promašeno ne izolirati cijevi jer će kuća biti pregrijana i toplina će stvarati nepotrebnu potrošnju energije.
Dear heat geek - I would love to hear your opinions on electric radiators, particularly Vs heat pumps, what are the pros and cons and when would one system be better than another.
I would also love to hear about low-H2O radiators such as the jaga strada, they supposedly use 90% less water so claim to be more efficient. Would love to hear your thoughts
Electric radiators cost 4x more to run than a heat pump so are absolutely a last resort. Jaga can run at a lower temperature due to the built in fan.. this slightly improves efficiency if set to run at a lower temperature
As I understand it the new building regulations require pipes to be lagged inside the home
not a heating engineer but been saying this for years the warm pipes on my landing under the carpet are just acting as extra radiators.
I will always insulate the pipes as it shows a beneficial impact on consumption. (exposed pipework inside room)
Would you insulate pipework that runs in an internal garage?
Very technical. But not insulating any hot water pipes within the thermal envelope used to be the norm anyway years ago. When did they start doing it and why. Would be my question. I don't follow all the technical mumbo jumbo but I just think a hot pipe radiating heat back into the room isn't doing any harm and as you say may be a benefit, so we never insulated them.
So to be fair, the real answer to this video is that you should consider every pocket or a wall as an individual "heater". This is not a zero/one scenario, you can insulate half of the pipe in the void, or use very thin/thick insulation on purpose.
Recent building regs say all should be insulated
Shame
So really the title should be 'Stop insulating ALL pipework', which is actually kind of common sense when it's looked at analytically - problem is that plumbers and building regs people try to apply the same brush to every situation and either see it as an all or nothing. At least as a DIYer some logic can be applied, provided the previous numpties have or haven't done it properly on impossible to access spaces!
So who has been insulating pipes inside the thermal envelope?
Anyone adhering to the new Part L regs...
9 out of 10 times ignore this and insulate your pipes. This only works if your house is very well insulated and you heat your whole house at all times.
This is relevant for 90% of UK homes. And 90% of homes should be stable state heated.
@@HeatGeek what about the 10% ?
@Steamzombie1838 insulate in the 10.. as we say in the video
@@HeatGeeka lot of UK homes won't have heating on a different zone than hot water sadly.
Part Lsays insulate all pipe work. Even flow and return and hot no matter where boiler is installed.
Hi,
I loved all your videos over the years, Keep up the good work.
I have a problem you might be able to help with. I have a Ferroli optimax HE25S gas boiler it’s about 12 years old now. The mother board had a intermittent problem, it would stop for no reason. I’d take it out look at it (no signs of damage) and refit It. It would work for years, I thought it was a cracked PCB. However I ordered a new PCB (DIMS23)for a UK supplier and when I fitted it comes up with an error code F37. No program book came with it and the supplier has no idea. Would you or your contacts know how I can change the program or have a programming book?
Many thanks and a happy Christmas to you and your!
Have you checked the pressure sensor , what’s it running at pressure wise at cold
@@stephenfanthorpe2708 Thanks for that, I’ll recheck. Happy Christmas.
Heat lost in the floor void is slow to make its way through to the room (carpets flooring etc) the whole point of insulating is so the heat goes where you need it straight away. The quicker the rads heat up, the quicker the stat clicks off surely the stat takes longer to get to temp when the temp at the radiators is lower as heat's been lost under the floor and therefor slow to reach the room. I thought the myth of keeping a constant temp was long proven wrong? Most efficient way is to just heat when needed and fluctuating stat temps lend more to insulating pipework in my opinion
Your thinking of on off heating. And heatinf constantinuously is much more efficient generally see this video th-cam.com/video/kGs_biFA87Q/w-d-xo.html
I believe insulation should be insulated when hot water is exiting the boiler. Return flow should not be insulated from the last rad pipe to the boiler, you allow more condensing. Not insulating pipes going to radiators means you are heating voids and walls that lose heat but not directed at where you want heat . The greatest loss of heat should be from the rads. If your return heat remains too high then either your boiler cant condense or the output flow temp is too high or the rads are too small to vent heat. The aim should be to dump as much heat to the biggest heat emitter (rads/underfloor heating to the floor above) and cut the heat returning to the boiler so condensing works under the delta needed and that you are not sending too high a flow rate temp to the rads that cannot be vented in time within the flow rate pressure. It maybe that the flow rate is too high to vent heat in time. Should boiler makers understand that cutting pump flow rate to vent heat might cut the returning flow rate temp. After all the lower the returning flow rate temp, the more it can condense that remaining heat while knowing too cold a return temp will require more kw to boost the output temp. Maybe this is there yet condensing levels are low in reality due to boiler oversizing, poor moderation, overshooting room temp (no opentherm ability), minimal deployment of weather compensation and poor rad performance/size for tge room they are in. Yes heat will vent internally but humans dont react to temp like a thermal store equalising. No more than most car drivers going at moderate speeds to avoid using the brakes even if transit time would be the same in reality.
