aaaaghhh

[Gavin A]

final check before MCS inspection tomorrow, and I find that the bivalent heat pump system we've installed has

A got an air lock in the section of piping the other companies heating engineer installed for us, with a nice high spot for air to collect in it, and

B - Been replumbed so that the gas boiler is now piped in to heat the base of the buffer cylinder (tank in tank) controlled by a valve that is entirely independent of the heat pump controls, and is merrily supplying all the heat to the cylinder, and possibly causing fault A as the temperature was well over 60 degrees, which the heat pump had then been circulating about it's circuit.

C - The information I'd been supplied with about the insulation of the walls in the section we're heating turns out to have been wrong, so we may have undersized the heat pump.... oh yes there was insulated plasterboard used, but not on that section.

Nowt like being scuppered by another heating engineer.

 

[jason121]

They passed mine and i had a few problems. Hopefully if paperwork in order and all the valves, insulation, noise calcs might pass you fingers crossed.

 

[Gavin A]

yeah, problem is that I was meant to be spending that time sorting the paperwork out. ah well, best get on with it.

 

[SibertSolar]

Crikey, good luck with it Gavin! Got your email, thanks, understood, catch you later

 

[Gavin A]

hmm, it appears that hidden away in the MCS site is a whole heap of design calculators etc that never even got mentioned on the ecoskies course I went on, though tbf I think we were the first course after the whole thing changed or something.

Microgeneration Certification Scheme - Heat Pumps

I'd missed the kitchens needing an air change figure of 1.5 which adds about 600W of heat demand, and takes the thing over the heat pump capacity. I've no idea where that figure's come from, but I'm pretty sure this house only has basic extraction when a switch is pressed, so in reality I don't see that the air changes will be any different.

Bivalent system though, so will just have to adjust the bivalence point upwards by a degree or so.

We're going to have soo many non-conformities on the paperwork, I've just been too busy to spend loads of time on it, and there were already existing heatloss calcs done for both buildings.

 

[BruceB]

Crikey. My last assessment was only a few months ago and they have added a whole load of stuff since then. eg grid connection forms and new build house spreadsheet.

It really has become onerous for a small company.

 

[Gavin A]

Crikey. My last assessment was only a few months ago and they have added a whole load of stuff since then. eg grid connection forms and new build house spreadsheet.

It really has become onerous for a small company.

haven't they just - we started quoting on these jobs last summer, they're new builds, so it's been a long process and the entire thing's changed in between.

started looking at it all last night, redid the heat loss calcs and gave up.

I've now got 8 weeks to sort it out properly.

on the plus side he couldn't fault the installations, said he was pretty impressed with the quality of the work.

 

[Worcester]

The amount of paperwork for the heating systems, Solar Thermal, Biomass and heat Pumps is horrendous, though we got away with only 2 noncoms at our assessment, and plenty of time to sort

When you add in the RHI requirements too, it is a shed load of paperwork, we've developed a massive spreadsheet that extracts all the data to the right forms - it does biomass, ground and air source heat pumps, with all the commissioning and certification sheets in, (maybe might have to consider paperclip again )

Only good thing I can say about it is that it is a considerabvle barrier to entry if you've only ever done gas or oil boilers before, so plenty of opportunity to recoup our investment.

 

[Gavin A]

yeah, it's properly one of those chicken and egg situations for us in terms of taking on a full apprentice trained heating engineer on £30k or so a year before we've even got the accreditation to bring the work in to pay for it, then still needing our existing installer to work on the systems as he's got the biomass and heat pumps training, as have I.

on the other side of the coin, there are the heating engineers who've been asking us to get the MCS accreditation because they can't do all the paperwork themselves.

I may end up sub contracting with a heating firm or something, but then this potentially restricts us to only working with the one heating firm. I've no real desire to be fitting the full heating systems, was intending to work with Dansk with him doing the UFH anyway... it's all a bit confusing really.

 

[Worcester]

We've ended up doing all aspects of the heating except for ufh as we've found the attitudes of a lot of gas / oil heating installers and plumbers sucks.

We've thrown more off site than I care to mention, when they walk around muttering under their breath "all this renewables stuff is just a lot on nonsense and none of it works anyway..." doesn't do a lot for customer confidence when they are investing not insignificant sums of money.

 

[Gavin A]

We've ended up doing all aspects of the heating except for ufh as we've found the attitudes of a lot of gas / oil heating installers and plumbers sucks.

We've thrown more off site than I care to mention, when they walk around muttering under their breath "all this renewables stuff is just a lot on nonsense and none of it works anyway..." doesn't do a lot for customer confidence when they are investing not insignificant sums of money.

Yeah I'm getting that feeling a bit too.

 

[dansk]

I get it all the time - "is this underfloor heating any good mate" my sarcastic reply "no mate its crap thats why im here fitting it"

A lot of the heating trade need to catch up and get with it (or maybe they dont as its better for us) its amazing how many tradesmen simply choose to bury their heads in the sand and not look towards new methods.

 

[Megavolt]

If yous ever need a installer in north west that covers gas,LPG,oil and fits UFH. We also have fitted solar thermal and was MCS but have let that lapse now. Please let me know. We are based in blackpool and do work all over the uk but at some distances it won't be cost effective after traveling costs ect.

 

[Gavin A]

I'll bear that in mind.

Current plan is to park this on the back burner for a few weeks to clear the backlog of commercial solar PV quotes I've on on my plate, while deciding what to do. Turns out my plumber actually has another 18 months or so plumbing experience prior to the first job he'd bothered to put on his CV, so the experienced worker route may still be available. I've no idea why he thought it a good idea to actually miss 18 months of plumbing experience, being trained up as an apprentice by a heating company off his CV.

 

[whinmoor]

Another aaaaghhh,

We had our annual MCS booked with NAPIT for next Tuesday. We planned to blitz the paperwork over the weekend and blag our way through on Tuesday using the tried and trusted choccy biccy method. Customer site visit had been arranged and we were good to go.

Just received a call saying it has been cancelled due to the assessor booking holiday. The lady simply wanted to re-schedule it a week later. I told her this wasn’t possible as we had work booked in and then holidays planned. We finally agreed on a date in a few weeks. For some reason the assessor could only make Tuesdays - probably moonlighting for NICEIC or Elecsa on other days?

The confirmation email says:

NAPIT Cancellation Policy:
If you require to cancel or re-arrange this assessment please contact me at your earliest opportunity. Please be advised that if you do not inform NAPIT of your wish to cancel or re-arrange your assessment by 4pm on 19/05/14 you WILL incur a cancellation fee of £200.00+VAT. Additional administrative fees may apply where 2 bookings have been made and subsequently re-arranged / cancelled. Any re-arranged assessment bookings will not be made until cancellation fees have been paid in full.


But, they obviously don’t have to pay when they cancel at short notice. One rule for them and another for us?