Ideal Vogue & Opentherm via Honeywell T6 Lyric (wired version)

[Dan_Robinson]

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Toot toot

[DBMandrake]

That's fine then, if you understand how OpenTherm works then you understand that this is a boiler issue? The fact that Ideal have programmed the boiler to go to maximum and then modulate down is one issue.

Reminds me of the Potterton Puma in a flat we rented in a number of years ago - it was a modulating boiler but the control strategy was always to fire the burner at minimum burn and wait about 10 seconds for the flame to stabilise and the flow temperature to start rising before ramping up the burn to what it thought was appropriate for the flow temperature differential that needed making up to reach the set point. This meant a nice "gentle" and quiet start every time it started.

It then had a fault on the control board (a leak from the flow temperature sensor onto the PCB blew the whole corner off the board!) and when the control board was replaced under maintenance contract it was replaced with a pattern part - which was all fancy and microprocessor based with surface mount components, instead of the old 16 pin DIP discrete logic, rows of resistors, transistors and relays that filled the old board - probably less than 1/4 of the number of components. New and fancy so it must be better right ?

Wrong. The new microprocessor based board was programmed to always start the burner at FULL burn for at least 10 seconds and then throttle it back. Result - a massive WHOOMPFFF!! every time it started up which could be heard across the flat (especially in the early hours) and sometimes caused the whole boiler casing to shake due to the violence of igniting at full burn.

That's progress for you...

[richardc1983]

Of course when the burner is set to minimum the boiler won't overheat if the pump speed exceeds the flow rate required to get the heat away from the heat exchanger? Are you sure you don't have the pump speed or settings wrong?

I don't know Ideal boilers, but based on my experience and now what I have learnt over the past 3 months, I know Dutch boilers are by far the best to use with OpenTherm. I walk into a perfectly controlled testing facility each morning...

The pump isn’t adjustable directly only have min or max pump modulation. I’m gonna see what ideal come back with as it’s very poor running this.

[richardc1983]

Interesting post, yes exactly as it seems, that 10s is too much and causes too much heat to build up especially at lower system loads.

[Dan_Robinson]

Reminds me of the Potterton Puma in a flat we rented in a number of years ago - it was a modulating boiler but the control strategy was always to fire the burner at minimum burn and wait about 10 seconds for the flame to stabilise and the flow temperature to start rising before ramping up the burn to what it thought was appropriate for the flow temperature differential that needed making up to reach the set point. This meant a nice "gentle" and quiet start every time it started.

It then had a fault on the control board (a leak from the flow temperature sensor onto the PCB blew the whole corner off the board!) and when the control board was replaced under maintenance contract it was replaced with a pattern part - which was all fancy and microprocessor based with surface mount components, instead of the old 16 pin DIP discrete logic, rows of resistors, transistors and relays that filled the old board - probably less than 1/4 of the number of components. New and fancy so it must be better right ?

Wrong. The new microprocessor based board was programmed to always start the burner at FULL burn for at least 10 seconds and then throttle it back. Result - a massive WHOOMPFFF!! every time it started up which could be heard across the flat (especially in the early hours) and sometimes caused the whole boiler casing to shake due to the violence of igniting at full burn.

That's progress for you...

No, that's muppet engineers using dodgy parts and not setting the boiler up properly.

[richardc1983]

It really is stupid how they have designed it to run like this. Lyric asking for 41c which would be ok but we’re averaging 32c flow temp at this moment with the 10s cycling every few mins. Set point 22c and reported temp by lyric 20c so house doesn’t even feel warm enough at that temp and it’s quite mild outside.

When the burner comes on it ramps up and before you know it within 15s or so the flow temp has gone from 32 to 46c... then the flow temp quickly drops back to 32c flow before the next cycle starts.

Surely this is an inefficient use of gas and will cause more wear on parts.

[richardc1983]

[richardc1983]

[Dan_Robinson]

Right... Can't bring myself to read everything, but have skimmed through.

