PIV units

[Slateral]

Bought one of those last year after the previous drier died. They are a little bit expensive, but I calculated it would pay for itself in 2 years in energy savings, and that was before the energy price hikes. Only thing I don't like is it tends to leave the washing ever so slightly damp sometimes, but leave the washing to air for a few hours somewhere warm, and that's sorted easily. It would probably help if I read the manual properly, there is a knack to these driers

Fully agree with Binky and John. We bought one a few years ago and wouldn’t go back. Running costs are very low in comparison to the old type.

 

[binky]

On our Beko you can trim the level of dryness from 0 to +9 with the standard being 5 i.e. in the middle. With the default it wasnt quite SWMBO's liking, a couple of steps dryer and now she's very happy. Once it's done the initial heat up it seems to drop back to about 400w, absolutely amazing compared to the 3kW pretty much constant of the old one.

I shall have to read the manual, just not the done thing for men don't you know .

Energy use is amazing for a TD, I was looking at repairing our old Bosch TD, which needed a new board at a mere £195, and was about 8 years old anyway, so you have to wonder how much life was left in it. We don't use it much as I prefer to dry clothes on the washing line (eco friendly/ tight fisted etc etc), but even then, such a low energy use made it a no-brainer when I worked out the payback. Only thing is the drying time seems to take forever, but it can be set for a higher temp and shorter drying time if in a hurry.

 

[binky]

On our Beko you can trim the level of dryness from 0 to +9 with the standard being 5 i.e. in the middle. With the default it wasnt quite SWMBO's liking, a couple of steps dryer and now she's very happy. Once it's done the initial heat up it seems to drop back to about 400w, absolutely amazing compared to the 3kW pretty much constant of the old one.

having now read manual, there's a dryness adjustment button on the front display which I hadn't relly noticed - doh!

 

[johnb2713]

RTFM - Read The Manual

 

[binky]

RTFM - Read The Manual

where's the fun in that!

 

[Kot]

Its amazing how much water comes out of a condensing Tumble Dryer, imagine that on all your walls and ceiling

 

[Murdoch]

Its amazing how much water comes out of a condensing Tumble Dryer, imagine that on all your walls and ceiling

One thing for sure is that it’ll be far less than drying indoors which he’s currently doing

 

[MikeJhn]

But they do take a much longer cycle to dry anything.

 

[ProDave]

A house with MVHR is really good at drying clothes.

Most of ours just get hung up an the airer in the utility room with an MVHR extract vent directly above it.

the Tumble Dryer is only used for things that need to become "fluffy" like towels and socks. Then only half an hour in the TD is enough to make them fluffy and they then go on the airer to finish drying.

 

[Andy1733]

So what getting from this thread is don't bother with a piv as they are no good and go for a CTD or if possible to fit a mvhr and ideally both...

 

[Andy1733]

Ow and if I go for a CTD read the instructions

 

[Joules]

Since I've fitted solar panels and storage battery's I've been doing other things to my property to improve the efficiency
I had the old wool type insulation removed from the cavity and installed the new bead system. I've fitted smart TRV to the rads and added an additional 150mm loft insulation (250mm now).
A slight problem I'm now having is condensation. It's mainly on the windows and even opening the trickle vents are not clearing it.
So I'm left with opening windows or fitting something to remove the moisture.
I have a dehumidifier which does the job but are unsightly and are not very efficient so was wondering
Has anyone fitted a piv unit to their loft and do they work. Or is there better solutions?

Some of my neighbours have PIV suggesting I fit one. I wasn’t convinced so just over a year ago I installed a Govee Smart Thermo-Hygrometer (Model H5174) in the loft. The warmer the air the more water it can carry, its measure is called Relative Humidity RH and its value is proportional to Temperature T.

My loft has 300mm of insulation with ventilated eaves. T and RH are cyclic and RH can get as high as 90% never being too far away from the prevailing outside RH. In summer temperatures can reach 50oC so no electrical equipment up there.

The device’s app graphs T, RH and uniquely Dew Point DP. The DP temperature has consistently remained lower than the mean loft temperature so there is no condensation up there. Nevertheless, nothing of value is stored in the loft space.

Bottom line: a chart of T vs RH is needed so that a judgement call can be made from Govee readings as to whether to switch on a PIV, the feeling is that it could make things worse especially if RH had reached 90%. Needless to say, I never went on to install a PIV. Instead, we open windows whenever possible.

