Boilermate II and Hive

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Greetings,

a very basic question from an end user with no technical knowledge.
We recently moved into a new house that has a Gas boiler (Worcester Bosch Greenstar 27Ri) and a Boilermate II.
A Hive smart thermostat controls the heating and the hot water.

I have no understanding of how the Boilermate works, I've always lived in a house with a combi boiler.
The Hive hot water was programmed by the previous owners twice a day.
With spring coming and in an attempt to reduce energy bills, I've monitored the gas meter.
With the heating off, hot water off and no gas appliances being used, the meter is still increasing.

Could anyone be so kind to explain in simple terms how the Boilermate works and if the Hive hot water control is effectively redundant, given that the Boilermate seems to do its own thing with the boiler! (Which would explain the excessive gas bills).

Many thanks

Bill
 
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Apologies, should have read the forum first. Just found another post that confirms my fears!
 
What ‘fears’ have you confirmed out of interest? The Boilermate II is a thermal store which means it always contains hot water. You can turn the central heating off but if the store did not have hot water in it then you would not get hot water at your taps. Therefore a small amount of gas will be used a few times a day to keep the temperature up in the thermal store.

From memory of when I lived in a house with the BMII there is some way of restricting when the call to heat happens (for example through the night as it’s noisy), and it’s possibly this what the Hive is hooking into, but I couldn’t be sure. Apart from this possibility I’d imagine it’s pretty redundant
 
The Boilermate II is a device which wastes fuel, by virtue of it being poorly insulated and needing to be kept blazing hot all the time.
It has no useful purpose.
 
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What ‘fears’ have you confirmed out of interest? The Boilermate II is a thermal store which means it always contains hot water. You can turn the central heating off but if the store did not have hot water in it then you would not get hot water at your taps. Therefore a small amount of gas will be used a few times a day to keep the temperature up in the thermal store.

From memory of when I lived in a house with the BMII there is some way of restricting when the call to heat happens (for example through the night as it’s noisy), and it’s possibly this what the Hive is hooking into, but I couldn’t be sure. Apart from this possibility I’d imagine it’s pretty redundant

The 'fear' that it's heating up a lot more hot water than we need.
I will look into restricting demand (especially for spring / summer). Thanks for your input.
 
I stayed in a friends house that had one of these in a plywood constructed cupboard in the bedroom I slept in. [the house was built like this] It emitted so much heat I had to have all the bedroom windows open and it was still too hot to sleep, and that was in the winter, what it would have been like in the summer I can only imagine. What a waste of heat! Plus as the boiler is on 24/7 to keep it permanently hot it had the habit of bursting into life in the middle of the night, which if it hadn't already been too hot to sleep would have woken me up.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread, but we also have a Boilermate 2000 and Hive.

Ours is still going strong, along with a Potterton Suprima which we believe both date back to 2002 when the house was built. The boiler has been serviced every 12-18 months over the past 12 years. The Boilermate has had a a couple of PCB replacements, but we quite like the immediate hot water it provides, even if it's supposedly not very efficient. It also sends hot water to bathroom & en-suite radiators after running a bath/shower, even when the heating is off. We've been told newer systems don't always offer this.

Anyway, the one new issue is it's not supplying hot water to the bathroom radiator - irrespective of whether the heating is on or not. We've had the whole system flushed 3 years ago, and the valve on the radiator has been changed. The last time anyone looked at the Boilermate they changed one of the three Grundfos pumps, and said another was temperamental, but that was 2-3 years ago and now struggling to get anyone to look at it... wondering if it's a lost cause. I have seen plenty of pumps for sale on eBay etc.

Should we persevere or consider a brand new system?... what would people recommend these days for a 4-bed detached property (16 rads)?
 
If your HW is OK and your CH is OK apart from the one bathroom rad, then the problem is the bathroom rad nothing to do with the boilermate
 
If your HW is OK and your CH is OK apart from the one bathroom rad, then the problem is the bathroom rad nothing to do with the boilermate
Thanks - that's what someone else said when I explained the problem, but he's not local. We have rubber/plastic pipes and they are not warm like other rooms, and the valve never gets hot either, which made us think it was the pump in the Boilermate - although thinking about it, the same pump must supply the en-suite rad as well (which is fine).

If the valve on the bathroom rad has been changed, should we consider changing the radiator itself?
 
