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It would appear that our Salus it500 reciever has died. Always on a Sunday.
I have the heating engineer electrician coming tomorrow I hope to look at it as I have reached the limit of my ability to intercede with it.
The situation has got me wondering if perhaps there may be a better unit than the Salus as an internet enabled smart heating thingy. I think Nest may work but wondered if anyone here has experience of Nest, Hive or Tado etc with biomass.
We have biomass boiler, solar thermal and immersion with a solar iBoost attached to the latter.
Thanks team for any helps...
You need more information to decide which controls to use.
Do all the heat sources load a buffer? How is the buffer controlled, what does your smart thermostat control are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Thanks bear -
Hapero 15kw boiler. No buffer (has a small one built in). I've turned weather compensation off as it makes the house heat better. I know that's not eco but... So the boiler is basically 'be on or be off' from the thermostat
Solar thermal goes into hot water tank only.
HW tank inputs - biomass, solar thermal which has its own Resol controller and pum and electric immersion.
Salus It500 controls heating and hot water.
Heating is a single circuit.
From my dealings with biomass they don't like being short cycled which your thermostat may cause it to do. Also they only like sending water to the system when the boiler is up to temp so that you don't get condensation on the return causing corrosion problems.
Your boiler may be different and that might be why it has a small buffer in it to smooth those problems, along with some internal controls on it.
So you just want a smart thermostat then to replace what you have. Personally I prefer the Drayton Wiser these days, didn't find the Nest very smart to be honest but it is very tactile! Wiser is expandable with radiator valves too.
Perfect. Thank you. Off to Google
solar thermal and immersion with a solar iBoost attached to the latter.
So there's PV as well then?
sharkbait - there is. hen we bought the house it was heated with a multifuel stove and backboiler. Stone floors meant underfloor would have been prohibitive so we went biomass but did what we could to be as green as possible.
Heating - Hapero 15kw boiler. It does not have an external buffer, just a small internal one. Installer and I had a long chat when it was installed 6 years ago about buffer and short cycling. He was adamant (and turns out right) that a buffer wasn't needed and agreed he'd install one at his cost if the machine over cycled. It does not appear to have done so.
Hot water - biomass boiler as above with an unvented tank that also has inputs for the solar thermal on the roof and an immersion which has the iBoost off the PV on the shed roof.
After a couple of years we switched the weather compensation off - after spending time trying to adjust the heat curve to get the house properly warm we decided that going a bit more old school may work and it has. Took a month of tweaking the combustion temperature target and air flow to get to a position of the boiler getting the house toasty and holding it well.
The thermostat has been a Salus IT500 which is a bit unglamorous in terms of web interface etc but it has worked just fine. Woke up this am however and noticed house a little cool, looked in boiler closed and the receiver unit for the Salus appears dead. The fuse is OK as is the mainboard. I do not have the confidence to go further than that though but our heating engineer is a nice guy and says he can be here tomorrow afternoon all being well. Assuming its not a mouse eating a wire or some other random and the receiver is dead I was wondering if I should stick with the Salus or if there had been better solutions in the last 6 years.