That’s not how mass flow rate works
I have old boiler (1970) in unfinished basement. After exiting the boiler, the 28.5mm pipe runs 13 m through the basement before splitting to warm the living spaces. I think I will insulate this. There’s maybe 5-6 m exposed on the return but that has some fins and heat removed there helps warm floor with piping and room above that doesn’t have baseboard radiators.
Just subbed, very cool video
One of my customers likes to lag heating pipes under first floors, it makes running additional pipework challenging due to lack of space, he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer 🙄
Beware counter-flow heat exchange; that is, where flow and return (or other) pipes are close together, heat transfers from hotter pipe to cooler pipe.. this is very bad news for efficiency of heat production and delivery by condensing boilers.. and bad news for delivery of heat to furthest heat emitters (radiators) in any heating system that uses radiators.
For this reason, I'd insulate the (hot) flow pipework nearest the boiler and between pipes in long runs under floors etc.. also insulate DHW (hot tap) flow pipes to see more rapid delivery of hot water to basin/sink.
CIBSE is right, of course.
It’s a statutory requirement to insulate all pipework inside the envelope. With good buildings we have more issue with overheating.
It's incorrect
Is this not against nee build regulations now? I know the update was vague at best but have seen ‘unheated space’ interpreted as pipework underfloors and such. Not digging you out, genuinely curious as it seems the reg is not black and white
Unheated space would be something like a garage, or loft space. Outsode the envelope
Hehe, loving the Thermodynamics
then you have condensation from heat pump lines.
What about the risk of not insulating the heating pipework in areas where the cold water pipework is within the vicinity(cross contamination of heat). I wonder how many combi boilers have the cold water encased within the f&r pipework in the same notch ? Back to the legionella argument again.
I can say that there was a swimming baths with the same issue whereby the CW was regularly heated by uninsulated heating pipework that created a little heat exchanger.... someone nearly died from legionella due showering
In the video we specifically tell people to insulate cold pipework
@@HeatGeek and what about the pipework that surrounds the cylinder which is within the thermal envelope?
@@HeatGeek have you insulated all your CW pipework ? I can imagine over 99% of installations are not.
Why would you want to heat ceiling voids etc.
Far better to keep all that heat for radiators which are more efficient at warming rooms
You are heating the ceiling voids if you choose to or not. Thats the point
Are you on the new gym face advert on TV?
Can’t trust a man who doesn’t know that wearing a baseball cap inside the house doesn’t contribute to the thermal envelope. Also his head is on back to front.
All valid points
I have no lagging in pipes and they froze
Within the thermal envelope of your building?
What about under kitchen units?
As per the video.. no.. the kitchen emiiter has to heat that space otherwise. The very simple maths doesn't lie
@@HeatGeek I think the question here is more about localised heat build up in cupboards contributing to food going off faster - the same reason that most of the underfloor heating people (in my limited experience) have avoided running UFH under these units.
@David Langford this is the first time I've ever heard this argument.. I don't know many people that have pipework running though a food storing kitchen cupboard.. the ones I do know of are definitely not lagged.
@@HeatGeek Leave them uninsulated and use the kitchen cupboard as a crockpot.😉
I am suspicious that this removes some authority from the TRV.
You can balance out for that
Regulation 4.24 from Part L now negates this video.
What specific regulation please?
a simple comment would have been, hey people you don't need to go into your boiler room and put insulation around your copper pipes.
Telling people to not Insulate pipework is so dumb. Allowing pipework to Heat underfloors, for example. Flow and returns from the boiler to the cylinder will just give added unnecessary heat in the summer. Admittedly it’s only for a short period of time but regardless when it’s 40 degs outside you don’t want to keep adding pointless heat. 9mm of lagging will avoid this issue significantly. Your idea only works in the winter. And then it’s sketchy and not advisable as it’s not covering building regulations which specifically states pipework should be lagged to prevent heat loss to conserve energy.