The boilermate was a method of getting mains hot water pressure with a stored water system without the need for an annual pressure test.
Gledhi4.jpg
the idea is the DHW is heated as it is required by the store of hot water.
Torrent pipe example.PNG
This can be taken a step further allowing multi heat sources to be combined, there are also systems where the whole tank is at mains water pressure, but these need an annual test, which is not required with open vented tanks.

The modulating gas boiler removed the need to use other methods to get mains pressure hot water, I had a very early system called a Main 7, where the boiler fired up as the tap was opened, but since the house still had 22 mm pipe work, there was quite a delay between opening the tap, and getting hot water, also there was a min and max output, so had to select a shower head which would use over the min output of the boiler.

As time went on, the instant water heater was combined with the central heating boiler, and also a method was developed to gain the latent heat from the flue gases, to do this the temperature of the return water needs to be cool enough, this required more careful control of the flow rates, the water store could help ensure more economic flow rates, however be it direct or indirect the big problem is it needs setting up correctly.

Since I now use an oil boiler, I am not worried about return water temperature as it does not modulate, but the glenhill system will allow me to use water heated by the central heating to get a powerful shower rather than direct electric, so it would save me a lot of money, however my problem is my floors are not easy to lift, so to change would cost a lot of money to lift and re-lay floors, or replace ceiling, so I have no real option, to use the boilermate would cost too much to install.

The Boilermate II is a device which wastes fuel, by virtue of it being poorly insulated and needing to be kept blazing hot all the time.
It has no useful purpose.
If may waste fuel, but it saves money, as it allows one to have a mains pressure shower from the central heating boiler without the delay of the boiler heating up, or having water go from cold to hot and return to cold then hot again which is typical with the combi boiler with a small hot water store. And although electric showers use less energy, since 3 times the cost of gas or oil, that is an expensive option.

Having used both a power shower, direct shower from a gas modulating boiler, and a combi boiler, and electric, the power shower was likely the best, the direct from main 7 modulating boiler the next, then electric, and then the combi boiler, I put combi boiler last as it would turn hot, cold then hot again so one would stand out of the shower while it stabilised, wasting energy, and water, once warm it was better than the direct electric, but it wasted so much time, energy, and water, lucky was in a wet room so I could step away from shower when it went cold.

The power shower was the other method to get same as the glen hill boiler mate, but it required careful plumbing to insure it did not take the water in the tank below the level of the immersion heater. And you still have a tank radiating the heat, so can't agree with @flameport with this, but know my brother-in-law had the multi fuel option which was very good, but really only an option in a new build, due to weight of water in the tanks, when he moved he was quoted £20k to fit to his old farm house, simply not an option as retro fit.
 
Thanks - that's what someone else said when I explained the problem, but he's not local. We have rubber/plastic pipes and they are not warm like other rooms, and the valve never gets hot either, which made us think it was the pump in the Boilermate - although thinking about it, the same pump must supply the en-suite rad as well (which is fine).

If the valve on the bathroom rad has been changed, should we consider changing the radiator itself?
We might have got to the bottom of the problem, is your problem Rad a designer vertical Rad by any chance ? post a pic of it and the valves, it is definately nothing to do with the boiler mate , or your boiler for that matter
 
valve1.jpg


Unscrew the red highlighted part which will allow the top white section to be removed.
Underneath should be a small pin sticking up, which can be pressed in and will spring back.
If the pin is jammed in and won't move the valve is permanently closed. Hitting it with a small hammer may loosen it. If not, new valve required.

. It also sends hot water to bathroom & en-suite radiators after running a bath/shower, even when the heating is off. We've been told newer systems don't always offer this.
Any system can be arranged like that. The bathroom radiators are just connected to the hot water cylinder zone rather than the heating.
On a new install, a more usual method would be having the bathroom radiators on their own zone so they can be controlled separately to everything else.

the immediate hot water it provides,
Just like an unvented cylinder provides, but without the 3x pumps, PCB, sensors and all the other unreliable malarkey.

Should we persevere or consider a brand new system?..
The non-heating radiator is a simple fix.
The Boilermate should be slung into a skip where it belongs and an unvented hot water cylinder installed in it's place.
You can keep the same boiler and radiators.
 
Thanks @flameport, those pins under the thermostatic valves are the bane of our lives!... we have to check them all every year. However, in this case it's definitely not the issue.

Would be great to get it sorted, then look at replacing the Boilermate further down the line.
 

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