Home and heating

Hi there, I appreciate this has probably been asked and answered many times, but I've just topped up my Ovo card, inserted into my meter and the gas valve hasn't opened. There's £58 on the meter, the meter says ON B3, but I've got no supply. This hasn't happened before, it usually opens after a few seconds. I was directed by the Chat Bot to call 0800 111999 and they hung up on me. I'm working a late shift tomorrow and I'm not going to be able to get anything done now until after Christmas. It's quite an old meter. I've attached a photo of it. Is there a procedure to get the gas valve to open? Thanks. Chris

Hi There, Bit of an odd one here. Used gas last night as per usual no problem but came into house early tonight (23rd) and no gas throughout house. Checked with neighbours and their supply was ok so tried to contact OVO but it was shut. Went outside to check gas meter and the display was blank so in desperation turned off stop valve and pressed the red and black buttons several times and opened the valve again. Eventually the display lit up with the message "opening valve " and then the display returned to a normal setting. I went back into house and the gas supply was as back. Is this normal as I know electricity trips but gas and is it likely to happen again and is it safe. Any explanations would be great Thanks in advance

Hello! I own a Mitsubishi Ecodan 14kW and the display shows ‘INVALID’ when selecting Delivered Energy. It runs ok, it records Consumed Energy. I remember that in the past the section showed some calculated values. Please see the right column, the second icon with battery with value 4321kWh. I have all the sensors, including external boiler (that did never needed to start) Can anyone advise there to look ? A picture from the book, just as an example is below. Thank you in advance for any suggestion

When I first moved to OVO, I didn’t have an IHD, but now that I do, I’ve figured out why my usage seemed so strange. I have an electric boiler, and I’ve noticed it uses electricity even when I’m not using hot water or heating. Sometimes it runs for hours, and other times just for about few minutes. The usage varies between 3kWh and 6kWh. Is this normal for an electric boiler, or could there be something wrong with it?

On the Tado website it looks like there are two versions of the Wireless Smart Thermostat Starter Kit V3+, one with OpenTherm and one without. Does anyone know if the one that Ovo are selling is the OpenTherm version or not? Thank!

Hi I need help I'm been charged 300 / 400 for electric some months I'm single parent in 3 bedroom house and my heatings been off since it warmed up in Feb 2022 .I've nothing turned on hardly in my house just a freezer fridge that run all day I have no heating we sleep down stairs but I'm still getting outrageous bills . A meter reader said whwn I posted a picture of my meter it's been tampered with but my energy company won't listen they said the locks still on it but theirs more wires than b and q

My Solis inverter always shows limbytemp whenever it's around 30 degrees Celsius outside. The internal temp is around 84 degrees Celsius. It's not in the sun and is in a breezeway. The fan seems to be working. Is this normal. Any advice would be much appreciated

I’ve suggested to a friend that he will get a more comfortable heat from his combi boiler with radiators by turning the flow temperature down and running the heating for longer. He’s done this and agrees. However, his recent boiler service engineer told him not to do this ! He said “Condensates can build up and cause corrosion to components (long-term). Units are designed for mid- to high-running.” Odd that they can be turned right down then…. 🤔 How true is this about the corrosion?

As we’ve got plenty of Air-Source Heat Pump early adopters here, we’re hoping you might be able to share your experience of a little discussed aspects of your heating system: drainage. Have you noticed your outside unit emitting water? If so are there any factors that increase or decrease the amount of water released?

So confused, what is most efficient way to run heating. At moment I do not have it on timer (as advised) I have it set at 19, then turn down to 15.5 when too warm in flat. I have my water on timer coming on an hour in morning & hour at night. I have 2 bedroom flat and live on my own. Being a pensioner I need it to run efficiently. Thanks

Hi there, I have a Daikin Altherma 3 H HT installed last year with a buffer tank which means the Daikin is mainly working on the living temperature based on the weather curve as it does not have a thermostat connected to it. There is an option to use “modulation mode” which gives the Daikin the possibility to fine tune its leaving water based on the indor temperature and the target temperature. To use this option though I would need to remove/bypass the water tank/circulator and get a thermostat connected to the Daikin. My naive view is that running modulation mode allows to take advantage of the inverter technology and have the Daikin automatically running all the time at a minimum power and get closer to the objective of having the heat pump just constantly compensating for the heat loss. Are there people on the community using the modulation mode on their Daikin? I would be happy to get some feedback on how it works. Many thanks and sorry for this cancid and naive question. Regards, Antoine

Hello! Yesterday I set my ground floor thermostats a couple of degrees higher. I thought that would keep the pump on to reduce the cycling. (more an experiment than anything) This morning I noticed there is still cycling but strangely coincides with intermittent spikes in the reading from the outdoor temperature sensor. Can anyone suggest what could cause this?