 

[Andy1733]

Thanks joules. I love a gadget and I can see thos being in the collection soon.
Since this post I've been doing a bit of investigation to see if I can find out why my property is retaining so much moisture. I found it difficult to believe it was solely down to the cavity wall and drying cloths on rads in the winter is something we have always done for 30 plus years.

First thing I found was bathroom extractor fan. The outside vent was almost blocked. Fluff and debris had almost made the extractor useless. So in with the hand held vacuum to remove this.
My kitchen extractor vent was partially blocked though tbh the hob is not used often so this shouldn't contribute too much though again made sure it was working to max efficiency.

I went around all the exterior walls with my damp meter and found 2 walls. One in the pantry and one behind the kitchen cupboards that were showing raised levels. Both had concrete floors. I've removed the skirting and found high damp levels at ground level in a arc pattern. On the exterior to the damp patch were air bricks. Coincidence? Cold bridging? Or about 3 year ago I had the drive block paved and the finished level finished higher than the original (5inch below damp). Could it be splashing rain coming in. Anyway I had se damp rods from another job so I drilled the interior and fitted the rods. A couple of week should conclude if it's coming up or through.

Then yesterday I went into the loft to get the crimbo trimmings and the box they were in were swimming in water. I could see daylight from behind the stack which is getting sorted next. week. The box was only placed in that position since the loft was insulated so good or bad!
Good because it didn't leak into the main house and come through a ceiling and bad because I didn't know about it until I've gone for the Xmas trimming.

Plus. When I went back into the loft to return the empty Boxes I investigated the rest and noticed some staining to the new insulation so looks like I have another leek elsewhere though nothing visible.


So over the past few days I've found several problems that can contribute to the problem. I've had the dehumidifier running all day yesterday and this morning it was down to 58% and the windows had about 3 inch of moisture around the edges as last week they were swimming.

Hopefully if I remove as much as possible of the moisture then I can see if our usual lifestyle is ok going forwards.

 

[Joules]

Thanks joules. I love a gadget and I can see thos being in the collection soon.
Since this post I've been doing a bit of investigation to see if I can find out why my property is retaining so much moisture. I found it difficult to believe it was solely down to the cavity wall and drying cloths on rads in the winter is something we have always done for 30 plus years.

First thing I found was bathroom extractor fan. The outside vent was almost blocked. Fluff and debris had almost made the extractor useless. So in with the hand held vacuum to remove this.
My kitchen extractor vent was partially blocked though tbh the hob is not used often so this shouldn't contribute too much though again made sure it was working to max efficiency.

I went around all the exterior walls with my damp meter and found 2 walls. One in the pantry and one behind the kitchen cupboards that were showing raised levels. Both had concrete floors. I've removed the skirting and found high damp levels at ground level in a arc pattern. On the exterior to the damp patch were air bricks. Coincidence? Cold bridging? Or about 3 year ago I had the drive block paved and the finished level finished higher than the original (5inch below damp). Could it be splashing rain coming in. Anyway I had se damp rods from another job so I drilled the interior and fitted the rods. A couple of week should conclude if it's coming up or through.

Then yesterday I went into the loft to get the crimbo trimmings and the box they were in were swimming in water. I could see daylight from behind the stack which is getting sorted next. week. The box was only placed in that position since the loft was insulated so good or bad!
Good because it didn't leak into the main house and come through a ceiling and bad because I didn't know about it until I've gone for the Xmas trimming.

Plus. When I went back into the loft to return the empty Boxes I investigated the rest and noticed some staining to the new insulation so looks like I have another leek elsewhere though nothing visible.


So over the past few days I've found several problems that can contribute to the problem. I've had the dehumidifier running all day yesterday and this morning it was down to 58% and the windows had about 3 inch of moisture around the edges as last week they were swimming.

Hopefully if I remove as much as possible of the moisture then I can see if our usual lifestyle is ok going forwards.

Thanks. Another essential is an affordable Moisture Meter. I have two dehumidifiers one runs continuously in auto set at 60% in the conservatory being more off than on and the other is a very basic one used to dry laundry in a box room. In there the RH gets as high as 75% at 20oC making the dehumidifier very efficient at reducing humidity. A clothes horse filled with washing will dry in about 5 few hours.

Dehumidifiers are very hard to source at the moment but the buying criterion was low power consumption. The laundry one as measured on a true power meter consumes 150W and the other consumes 250W. I get some stick from her indoors about temperature-hygrometers in every room but the level of RH in the house is very weather dependant. Once it reaches 65% the battle starts to lower it.

 

[Murdoch]

I found it difficult to believe it was solely down to the cavity wall and drying cloths on rads in the winter is something we have always done for 30 plus years.

