Regional Winners

Please tell us about a project you are particularly proud of – what was the problem and how did you solve it for the customer?

I am a plumber who has recently moved from South Wales to the south coast of Dorset. My work is split about 75% Dorset and 25% South Wales as I travel back every few weeks to stay with family and friends and look after my old customers.

Living in a new area, it has been a bit of a challenge going from a busy small business to starting over again and trying to get the work in and my name out there.

I was delighted to have a phone call from somebody requiring a couple of new radiators.

I arrived at the property that was a large bungalow in a well to do area, built on a slope with many steps to get into the property. The bungalow evidently had various extensions in the past so was an odd shape.

The customers were a young couple, an airline pilot and stewardess. They appear to be nest building and the property was in need of updating.

I was greeted with a warm welcome and told that a few radiators were arresting and needed replacing.

Instead of just removing the radiators and getting a like for like, I prefer to do a heat loss calculation based on a certain flow temperature so that the room in question heats up evenly and efficiently which will give more comfort and save energy.

I asked to have a look at the heating system and the customer told me that they were plagued with problems with the hot water and the heating and was costing a fortune to run.

There was a standard efficiency boiler and the flue was pointing towards a large conifer tree, which was about three metres away.

A large section of this tree had died completely where the hot fumes from the flue had scorched it! This shows just how inefficient this boiler was as it was throwing a lot of heat straight outside at the poor tree.

I asked the customer if they were planning on upgrading the heating system in the future to which they replied they definitely were as they were fed up with the problems they were having.

With this in mind, I wanted to have a conversation with the customer about how to increase the energy efficiency of the building which would be in their interest to do at this stage.

Any doors or windows that were not sealing the building correctly should be upgraded. There was a very long-lost space which should be insulated as much as possible as this is a very efficient way to insulate the building.

Also, the building needed adequate ventilation so a mechanical heat recovery ventilation would be required ideally, so the property could be made air tight as possible and have a constant fresh supply of air whilst retaining 95% of the heat and cutting down massively on condensation and humidity.

Once the customer had told me that they were happy with upgrading, I knew what to base my heating loss calculation on. I used the Stelrad STARS program to calculate the heat loss for the rooms that were to have the radiators replaced.

Due to the nature of the customer’s work and having a very irregular schedule, not being at home for days on end, I wanted the future flow temperature to be low enough to be very efficient, but high enough to heat the property quickly and the radiators to be large enough to supply a low temperature but not take up all the wall space and be prohibitively expensive. We had to decide with the customer what they were happy with. I gave them all the pros and cons and explained it all in a language they could understand.

Once talking this through with the customer we settled on a maximum mean radiator temperature of 60°c when the weather was at its coldest.

As the radiators were going to be big and heavy, and the house had difficult access with many steps we wanted a company that could deliver the radiators into the house. We also wanted panel radiators that were of a good quality, aesthetically fit with the house, last a very long time and minimise the potential of corrosion.

We chose the Stelrad brand as they have an excellent delivery service. They used their own couriers to deliver straight to the door and they even placed the radiators in the room they were going in!

The Stelrad radiators are made of high-quality steel and are treated in a different way to other brands of radiator, which makes them more resistant to corrosion.

The customer was so impressed with how thorough I was with the selection of the radiators that he asked whether I can replace his whole heating and hot water system!!

Rather than just plan to remove everything, I had a good look through the system and wanted to see what parts could be repaired and what parts could be replaced.

It is important to be energy efficient. But this also means that if something does not need replacing and can be repaired then this will contribute towards the energy efficiency of the install.

I had employed a plumber to come and help me as the radiators were so heavy but I was let down on the day so I had to fit them by myself. Thank goodness we went with Stelrad as they had placed the radiators where we needed them so this made my job a hell of a lot easier seeing as I was fitting everything by myself.

When the first three radiators were fitted, I carried out minimal urgent repairs on the heating and hot water system so it would tide the customers over until I had returned to carry out the install. I went away to allow for the customer to upgrade the various parts of the building to improve the energy efficiency of the building as we had discussed earlier.

I returned a few weeks later to find that the mechanical heat loss ventilation had been fitted and the insulation had been upgraded throughout the house as well as a few doors and windows.

The customer wanted all of the other radiators in the house upgraded. I did a room-by-room heat loss calculation so we knew what size of radiator we could fit, which was also important to get the size of the boiler correct.

The smaller the boiler the more efficient it will burn the gas as the boiler will be running constantly rather than cycling on and off. We needed to size the boiler as close as possible to the actual heat loss of the building in order to have the system running as efficiently as possible.

There was an unvented hot water cylinder right at the end of a very long and narrow attic space. They were many problems with the hot water but I was able to repair the various parts rather than removing the whole cylinder as it was not really required.

There were tree roots growing up the pressure relief pipe work that had blocked them completely and once I had cut the pipework it looked like a cigar stuffed with roots!

I went about removing the parts of the system that really needed removing and rerouting the pipes to make it all more efficient and insulating as much pipework as I could underneath the floorboards in the attic spaces. And anywhere the pipework was accessible.

We wanted the radiators to all heat up at the same time and have a constant flow rate through them according to the heat loss of the room. So, we decided to fit Danfoss B2 dynamic valves. These can be fitted at a set flow rate so the radiators will never need balancing and the return temperature from each radiator will be constant which adds to energy efficiency and comfort.

We can use the Danfoss installer app to calculate how much flow is required through each radiator. And also, we then know how much flow is required in total from the pump in the central heating system. We decided to go for ATAG IS system boiler which would be covered by a 14-year warranty and incorporate a pump and expansion vessel which would also be covered by the warranty.

The boiler has extensive parameters so we are able to tweak the essential heating system to be as efficient as possible.