I recently acquired a Mitsubishi heat pump ecodan, which is currently set to compensation curve mode, and I am using an Emos thermostat in my living room. I would like to switch the heat pump to Auto Adaptive mode. However, the desired temperature is being measured in my garage, where the heat pump is located. It seems possible to purchase a wireless Mitsubishi thermostat (PAR-WT50R-E) to address this. However, I would like to know if it is possible to use the existing Emos thermostat instead to save costs. Thank you in advance for your help!

Anyone else on Superdeal noticed that the afternoon 2 hr boost has vanished? Could understand if this was the summer but in winter it is imperative for storage heaters.

Afternoon all We have just moved into a new house with a Combi boiler, previously house had a standard boiler & storage tank. Have noticed over the last week or so that the boiler ticks in a lot even when it is off (not manually activated, no timer and the thermostat is set lower than the ccurrent room temp) Having looked at some of the overnight events. I see we are using between 3.5/4kw per hour. does this seem normal?

I’ve “inherited” an Ecodan/Zubodan ASHP, wet undefloor heating+rads downstairs, and rads only upstairs system and have many questions. I’ve been running the system with limited success over the last year and a half but with a newborn and a cold winter about to hit I want to make sure I’ve got everything efficient, cost effective, and working properly. I’ve read most of the threads here but still unclear on exactly what I should be doing for our situation and very conscious a small change could massively change the temperature in the house. Our current set up is: 2x zones. Downstairs is 8 UFH loops + 2 rads, and upstairs is 3 rads + a towel rail. Both zones supplied by the same temp from ASHP. Every room downstairs has 1x UFH loop aside from the lounge and the hallway. Those two have 2x loops *and* a radiator with a TRV. Every room is thermostatically controlled. When temp is reached TRV & ufh circuit actuator shuts off for that room. These are also on a schedule (19 at night, 20 during the day for some rooms, 2 unused rooms are static at 17.5 and things like the lounge vary wildly). DHW comes on between 3am and 6am, heats to 48 degrees, with a max temp drop of 6 degrees. When this happens I can see the house temp plummet. ASHP not set to compensation mode but static temp of 49 degrees. All UFH loops in the manifold are balanced. I know this isn’t the right way to set the system up but the previous owners were treating the ASHP and UFH like a combi and messed with all the settings (among other things - we found the immersion was on 24/7 for about 2 months after moving in during the summer!) so I’ve been spending the last year during periods of colder weather fixing it back to the recommended settings slowly, tracking the difference, and learning bits as I go along. Last winter though we were spending about £30/day on electricity which doesn’t feel right at all. My plan is to move to weather compensation curve but my brain can’t get away from combi boiler type thinking with regards to the schedules and the rads upstairs. So I guess my questions are: Should each room in zone 2 (UFH+rads) be set to a static temp all day, with no schedule, and the TRVs (lounge & hall) be set to a middle of the road setting. Further to this, should the upstairs TRVs be set to fully open and dial them back if it’s too warm until it’s a constant temp for a few days or should these run on a schedule? Conscious if we move to compensation curve these radiators won’t be warm before bed like they are now on their schedule (for example 6am - 10am 20 degrees, 18 during the day and then 20 degrees from 9pm until 1am or so). Caveats (not sure if these affect anything): The kitchen thermostat is pretty twitchy when the cooker/hob is used and spikes (therefore shutting the thermostat off at its current setting. I have an ecodan FTC-6, but not a mitsubishi tank and the stats are all danfoss in each room. We have a log burner in the lounge which, similar to cooker, is picked up by the room stat and effectively turns off that room. We have a semi-draughty house in places. I’ve been plugging most of the gaps as I go along, but I’m aware there’s bits that aren’t ideal. We have a newborn so messing with heating and it being cold for extended periods isn’t really a fun idea. A further fun complication is the company that installed the system want nothing to do with servicing it - seems they wanted that sweet government grant money but care not to maintain it moving forward so I’m on plums trying to get them to give me any sort of documentation or training session - hence coming here for help. I feel like the solution is obvious if I sit back and think about it but messing with heating always gives me analysis paralysis. Any help or pointers would be awesome.

Im building a new house and need to purchase a ASHP, looking mainly at Vailant because of the OVO 15p per KW offer they have for their customers (which I'm one of) In order to receive this offer, do I need to buy the Vailant heat pump from OVO or can I get it from a certified MCS installer and still claim the new tariff? I will also be purchasing the Gateway add-on, is this the only requirements? If not, then maybe I will look at other ASHP rather than just the Vailant range Any help appreciated!

