Yo Yo sho fo

[ sh o f o ]. That’s actually chauffe-eau, one of the french words for boiler*. Sounds good though, doesn’t it mo-fo?

Our sho fo and our basement. First time you see that part of the house (and like every floor, it has many rooms...)

So this post is about energy; and more specifically, central heating.

An advantage of doing a back-to-brick renovation is that you can try to maximise energy efficiency, saving the environment - and ultimately reduce your bills - by installing the most up to date efficient things you can find. For example, low energy appliances, dual flush toilets and high performance boilers. The downside of this is that you have to identify and choose all these things while ensuring they work with the cables, plumbing etc being installed. In this respect, nothing stressed us out more than the central heating system and boiler.

Heating combines the scope for the small problems from electrics, the big problems from plumbing add potential issues gas leaks and exhaust fumes for good measure. The various stages of our central heating redo demonstrate the potential for problems. So what stages did we go through? Well:

1. Sizing the radiators needed in each room, and subsequently the boiler. You know, different radiators produce different amounts of heat, and the boiler has to have enough capacity to heat them all (and do your hot water). There are online applets to help with that such as this one. We also did our radiator layout at this point so the piping could be designed appropriately.

2. Choosing the boiler. We quickly decided on a combi boiler which does hot water and heating, and given the range available in Belgium the model more or less ended up choosing itself. We actually ended up getting the boiler all the way back in April last year when it was on (very) special offer, saving us a minor fortune that we would later give back on installing vent pipes (see point 5) . It spent the next 5 months in its box waiting to be connected...

3. Pipes, pipes everywhere. All the old rads and pipes came out and got sold for scrap – all 1 tonne of them - and the new pipes went in. Of course they were tested as they went in, but the test was a bit like England’s world cup preparation a few years back in Brazil – they didn’t take into account pressure or heat J which can change more than you think (see point 7).

Piping up on the second floor. Along to the rads on this floor, up to the rads on the next one.

4. Fixing the radiators in place. In our case we chose aluminium radiators as they are widely considered to be more energy efficient. They tend to hold less water; and as a super conductor they heat up very quickly, but the down side of that is they also cool down quickly. In reality they probably are marginally more efficient, definitely are much lighter; certainly are more responsive; but unfortunately a bit more expensive (and not so easy to find – ours came from France and Germany).

One of the alu rads. This one came from a Geman company called Moryb who do them "sur mesure"... and it's nowhere near as expensive as you'd think!

5. Connecting the boiler. Oh no, wait a minute. We couldn’t get the boiler connected because we first needed to install an air intake and exhaust pipe. This was the first really big obstacle we encountered. As we went through the limited options for routing the exhaust pipe, our choice of boiler location – in the basement at the front where the old one was – began to look less than ideal. Indeed, the only reasonable option was to send the air intake and exhaust pipe upwards to the roof, 16m up the chimney through 4 stories (and creating a big dent to the pocket in the process)**. 

Chimney inside a chimney. Our undertaker ripped out the bricks in the attic and passed 16m of pipes down from here, connecting them as they went in to avoid having to do the same thing while standing awkwardly on the roof (it's bricked up again now BTW).

6. Connecting the boiler take 2 and the radiators. Exhaust pipe in place, it was finally possible to connect the boiler. That is, after some extra bits: running cold water and gas pipes to the boiler; getting a plug socket next to it; adding a drainage pipe. Finally, radiators connected, loop closed***, radiators turned on. Finished, correct? No, because then comes...

Right, now we can get this connected (and you can see a bit more of basement room no 1)

7. Troubleshooting (i.e. leak fixing). This is how we spent the end of last year. Of course the pipework was all fine with cold water running through it. But heat up the water and increase the pressure – as is required for central heating – and suddenly minor leaks occur. This is not helped by the corrosion problem either – the water reacting with the metals in the system and creating corrosion including rust in the steel pipe joints. Our boiler was slowly losing pressure with these small leaks and we had little buckets under 3 or 4 radiators to catch the water.

So how did we address this? Just tightening up the leaking joints worked for some but not for all. Our biggest mistake as such was not using inhibitor from day 1. Inhibitor basically stops – or slows – the corrosion process. It seems to not be commonly used in new installations in Belgium, but we took things into our own hands, adding in 2 litres (as its a big system) - not as easy as you think in a closed loop combi system. Using the same eezyfil tool attached to a rad we topped it up with this stuff to seal leaks and bobs your uncle.

Sanity in a bottle. 1 litre of this in and miraculously no more leaks.

Our final step in the boiler process occurred this week – the connection of a smart meter energy box to both act as a thermostat and control consumption. But the energy saving process has not finished – the second key factor comes later in the year, on the outside of the house. Want to know what it is? Hopefully all will be clear around May time...

* Chaudiere is more common here in Belgium. But chauffe eau just sounds sooo good.

** In case you wondering, the old boiler was installed without worrying about such “technicalities”, they were happy to pump the exhausts up the chimney flue and take the air from the room. Both unsafe and the source of some of the issues we discovered in the rooms in the house directly above.

*** Combi boiler heating systems work on a closed loop principle where the water is recirculated