Mikesolar, any updates on the house?

Haha, got a big hole in the front of the house

Putting in a new bay window, the old one was painted shut single glazed with a storm. The previous owners were smokers so I guess they didn't value fresh air.

More stuff. The pump on the 4 year old mid efficiency boiler is an Armstrong pump which draws 3.3A. I'm getting rid of the red beast and putting in the Taco Bumblebee which uses around 20w. A no brainer for sure and I will reuse it when I change to the high efficiency boiler.

Little room off the main house had no insulation in the walls, all single glazed windows and a HUGE fin tube radiator which may not have even kept up with the heat loss. New windows, spray foam everywhere and a new Stelrad (much more efficient).

http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...007_190605-jpg

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I've not heard of the Taco bumblebee. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

The bumblebee is an ECM pump where the control is designed to have a fixed dT (20F for example) which means that if you have 2 or 3 or more zones with zone valves, the pumps will increase or decrease the flow rate to provide the constant dT. The power it uses will decrease as needed. A regular pump will have a much higher power demand under a lot of these conditions. The Grundfos Alpha is similar except that it tries to match a design pressure drop instead of dT. This may be more important in Europe where they sometimes use really small copper tube to go to radiators (such as 5mm tube). We don't do this. I have used lots of Alpha pumps but it is my first time using this pumps so we will see how it will work.

I like this pump. I will have to check back down the road to see how you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX0J7r0paVI

I live in Europe (The Netherlands) and I never heard of that small size tubing going to radiators. Minimum size I now is 15 mm (O.D.).

The Brits used it. It was called Microbore (?) or something like it. It might have been 8mm but 15mm is normal here (5/8")

Yes we call it Microbore, 8mm OD used to be common.
Generally 10mm OD minimum now although mostly 15mm, 8mm and i guess 10mm to a lesser degree has a tendency to become blocked with sludge in older systems. May not be such an issue with modern pressurised systems ?

Steve

Added new front door. As insulated and efficient as I could get for the budget. The old one leaked like a sieve.

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