Definitely looks like a boiler issue, but there is a lot of misuse of terminology ;as well as ascerting facts that simply aren't so.




One thing to note (which may not be pertinent to this boiler), the high fire on ignition may be part of the software of the boiler that is there to establish whether or not the flame is stable.

If you are dealing with small loads, this can lead to temperature overshot. I'm doing this at the moment with my Intergas on OpenTherm.

I will also add that it s established recently that the Honeywell OpenTherm implementation doesn't bring Tmax modulation into the Ambient air is 1 degree +/- setpoint. Which IMHO is far too narrow.

However, as RB said above. It is the boiler's job to maintain the Tmax however it feels necessary within its own control logic.

I didn't relaid there was pump control parameters in the OT spec, but if there is, it would have next to no benefit in modern boilers, especially with their lightweight heat exchangers. Much better that the boiler looks after this. Although there are different methods. Linking to the burner is one and is equivalent to Δt to let intents and purpose. Δp is another.

I think it would be worth establishing from ideal if this overshoot is caused by this period of flame stability checking.

If the Lyric is asking for 35 degrees, the boiler should be acknowledging it.

Sensor accuracy is another thing, and some variations are bound to occur. These are room thermostats, not medical equipment. Even sensors in boilers can be out by some margin.

[Dan_Robinson]

And what was Lyric asking for at that moment?

[The EVOHOME Shop]

I didn't relaid there was pump control parameters in the OT spec, but if there is, it would have next to no benefit in modern boilers, especially with their lightweight heat exchangers. Much better that the boiler looks after this. Although there are different methods. Linking to the burner is one and is equivalent to Δt to let intents and purpose. Δp is another.

There isn't anything in the OT Spec Dan. Just like the Intergas, these parameters are how the boiler handles the pump when there is OT demand - just seems Ideal don't do it very well! This issue has got to be flow rate issues with Richard's system and obviously how the boiler handles initial firing of the appliance.

[richardc1983]

So it’s been escalated up very high now within ideal have my issues... today I got a call from the top guy in technical at ideal. He tells me there are 4 people currently having the same issues with Honeywell opentherm products on the ideal boilers. Basically he says that Honeywell have programmed the PCB’s for the boilers wrong and the software is controlling incorrectly. I’ve battled with this for nearly a year now but finally they agree that st present there is an incompatibility with ideal boilers on Honeywell opentherm controls. He said no such issues with the ideal opentherm controller.

He said the issues they have noticed are, target temp not being reached again due to cycling, overshoot of target temperature due to too high a flow temp and cycling & the boiler off dial not turning the boiler off. Boiler is behaving worse than a standard on off boiler. House was sat at 20c at 7.30 this morning when set point was 22c, it had come on at 5am, flow temp was 45c and it was cycling on and off to get the rads hotter to 70c had to turn set point to 24c.

Apparently as well the burner should be coming on at the low rate and then ramping up not the other way round. If for example requested flow temp is 60c then the requested flow rate goes to 40c the burner should not go off but ramp down to minimum and the system would naturally lose heat (minimum flow temp at minimum burner is about 30c.

I asked if they are doing a recall as imagine how many other people are having the same issues and compensating by turning it up full. He said no recall in mind and they would be in touch in two weeks to come replace the pcb once they are in from Honeywell.

[richardc1983]

Copy of email sent to ideal to escalate due to lack of response.

Please escalate this to management as a complaint, I have still had no acknowledgement or response to my email below sent on the 21st Sept followed by the 26th Sept. I’ve called numerous times in between and told it’s been passed to the R&D team, this was a month ago and I’ve still not heard anything. I’ve asked a manager to call me back to no avail? Is anyone in charge, it doesn’t seem so as no one does what they say they are going to do.

This product is clearly not worth the price that I paid when I thought I was getting a premium product with top of the range control logic. Not to mention the equally poorly designed Honeywell Lyric of which I am told by Honeywell that Ideal worked with them when they designed it.