Updated on 20/01/25 by Abby_OVO Heat Pump Plus add on now available for Vaillant heat pump owners Our Heat Pump Plus add on is now available for customers with a Vaillant heat pump. It can save you up to £495* a year on your heating bill. What is Heat Pump Plus? It’s our heat pump add-on that lets you power your heat pump for less, at 15p per kWh. You’ll pay one rate for the electricity your home uses and a lower rate for the electricity the heat pump uses – saving up to £495 a year on your heating bills. See more information on our Heat Pump Plus page here. What about the partnership with Vaillant? Heat Pump Plus will now be available for customers with a connected Vaillant aroTHERM heat pump. To be eligible you must be an OVO customer with a working electricity smart meter and a myVAILLANT connect internet gateway. Full eligibility criteria listed here. What happens if I don’t have MyVAILLANT connect? Customers with a Vaillant heat pump will need to make sure it’s connected with myVAILLANT connect to access the add-on. This gives us access to the heat pump usage data, and we use that data to work out how much electricity was used by the heat pump. If you don’t have myVAILLANT connect, you might need to get an extra piece of hardware installed to be eligible for Heat Pump Plus. See our FAQ page for all the details. *Actual sum is £495.94. When you add Heat Pump Plus to your plan, your home energy rate will stay the same, but the energy consumed by your heat pump will be charged at an effective rate of 15p per kWh (thanks to payment of your Heat Pump Plus credit).The £495.94 saving is based on an air source heat pump with a UK average Seasonal Coefficient of Performance (or efficiency rating) of 2.8 and an annual consumption of 3,644 kWh with the Heat Pump Plus add-on compared to OVO's average SVT rate of 28.61p per kWh. Actual savings will vary depending on your heat pump usage, efficiency rating and the cost per kWh of your standard home energy tariff.

Hi All, We had a mitsubishi EcoDan Heat Pump for the last year, Installed November 2023, in our rented house. Everything has been working fine untill we had a power cut last month. The heat pump wouldn’t turn on and we didn’t know what to do. Our landlord was informed, they came out to the heat pump and did a system reset. This fully reset the system to factory default prior to the power cut. The heat pump now works, but whenever we make certain changes, the settings dont save for long before they return to default. We have set the DFW and this remains at the adjusted setting so isn’t an issue. The problem is on the main screen of the control panel, its set onto flow mode i believe at 55’C(See picture), whenever we change the heating mode to heat room at 20’C and adjust to 18’C, The system always returns to flow mode after a period of time. is there a way of stopping this? We’ have never had this problem before and i suspect its because the system has not been set up the same way when it was initially installed in 2023. We’ve explained this to our landlord but they won’t help as they say the system is working, plus the company that installed it now aren’t operating. We don’t want to keep changing the temperature every time this resets, can anyone advise. Ohh and of course, the manuals aren’t much help.

We have THTC with consumer units for Storage heaters,fixed appliances & lighting/mains. Will we be able to move to Economy 9 when the new meter is installed ? Will all consumer units be connected by Ovo to the new meter ? Can the power be delivered without being on a timer so we can manually control the heating. Would like some idea of where we from here & whether the future will be more expensive. Thanks

Has anyone been left without electricity during winter with health conditions that rely on electricity (oxygen) arthritis also? How long for engineers to arrive? Don't ovo have duty of care?

Hi All, Wonder if anyone can answer this. I have one Storage Heater in my property which i would like to replace for a standard Ceramic Core Electric Radiator. I understand that it would have to rewired differently via an electrictian and i would need to change my Tariff (Currently on Economy 7 Ovo Tariff) so i assume to Economy 10. My Water is heated at night via Electric immersion heater which i assume ties in with the Economy 7 as it keeps in around midnight i think. I have a smart meter installed aswell in the last couple of years So what is the best way to tackle all of this as i cannot get a straight answer as if i change the Storage Heater to normal Electric heater won’t this affect the water heating because of Tariff change or am i looking at this all wrong. Any advise could be appreciated Thanks

Hi All, new to the Forum but having a real issue. We have modern Dimplex Quantum storage heaters connected to our THTC (SSE Horstman K series) meter which works on the radio signal. We are on the OVO Simpler Energy tariff. It has been working fine last few years but a few days ago we started noticing the storage heaters not putting out any heat. They normally charge up off peak overnight and then release heat through the day. From looking at the meter and input data on the Dimplex we only appear to be getting a few hours of heat input overnight - some nights none - not enough to look near heating the heaters. We have changed nothing so can only assume a problem with meter/RTS signal/OVO. Have reported to OVO and a meter engineer is supposed to be coming. We are in the North of Scotland with SSEN as DNO. Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated.

Why is there an ‘e’ on the dial ? Surely it is more efficient to lower the hot water temperature towards ‘min’ ? What hot water temperatures do the different numbers give ?

Hello My Grant ASHP (Grant Aerona3 10kw R32 Heat Pump) has consumed almost 10kw in the space of 10hrs, from midnight to 10am. The heating was set to be steady at 17.8 and nothing else was running overnight. It was cold last night, getting down to aprox 2-3 degrees. Does this sound normal? Thanks so much in advance.