wudhut

Hi, Having a frustrating time trying to find a well versed hydronic heating engineer in Melbourne Australia! The quality of those who have carried out a survey, is dubious and their written quotations are laughable - so vague as to be meaningless. As a result of our experiences so far, it seems (without starting the Ashes war all over again), we need an ex-pat UK engineer who can marry UK design standards with Aussie regulations and practices - are there any out there?

old.sparkles

Hi wudhut and welcome to BE

I've moved your thread over to our main Australia forum, but I'm not sure how much help we can offer.

Scotty1

Hi there, can't help on the Melbourne bit, but we put gas boosted hydronic heating in our new build a couple of years ago. The company we used were trained with a grant from an environmental fund to encourage sustainable heating. We did get a couple of other quotes from sydney but they were prohibitive. Happy to share experience if you have any questions. Love the heating it gives.

koalakim

Hi

Have you tried Fosters? A guy round the corner works for them, van branding must work as I remembered the name!

KK

Reasonable

We had bad experiences with them!

DaveandLinda

This guy is a British expat but based in Hobart:

http://www.hydronichome.com.au/

Don't know if he would be willing to travel to Melbourne. I don't have any experience so can't say if he is any good

Pomster

we have just had hydronic heating put in (underfloor/slab) by some guys my husband used to work alongside - he was doing aircon and they worked on heating in top end houses.

think they are called Hydronic Heating - run by two brothers Mark and Rob Keenan. Not sure how good it is yet as we have only just moved in and have not needed to switch it on yet.

wudhut

Hi Guys, Think we have found one in Gem Plumbing and Hydronic Heating. Bigger company than we really wanted to go with but at least they listened and talked sense. Still not impressed with the detail in the written quotation but maybe that is the norm.

Been difficult organising this from the UK for my son who unfortunately had a serious accident just at the crucial time in his building programme.

Thanks for the responses; when the job is done (estimate 4weeks) I'll be back to let you all know if we made the right decision!

Stevo88

Hi wudhut, really interested in this post and just wondering what your outcome was ? I am a time served British gas engineer of 8 years and decided to make the move down under (Melbourne) Three weeks ago. Did you end up having your 'hydronic' system installed ?

wudhut

Hi Steevo,
Been a very traumatic period since the original request! The short answer is yes, my son went ahead with the hydronic heating and from all accounts, just in time for a cold snap in Melbourne.

He found resistance to the concept of fitting central heating, never mind hydronic however, my son works from home a fair amount and the results have proved him right.

Think it might be helpful for you to chat to him, as he is reasonably knowledgeable on heating and can tell you where he found differences to the UK - send me your personal email address and I'll forward it on to him. He lives in the Ferntree Gulley area.

Cheers

ozzieeagle

If your going to run it with Gas rather than a heat pump, then you are definitely going down the wrong road. 100 pct guaranteed.

Electricity is already cheaper for heating than Gas in this country and the margins are going to get even wider.

BadgeIsBack

What's a heat pump?

I think what is important is that the heat you get has a bit of moisture.
The problem I have with reverse cycle is the dry air.

You can't beat a real fire!

GarryP

Think reverse cycle air con - it takes in electrical power to take a source of heat and split it into hotter and colder side. In normal air con mode the cold air goes into the house, and the hot air goes outside. Reverse the cycle and the reverse happens (surprising that).

Point is, because the power input is just used to 'split' the heat, it can have an efficiency of 400-600%. A neat trick.

Normally people just run the reverse cycle air con in heat mode in the winter (particularly if you have solar panels to power it during the day, better than wasting it on 8c per kWH).

However there is no reason not to pump that heat into heating up water for an hydronic system - you can still get >100% efficiency.

Although personally I'd go for simple air con units and a source of moisture if I were you.

BadgeIsBack

ok - funny because at times, reverse cycle does not seem to get much love on BE.
People tend to turn up their nose at them. We use ours a few days a year in summer and occasionally in winter if we can't light the fire. We prefer the wood burner but we don't mind the reverse cycle.

I remember being told they were very efficient (by a local) but because there is a sort of 'turn up nose at whatever a local says' default setting on BE to do with anything relating to 'lovely' central heating (or windows for that matter) I assumed they were (possibly) 'most decidedly NOT'.

I will take your word for it.

ozzieeagle

Daikin make a heat pump specifically for hydronic systems. ...I looked into them during my renovation. ...we went with 2 reverse inverter (heat pump) air cons at 6 and 4kw.....slashed my total energy bills 40pct.