With their system we could fit priority hot water which means the hot water heats up a lot quicker than using traditional zone valves and we can have a different flow temperature go into the hot water and the heating which allows us to use weather compensation on the heating. This in turn allows us to have the lowest flow temperature possible which will constantly change depending on the temperature outside. Every system I fit even if it’s just a combi boiler swap will have weather compensation as it is a no brainer for the benefits that lower temperature heating gives.

Which products did you select for the job and why?

Even though this was a very large property with many outside walls and different elevations, the heat loss was only 17 kW so I decided we could get away with fitting an 18kW boiler. I contacted the manufacturer of the unvented cylinder who told me the coil could transfer a maximum of 20 kW and as we were using priority hot water, we did not need to size the boiler according to the heating and hot water being on at the same time as they never would be.

The 18kW boiler would be just about enough to heat all the radiators on the coldest day and will utilise almost all of the maximum capacity of the coil within the cylinder.

The next size of boiler would have been 24kW which would have been oversized for this property and for the hot water. So even though fitting an 18 kW seems like a risk as if the boiler was under sized, I wanted to do what I could to provide the customer with the best most energy-efficient system possible, without them having to go over budget. Plus, I was confident with my calculations.

I also calculated the volume of the water within the system so I could calculate how much extra expansion was needed and I could size my external expansion vessel correctly.

We were also able to fit smart controls so the customers wherever in the world they were could control the heating and hot water.

As we were using ATAG priority hot water, this allows us to store the hot water at a much lower temperature than many traditionally would be able to and we could carry out a thermal cleanse of the system every week to make sure no legionella could grow in the hot water system.

Tell us what was different or unique about this job? Why does it stand out?

As the customer was pregnant, I did not want her to be without heating or hot water when she got back. There was a massive amount of work for me to do by myself having been let down by my plumber.

Most of the work needed to be done at the end of a very long, dark attic which meant I had to crawl back and forth through insulation many times with my tools. This made the job extremely difficult!!

I decided to get myself organised and before starting the work I wrote down every stage and how I would do it drawing out all my pipe work, method, material lists etc. We are in a hard water area so a water softener was fitted but I insured the drinking water was kept unsoftened and also the fill for the heating system was kept unsoftened.

As the radiators were big and heavy, I did not want there to be any opportunity for them to come away from the walls as it could be dangerous, especially to children. So, I used a chemical resin and threaded rod to fix the radiators to the wall. Fixing the radiators in this way can hold an incredible amount of weight and you would be able to dance on the radiators safely without them moving!

Once all the radiators were fitted, I flushed the system over many hours to ensure highest possible water quality as the water quality is the number one cause of a heating system breakdown. In my experience I find this is probably the most important stage of fitting any heating.

There are other steps I take which are not seen but I also think are very important such as deburring every pipe to cut down on turbulence noise, restrictions to flow and to improve the longevity of the pipe work. I also make sure all pipes are supported correctly and where pipes are going beneath the floorboards, I wrap felt insulation around the part where they pass through the joints.

The pipework had to be sized correctly also for velocity and flow rates if I wanted this system to perform optimally, and any defective valves etc to be replaced whilst being mindful of costs and not replacing things that did not need replacing.

I like to fit a drain off valve outside which makes draining off the system much easier for any future maintenance. The customer was having a kitchen built around where I put in the boiler, so I ensured all of the paperwork was hidden behind the boiler and the boiler was in the correct position and everything took up as little room as possible. So when the kitchen fitters came in, they were able to build their cabinets around the boiler, pipework and water softener seamlessly.

The finished picture of the boiler in place does not look brilliant due to the kitchen having not been fitted yet. So, I have put the picture of the user display showing the weather compensation, flow temperature, thermal cleanse on the priority hot water as well as the time I finished the job.

And finally, tell us what the end result was for your customer?

It’s got to the final day of the installation and they were still a lot left to do. I arrived on site at 7:30 a.m.

There was a problem towards the end of the job when I opened the box to the hot water priority kit and it was the wrong size.

This is a specialist item which cannot be bought off the shelf and has to come direct from the manufacturer, but the customers were due back the next day so I did not know what to do.

This was the benefit of using a manufacturer that has such a great reputation as I called them up with my problem and they went above and beyond what I could ever expect. They found a priority valve in the city of Brighton which is many many miles away and they sent their sales rep to drive all the way from Brighton to me in Dorset about 3 hours each way!!!

As mentioned earlier, I was anxious to get the heating on for when the customers returned, so I worked and worked until 4:00 a.m. in the morning and had finally got the system up and running and commissioned.

The customers were delighted to see everything had been done by the time they got back. It felt like I had run a marathon to get all this work done and I was extremely pleased on how quietly and efficiently the system was running.

Although the customers spent a lot of money on this heating system, I was really pleased how little it actually cost them considering I had fitted all of the best brands. I attempted to do this job as cost effectively as possible by only replacing what really needed to be replaced while still achieving low flow temperature heating throughout the whole house and have it running as efficiently as possible. The house is also future proofed and can easily convert to renewables if the customers want to.

I always take a video of my installations to send to the customer which explains how to use the system including the radiator valves, the heating controls the boiler itself and what to do in case of a breakdown. Also, maintenance requirements if I’m not maintaining the system.

I asked the customers for 50% payment and allowed the system to run for the next 8 months until we got to the coldest part of the winter. They were very happy and very warm. The system was saving them money and was without any problems, which was very important as there was a newborn baby now in the house.

Only then did I request the final 50% of the money.

This job was brilliant in many ways as I was new to the area, I needed work and off the back of going to quote for fitting a radiator, I ended up doing the difficult task of upgrading a large house heating system by myself. Now the customer has a system that is extremely reliable and efficient. I got a lot of work from this job which helped me settle into the area.