We litrally cover this in the video and even draw you a diagram showing you to insulate that pipework. Please watch the video before commenting
most say insulate with those foam insulators, he says no. I think I will insulate with foam pipe insulators.
I think you may be getting so over obsessed with increasing the COP to maximise efficiency that common sense is going out of the window.
We are moving away from gas/oil heating and smart heating controls with motorised TRVs which gives us the ultimate in control with fast warm up temperatures and zoning to avoid wasting heat in unused rooms, to heat-pump technology which by it's very nature has to be on all the time, heating rooms and areas that don't need to be heated just so they can work efficiently.
It seems a bit of a backward step to lose the convenience and comfort of fast warm up times and zoning by room due to the inherent limitation of heat-pump technology, which requires heat to be dumped anywhere within the thermal envelope in a desperate measure to keep the COP high in line with a manufacturers spec and/or your own target value, irrespective of whether the heat is actually desired in that specific area.
I just don't see how heating rooms that don't need to be heated can be efficient in terms of overall energy usage, even if the system COP means it's running efficiently on paper.
I disagree and on house I'm paying £18 for month.
Sorry but this fellow is 100% wrong. Heating systems are designed such that they require liquid at a certain temperature delivered to them. The system then distributes the heat in the right amount to the right places. If heating pipes aren't insulated, the heat distribution units can't deliver enough heat to the right places. Heat lost from uninsulated hot pipes rises up thru walls and chases and is lost to the outdoors. Or if uninsulated pipes run near exterior walls or roof, they lose heat thru the walls or roof. And uninsulated pipes overheat some areas while leaving other areas without enough heat.
I've been designing thermal insulation systems since 1972 and have heard many mis-informed people say the same thing as this fellow. It would be a mistake that''s hard to fix if you follow such advice. Insulation is required by building codes for hot pipes (heating pipes and domestic hot water pipes) on every commercial and institutional project in the developed world - because it reduces energy costs and makes the heating system work as it was designed to work.
If your within the thermal envelope what you say cannot happen. If any heat is lost from the pipe this can be made up for by the mass flow rate which must always equal energy in and out. The theory is totally sound.
Another lot of heat geek flawed science - so now plasterboard, floorboards, carpets etc are more efficient heat emitters than radiators......interesting. Also not sure you're right on 2022 regs either.
To make heat my heat pump has 2 big fans 2 pumps 1 condenser to bring it up to heat and cost a lot more than my gas fire which heats the room I am in the heat pump runs all through the 4 bedrooms kitchen and bathroom do the sums in cash.10 minute gas, toasty 2 hours heat pump not so toasty and skint.
Your gas fire is dreadfully inefficient compared to your heat pump. About 50% of the heat it produces goes up the chimney! What a waste!
@@tlangdon12 yes but the 50% is where you want not heating empty rooms plus it is cheaper.I have tried it and proved it heat pump don’t cut the mustard 55kWh to keep the 1 room warm gas fire toasty and cheaper.No one will tell you how to run the thing,leave it on turn it off? Love to know
@@Allegedly2right What make and model is your heat pump? I'm curious what size of heat pump can consume that much power.
@@tlangdon12 Grant Aeronia HPID17 R32 yesterday it was 28kWh the colder the more it uses and that is 19c
@@Allegedly2right Thanks for the prompt reply. I’m guessing you have a very large property. My 5-bedroom Victorian End Terrace house with solid walls, old double glazing and minimal loft insulation is heated well by 19kW. 55kW of heat loss is immense. Your heating bills will also be immense. But the problem isn’t the heat pump, it is the size and level of insulation of your home, and the cost of the electricity.
Poor advice on the basis that you've oversimplified the problem. Insulation ensures heat is delivered to where its required at the correct temperature. Taking all the lagging off your pipes you could be dumping heat in parts of the house where you don't want it. Then leave other parts of the house where you do need the heat lacking sufficient flow temperature for the heat emitter to work as designed. I've come across this in the field, was a child's bedroom right above the boiler the main distribution pipework running right under the floor boards, the result was a kids room that's far too hot whenever the heating is run. Solution to reduce the boiler flow temperature, which resulted in the extremities not getting sufficiently warm. Optimal solution lag the pipe work which should have been done upon installation of the central heating system.
Everything you've said we adress in the video so I can only assume you haven't watched it.
Your cap is on the wrong way
???
please read part L
Part L does not dictate thermodynamic law. Part L is wrong.