Wiring centre for large multi-zone wet UFH system

Hi all, I am currently re-wiring a large 6 bed manor house as part of an overall refurb.

The plumber landed me with a bombshell today when he told me that he knows nothing about the electrics for the existing boiler or the new UFH system.. So yours truly has an extra job.

Only just started to look at it so I may not have all required info yet. I have not been able to speak to the person who specified the kit/design yet but I wanted to get a head start if possible.

1X 7 port (pumped) manifold feeding 5 zones.
1X 7 port (pumped manifold) feeding 4 zones.
1X 6 port (pumped) manifold feeding 4 zones.
1X 3 port (pumped) manifold feeding 2 zones.

The UFH kit appears to contain a master 4 zone wiring centre plus 2X 6 zone slave wiring centre which attach to the master. This appears to cover the number of zones (15) with one to spare.

Two questions:

1) I thought wet UFH systems traditionally have a wiring centre per manifold? Yet this kit seems to have one large wiring centre for the whole thing.
If that is true then I will need to run many (many) wires from room stats/pumps/actuators from all over the house to the one wiring centre. Does that sound right?



2) If my assumption is wrong (maybe all the kit parts have not arrived yet) Assuming there is one wiring centre per manifold then what do I do regarding the boiler signal (I know I will need to use the volt-free contact)
Do I daisy chain all the volt free contacts of all wiring centres together and then run a single twin+earth back to the boiler?
Obviously any zone will call for heat at any time so I assume I would need to link them all together (in paralell) at some point?


Additional info:
All rads are being removed.
There is a megaflow hot storage tank which will stay.
The original water circuit appears to be S-Plus scheme.

Thanks for any enlightenment

..

holmslaw, I have 32 years electrical/electronics experience though obviously not with UFH systems. I am more than capable of taking on this additional work, I will pick it up very quickly and I am also happy and eager to do so. I was truly anticipating helpful feedback and I must say that yours is a bit dissapointing.

..

Wiring multi-zone underloor heating is not something to be afraid of. If you are at all competent (and it sounds like you are) then it is not difficult.

There are a number of wiring diagrams here: http://www.ukunderfloorheating.co.uk/technical/plumbing-and-wiring-diagrams/

The heating kit usually comes with a multi-zone wiring centre and you can have several actuators on each zone (some wiring centres have a limit BTW).
The wiring centres are easy to connect as you have dedicated connections for Boiler, UFH Pump UFH Motorized Valve, etc and separate terminals per zone for stats and actuators.

PS
As you have a Megaflo, its mandatory to follow the wiring on the DHW side to include the Megaflo's thermal cut out. The diagrams for that are in the Megaflo manual, and online.

PPS
It is best to ignore Holslaw. He claims to live in a place where he would never come across underfloor heating. He seems to only be really comfortable when scoring cheap points about the minutii of regulations wording, rather than giving real help and advice.

I will remember you as unhelpful. I have had to work on complex industrial systems control systems alone in a factory in Japan. Systems with which I was not 100% familiar and worked with various helpful people via telephone call which resulted in a fully functional system. Happy to say no lawyers involved.

Did you read the bit where I said I have not yet had an opportunity of speaking with the person who specified the system (a person who will be on site next week) and I am simply trying to get a head start? After taking the trouble of posting my original questions do you think I would be stupid enough to randomly connect things, switch on and blow the UFH pipes?

By the way holmslaw, how did you gain your UFH electrical experience?

I invite you to come and work with me for a few days and you can then gauge whether or not I am likely to get letters from a lawyer.

You know I really thought this forum was for gaining technical advice yet I appear to have stumbled upon some sort of holistic therapy session.
I posted for technical advice/help. If you do not want to share your technical knowledge then why do you bother to reply? What do you get out of it?

Taylortwocities, thank you very much for your reply and for restoring my faith in this forum. I need to look the link, digest a few things and get back to you tomorrow.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

For what it's worth, the first one of these I had to do gave me the wobblies until I sat down with the installation manual that came with the gear. Like your plumbers, mine didn't know the electrical side, but then I didn't know the water side so we were equal ... The manual laid it all out, and it worked fine. (Don't think mine was quite as complex as yours, but big enough). The one thing I forgot initially, and we had to go back over for it, was the connection from the load centre back to the boiler (doh!!)

PJ

With 15 zones I wouldn't bggr about with domestic wiring centres, I'd get a commercial Building Management System in. eg Trend

OwainDIYer, I am beginning to think that we will need an industrial scale wiring centre. I have already installed Futronix rack mounted lighting into the place and have a large wiring centre for links to allow escape/exit rout lights activation on a fire/smoke alarm and links for other automated event driven sequences. I would like to keep the heating system seperated (keep it simple) but we'll see what today brings.

I think I first need to establish whether there is one big common wiring centre or smaller distributed wiring centres with each manifold. On the face of it, it seems that there is one big wiring centre but I do need to check that today. Looking through the kit, there appears to be no single system manual but I do need to talk to the preson who specified the thing.
Thanks,