Home and heating

Hi Everyone,Thank you to allcthose who helped last year regarding Air Source heat pump as my oil boiler went down and i was having trouble with my housing association about when it was going to be installed etc. That was in May last year. Fast forward to this year we now have a heating system ....its Storage heating and i spoke to Ovo re garding all this being changed in January this year apparently yes then at the last hour it was no. Ok so i tried to look for a different company that do Economy 7 tarriff. Found one but now Ovo don't want ti let me go due to a huge bill which i have due to it being wintertime and having to use elctric heaters due to no heating system can anyone advise  me what to do obviously i didnt realky want to leave but ....its a case of having to but then if Ovo did Economy 7 or something similar i wouldnt have to.

Over the last three weeks (April 2026), my Glow Worm Energy 18r boiler has started showing the F28 ignition fault early in the morning (around 06:00) before the boiler calls for gas to service the central-heating and hot water systems in my home. I reset the boiler and it fires up okay when called upon to do so at 06:30/07:00 but I am now investigating the cause of the fault. One possible cause is fluctuation of gas pressure and I am wondering if the war in the Middle East has caused the pressure of gas supplied to domestic homes in the UK to be temporarily reduced overnight resulting in the F28 fault message? Have other Ovo users experienced this fault condition recently, or has the war caused fluctuations in the pressure of gas supplied to domestic premises?

Hi, I live in Dundee, Scotland which is a fairly large city, senior citizen currently on pre payment meter THTC and know all about the RTS switch off. Made arrangements with OVO to change over to pay as you go Smart meter, Engineer arrived yesterday and couldn't do the switch as the Smart meter failed to connect, he sent the relevant information to OVO that no installation had been made, what happens next?Engineer just said let OVO figure it out, can someone help

HiI am on economy 10 tariff with OVO, we only have storage heaters. Last year I booked the appointment for the new smart meter to be installed due to the RTS switch off. The ovo engineer was a lovely old chap, who, as it turned out had originally installed the meters (long before we bought the house). He said we do not need to change as our meters do not use the RTS signal. I asked him to please inform Ovo of this as they keep harassing me to change. ( months later and I am getting almost daily contact to change as they now say we will not have power after the 5th May 2026. The person I spoke to tried to deny that their engineer had ever been to our house!!! The meter I have is a typeS123B03. I have also been told by Ovo in the past that I am correct in beleiving that smart meters will not operate correctly at our house, there is no mobile signal from any provider and no broadband to the property. Can anyone help me know if my meter is the type that has its own internal clock

When heating is on, the water starts to heat up as well, but it is not on the controller - water is shown as OFF. Looks like something is wrong with the settings. Please Help!Remote controller: Switchee Hot water set 45. NOT legionella mode  

If I win the lottery and pay OVO £8700 for a 12 panel PV Solar array on my large 25 degree pitched south facing roof plus a 5.2kWh storage battery in my integral garage plus an estimated £5000 for an 11kWh ASHP (after £7500 govt grant) plus an estimated £5000 for new radiators and hot water cylinder, can I expect to be effectively self sufficient during 9 months of the year? 

Hi, I have a solis 5kw hybrid inverter paired with 16.1k fogstar eco battery, but know the Inverter will not let the charge deplet from the battery. It worked fine until it reached 100 % at which point in just stays at 100%and draws power from the grid. Thanks for any help as this is driving me crazy. 

I have 9 slim so called ‘convection’ style radiators in my house, that appear as perforated panels backed up by a matrix of 15mm copper or steel pipes running vertically from the top to bottom tubes with thermosatatic TRVs fitted by me with a water pump primed, Gas fired C/H boiler in my garage.The gas boiler is no longer servicable and I have voluntarily swithced it off at the gas mains supply but kept my dual fuel tariff because the house has a gas cooker access point, currently capped in our kitchen and gas piping feeding the garage boiler that runs along our lounge wall and could easily be extended through the breeze block dividing wall to run a lovely powerful balanced flue gas fire in our lounge at a future date. My idea is to get an ASHP installed to replace the old gas boiler but wonder about my rads being thermally unsuitable.They are all in good condition and I added corrosion inhibitor several years ago after cleaning the accumulated black magnetite sludge out of each one

I seem to have to wrestle with OVO every year these days before I get a satisfactory resolution of my rights as a loyal customer. Is now a good time (wrt disruption in global energy, climate change arguments, resale value of my 1983 house etc) to consider ditching my old gas boiler and upgrading to an ASHP with a brand new well insulated hot water cylinder/immersion heater to ‘top up’ bathing and washing up water etc plus maybe even new more suitable radiators? If so which are the best suppliers and installer of ASHPs. Daikin, Vaillant, Worcester - Bosch, Mitsubishi  et alia or even consider the Octopus system solution?