So if you've been drying clothes in the winter, inside for 30 years and the problem has only come up now then surely its the other "improvements" that have brought this to a head?

For moisture to go away there needs to be fairly decent ventilation - so have you over done the draft proofing?

 

[Andy1733]

So if you've been drying clothes in the winter, inside for 30 years and the problem has only come up now then surely its the other "improvements" that have brought this to a head?

For moisture to go away there needs to be fairly decent ventilation - so have you over done the draft proofing?

Possibly though as I've mentioned above the ventilation I already have were not working as they should which has been rectified.
Plan short term is dry the washing down stairs only and run the dehumidifier for the day it's drying. If I can get the moisture levels down then find a balance between ventilation and moisture levels and see how it goes. Obv from the replays piv is not the solution to my problems

 

[Andy1733]

It's been about a month since my last update and I've got on top of 95% of the problems.

As mentioned previously we don't dry clothes on the upstairs rads any more and this has reduced the condensation down to next to nothing. On the rare occasions it's frosty outside we are getting a 1/2 inch bit around the bottom edge of the window which imo is acceptable.

When we dry the clothes we run the dehumidifier until we get below 55%

The rising damp in the pantry has all but gone. Reading 0.6 on my damp meter from 1.9..

The damp behind the units are a different problem. After 3 weeks the damp wasn't improving so I decided to remove the air brick on the outside. It became quite clear on removing the brick that the cavity was full of rubble, debris and wet sand like material. This was about 4 inches above the top of the airbrick. After removing the rubble from around the airbrick of I pushed my hand upwards I could feel the insulation. I decided to remove every other brick along the damp proof course until I found an acceptable clear cavity.
The total distance I had to remove was about 4 MTR and I removed 4 rubble sacks full of debris. I bricked up the holes and fitted a new damp proof membrane. It's been about a week since I finished this and I've noticed the damp receding.
Strangely when I dry the washing the damp patch looks worst so maybe the cold wet wall is attracting condensation towards it.
I got myself one of those moisture readers mentioned above so I can monitor what's happening and I can see what I can tweek to rectify the problem.

 

[Andy1733]

Ow and another thing Ive altered is my heating settings.
I set the programme to run. 530am to 8am at 17 degree.. Then 330pm to 630pm at 17 degree. Then 630pm to 9pm at 19 degree. All other times were 10 degree.

I checked out the octopus app and noticed when the heating kicked in (530am,. 330pm,. 630pm) I was having a large spike in gas usage. This AVG over the 2 week I did this at 9.2kwh of gas per start time. Then would drop down to around 2kwh.
For the above settings I was using approx 65kwh of gas per day.

I then changed the settings to kick in at 530am at 17 degree and hold that till 630pm. Then raise to 19 degree till 9pm...
What has surprised me is the AVG usage is around 72kwh of gas per day for the last 3 weeks..

So basically I'm using only 7kwh of gas per day extra and keeping the heating/house above 17 degree. All day.

 

[Murdoch]

I don't think you can make comparisons of gas usage unless you record the outside temperature ......

 

[johnb2713]

Ow and another thing Ive altered is my heating settings.
I set the programme to run. 530am to 8am at 17 degree.. Then 330pm to 630pm at 17 degree. Then 630pm to 9pm at 19 degree. All other times were 10 degree.

I checked out the octopus app and noticed when the heating kicked in (530am,. 330pm,. 630pm) I was having a large spike in gas usage. This AVG over the 2 week I did this at 9.2kwh of gas per start time. Then would drop down to around 2kwh.
For the above settings I was using approx 65kwh of gas per day.

I then changed the settings to kick in at 530am at 17 degree and hold that till 630pm. Then raise to 19 degree till 9pm...
What has surprised me is the AVG usage is around 72kwh of gas per day for the last 3 weeks..

So basically I'm using only 7kwh of gas per day extra and keeping the heating/house above 17 degree. All day.

We used to run our gas boiler on timed thermostats to have 21 deg C morning and evening and then switch off overnight and during the day. In the recent cold spell I read up a bit about condensing boilers and it became apparent that I (and most others) wasnt running my boiler within its condensing range. We had a flow temperature of 60 deg C. I reduced the flow temperature down to 35 deg C and left the heating on 24/7. The net result was a warmer house and less gas usage dropped from 98 kWh per day to 72 kWh per day. During this time of constant on the outside temperature had dropped in the cold spell to -4 degC. It's well worth trying reducing flow temp to enable the boiler run in a more efficient range.