As your aware this boiler was installed nearly a year ago now and has never worked as it should, your engineer who visited was also very unprofessional and didn’t understand opentherm so what hope is there when your own service people don’t know the technology inside the product and turn round and call it bu11sh!t! Perhaps you should be putting that terminology in your glossy product brochures when flogging your products as I’m sure customers would in their droves want a boiler with opentherm.

The technical support has been shocking, as a facilities manager I am used to engineers and companies trying to fob us off commercially but it’s evident the same is going on here.

Please can someone update me by lunchtime Thursday 26th or I will be taking this further as your product is not doing as it should (see email below). You blame Honeywell and say that it’s the lyric requesting the flame to be so high, yet they blame you and say it’s the boiler doing what it sees fit. Why do you need the burner to come on at such a high rate when the flow temp requested by the T6 is 32c? Yet when you select “service mode min rate” you can maintain a flow temp of 30c WITHOUT cycling as the burner comes on at the lowest rate and doesn’t put too much heat into the system to cause cycling.

Perhaps you don’t understand what I’m saying so I’ll try these analogy’s, replace the mph with degrees Celsius.

Analogy 1: You live next to a dual carriageway, you set off at 20mph & pull out onto a 70mph carriageway, you floor your foot on the gas in a controlled way to achieve 70mph speed asap as you need to get upto this speed quickly. Then once you’re at that speed you can level out and maintain that speed with just the right amount of pedal pressure on the gas.

Analogy 2: You live next to a road that has a 30mph limit, you set off from stop, you floor your foot on the gas pedal causing wheel spins due to too much gas thus causing wasted energy and overshoot of speed.

Analogy 3: You live next to a road that has a 30mph limit, you set off gently from stop with your foot gently on the gas and slowly bring the car upto that 30mph limit maintaining the speed nicely.

Analogy 4: You want to achieve 30mph so you floor the gas pedal to achieve 30mph asap but you cause wheel spins and overshoot the speed to 40mph and because of this you take your foot off the gas and the car comes to a stop completely to which you then start Analogy 4 again...

Do you see where I am going with this... it’s exactly the same... your boiler is.

Correctly using analogy 1 when system is starting from cold, it then follows analogy 2 adhering to the speed limits but then if it cycles off due to hot water demand or the thermostat has cycled off it then follows analogy 4 when it should be following analogy 3 to regulate the lower flow temp being requested. This is poor logic to have it cycling all the time you wouldn’t drive your car this way as it would be seen as inefficient as well as not practical or comfortable.

I’ve sent videos, I’ve sent detailed emails, phone calls and in short of sending the last will and testament can someone please respond with a resolution as this is not acceptable customer service. I’ve suggested the resolution and what I would like from this.

[HenGus]

Richard - I can understand your frustration. Am I reading your post correctly in that Ideal is saying that this is a Honeywell/Honeywell problem given that Honeywell manufacture both Evohome and the boiler PCB? I appreciate that Honeywell is a huge organisation and I doubt that the two items are manufactured in the same country. When I looked at the Ideal Vogue, I recall asking whether the boiler was Opentherm compatible and the response was 'Yes'. That said, nowhere that I can find does it list Opentherm compatible devices. I had a similar concern about the Atag. The literature clearly states that the Atag iS is fully Opentherm capable but only the Atag One controller is listed.

Is this not a case of 'caveat emptor'? I ask because I only went for the Opentherm solution knowing that I could revert back to non-Opentherm control if necessary. As it so happens, after a lengthy learning process, not helped by summer and no CH, the Atag is performing as I would expect with return flow temperatures in the mid 40s. Even with just HW selected, the boiler takes about 15 minutes to get to the max TSet temperature of 70C.

[richardc1983]

Ideal and Honeywell we’re passing the book to each other for the last year. Now the issue is the boiler PCB firmware or software is incorrectly programmed by Honeywell. It works fine apparently with ideals opentherm controller do not sure why the software would not let Honeywell’s controller to controller work properly. Surely it’s a standard language protocol.