Bear in mind I’m not solar savvy...I had solar panels installed in July last year and everything worked fine ...using the Fox cloud app etc .I updated the app and now it appears that my battery is not charging and my daily production is showing the same every day ? How do I set up my battery again to use the charge during the night? All the apps shows is my grid importing and the energy being used in y home ? I find the whole thing bloody confusing as, as the weather has improved eg generating more solar my daily bill is lower but nothing being shown on the app ? Is there a different app I could use or do I need to get the installers back ? Cheers in advance Andy  

A recent MCS survey on my property - by a reputable installer - came out with the figure of 22kw needed for our heat pump installation. (Our home is a large Edwardian semi-detached and about 350msq.) It’s such a large figure that they have suggested 2 heat pumps of 11kw each working in tandem. I suspect this is excessive and my own data from recorded gas usage would suggest much lower. We use consistently between 31000 and 33000 kWh of gas per year. Using the ‘rule of thumb’ guide and dividing that figure by 2900 would suggest closer to 12kw. I also have data from the coldest day we have had in the house - 15 December 22 when the temperature dropped to -7 all day in a cold snap. On that day we used 375 kWh of gas which divided by 24 hours would still come in under 16kw. We usually keep our house at a comfortable 19C which is fine for us but I know the survey factors in warmer temperatures. Nevertheless the discrepancy seems considerable. Am I missing something? Would welcome comment

We are in a remote rural Scottish location which surprisingly qualifies for a Warmworks grant to instal solar PV. We have to have what they decide, which is “9 x 450W JA solar PV panels” on a west facing roof plus a “Duracell Bundle” battery and inverter.   I don't have any details of what these are, so can't look up what they do in detail.  We can't chose the installer. The installation will be next week - 15 & 16 September.We are on OVO’s Economy10 tariff with an Aclara SGM1416-B smart meter and storage heaters (no boiler, no gas).  1. The main question is - do we need to inform OVO that we are having panels and a battery?2. We are at home most of most days, so can often use more electricity when the sky is bright. Is that the best strategy for economy?3. I won't know until the system is installed next week whether      •    the panels can return power to the grid if the battery is full     •    the battery can be charg

Hi all, I’m in the process of researching solar and a couple of installers have suggested fitting Fox ESS batteries. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with them and any feedback, negative or positive, to share? In addition, can anyone explain to me about what I should be looking for in a tariff once we have the solar panels and battery installed? I do have a quote for solar from OVO so would that be a lot better than if I went with, say, Octopus? Thanks in advance,Hollie

The two Honeywell night storage heaters in our attic room are not heating unless I use the boost key on the SMETS meter or the shortcut on the PIPIT IHD remote meter. I think this must be because the separate circuit has not been programmed on the meters, but I don’s know how to do this. Can anyone point me to an online guide to programming the separate circuit (I keep wanting to call it ‘Economy 7’ but I don’t think that is what it is called any more)? Or is there an app for it?  Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Hello,Is it possible to control the timing of DHW, not by controller timer option but by dry contact?Does it have to do anything with 131 mode in function setting?Is there a full list of the function settings menu? Thank you very much!Ronen

 Hello, I have a DAIKIN ERSQ 011AAV1  16KW. I have a BRC21A52 controller and there is a code in the service manual 9-02 that is indicated as Thermo on/off admission with a range -5  till +5. Does anyone what exactly does it do? For example what's the difference between setting it at +5 and -5? There is also another code 9-03 that the step is every 0.2 and it can be set either until +5 or -5 but there isn't any explanation in the manual what is this code about. Any help would be nice. Thank you in advance.

Here for help again. Last year we had Solar, battery, ASHP, and a smart meter put in. OVO only did the smart meter. They also gave us the Chameleon IHD 3. It was working fine and we found it really useful. Moved to Octopus Sept 2025 because SEG payment was better. On Feb 24th this year our Outgoing octopus was up and running. I can see our bills and usage is all as expected but since the 24th Feb the IHD has been showing CORRECT kWh use but WRONG cost. It’s nowhere near what it should be. For instance this morning at 8am it said we had spent 22pence! Not even the standing charge of 44 p. I know SEG payments can’t be dropping the price that much infact they shouldn’t be showing on an IHD should they ?Ive tried hard reset but still saying the same. Any ideas?

I’m writing this on behalf of my 85+ year old mother. Apologies for the long post but it does explain pretty much perfectly the issue.  Shes with OVO and has been for many years, this year her very old manual thermostat started playing up and heating was coming on in the middle of summer and was a nightmare.  I saw the Tado V3+ (Wireless Thermostat, Internet bridge and wireless receiver) deal OVO were offering earlier in the year and she bought it.   Eventually an electrician installed this around June, it's been working perfectly since then with her Baxi EcoBlue boiler. As she is on approaching 90 and is quite frail, shes like to have the heat on so its been working from around October/November time, she likes it at an indicated 23degs. I dont think it is quite that high but feels better than the 14degs  on her old thermostat!!  We have a schedule setup so from 10pm-7am daily she has it set at 14 degs C, 7am-10pm 23degsC. 

Can anyone tell me what these particular settings mean please see photo 1 of FTC6 controller (I am still on the ASHP learning curve) - I am trying to grapple with whether the Flow Temperature settings are too high/too low/just right. At the moment the outside temperature during the day has been about 18 degrees, at night we have been having near freezing temperatures. See photo 2 from Melcloud. My system is set to run 24/7 which I believe is the most economical way - low and slow. I have been having the room control set to 17 in the day and I have put it up to 18 in the evening during my off peak hours. if I move it up or down it’s only by half a degree.  My problem is that I previously had old storage heaters and this thing is using a fraction of the electricity that they were using, so all the angst about 2.5kwh usage on this forum seems irrelevant to my situation. With my storage heaters I was using 40kwh a day on May 1st, if which 7kwh was all the other stuff in