Hello folks -
Until a couple of months ago, we'd always had decent hot water for baths etc.
Our setup is a thermal store with a heat exchanger, heating mains cold water. There's a thermostatic mixing valve, with hot water from the heat exchanger coming into the top of the valve, the mains cold into the bottom and the mixed water out the side into the hot water pipework.
The mixing valve is set to MAX (which presumably means max temperature it will permit).
For some reason, our bath water etc is now only lukewarm despite nothing obvious having changed. We have a solar panel feeding into the tank, which has an LCD display, and the display is showing that the internal tank temperature is as high as it's ever been, so it seems the issue is not with heating the thermal store water.
One thing to note is that I cannot seem to turn the mixing valve in any direction, although as mentioned nothing has changed recently so I have no reason to suspect this setting has changed anyway. Tonight I also noticed that the system pressure was below 0.5bar, so I topped it up to 1.5bar as recommended online.
If the thermal store is at the usual temperature, can anyone suggest why the HW is no longer as hot as it was, and now only lukewarm? Has the mixing valve gone faulty and is letting in too much mains cold?
Any advice would be gratefully received by this novice!
Until a couple of months ago, we'd always had decent hot water for baths etc.
Our setup is a thermal store with a heat exchanger, heating mains cold water. There's a thermostatic mixing valve, with hot water from the heat exchanger coming into the top of the valve, the mains cold into the bottom and the mixed water out the side into the hot water pipework.
The mixing valve is set to MAX (which presumably means max temperature it will permit).
For some reason, our bath water etc is now only lukewarm despite nothing obvious having changed. We have a solar panel feeding into the tank, which has an LCD display, and the display is showing that the internal tank temperature is as high as it's ever been, so it seems the issue is not with heating the thermal store water.
One thing to note is that I cannot seem to turn the mixing valve in any direction, although as mentioned nothing has changed recently so I have no reason to suspect this setting has changed anyway. Tonight I also noticed that the system pressure was below 0.5bar, so I topped it up to 1.5bar as recommended online.
If the thermal store is at the usual temperature, can anyone suggest why the HW is no longer as hot as it was, and now only lukewarm? Has the mixing valve gone faulty and is letting in too much mains cold?
Any advice would be gratefully received by this novice!