Honeywell HR92 LCD reversal

[benwillcox]

Hi all, I'm new here and found the forum whilst researching the Evohome system.

I've recently bought a Evohome system with 17 HR92UK units, matching Valencia TRV bodies, and the hot water kit.
All the control side of stuff I've already installed including the wall mount kit for the touchscreen, and wiring in the two BDR91 for the heating and hot water zone valves (S-plan system).

So far all good. I've quite a few radiators without TRVs at all, and the ones that are there are looking a bit crusty so have decided to replace them all. I also have the matching lockshield valves but may keep the existing ones if they look ok to minimise disruption and potential for causing extra leaks (but probably lock them all open and use the internal balancing function in the Valencia TRV bodies).
4 of the rads are towel rads with the TRVs mounted horizontally, and after a bit of research I discovered there is a european version of the HR92 with the display reversed, which would be ideal.

The supplier would take 4 units back so that I can source the euro versions elsewhere, however I wondered if the LCD could be flipped? I see this question has been asked several times with the answer simply being no, but it does seem to me that the LCD panel could be reversed within the housing if it can be disassembled.
So the question is, has anyone disassembled the HR92 to the point where the LCD housing is separated, to see if the panel can be reversed 180 degrees? It looks like the LCD housing can be prised apart, but I don't want to break anything by forcing it if there is a special technique for disassembly.
I'm an electronics engineer and comfortable working down to component level, but breaking plastic is not what I want to do!
Yes the easy answer is to send them back and get 4 x euro versions, but the quicker method would be to reverse the LCD panel if possible!

Ben

[Meh]

It’s not worth it because the ribbon likely isn’t long enough even if the plastic clips inside that hold it could be fudged to switch the lcd.

The EU version is available in the UK in a few places including amazon (prime as well). Look for THR092HRT which is the German version and identical to the WE European version.

Also that way the Honeywell logo is also the right way round

[benwillcox]

Thank you, yes I expect you are right! I will go for the easiest option and just return the 4 UK versions and buy 4 EU versions instead.

Just finished my install this afternoon (bar one radiator, which needs a bit of extra pipework adjustment at a later date). Took me the best part of 2 days to fit 17 Velencia TRVs to a variety of radiators, some with but the majority without TRVs. Obviously the pipework never matches up exactly so it's been a bit of a mission, cutting off old olives, trimming back some pipework, extending others, slightly raising some rads and slightly lowering others to get everything matching up. Would have been a lot easier if it was a straight TRV body replacement but where's the fun in that!

Thanks,
Ben

[DBMandrake]

I feel your pain. Counting draining and refilling it took me a full day to replace the valve bodies (and lockshield valves) of my 9 radiators with Valencia's - I have the added complication that most of my radiators are 8mm pipe - you can't re-use the same stub of pipe and same olive in a new valve body like you typically can with 15mm as the adaptors differ between brands and are usually destructive compression types that are single use.

Most of my pipes were also pulled tight through the floor to reach as it was and/or were covered in paint, scratches, were kinked etc... on most of them I ended up going under the floor, (empty crawl space) cutting them a couple of feet back to good pipe and using solder ring joiners to terminate with new fresh pipe for the new valves and a bit more slack to work with... A lot of extra work but the end result was tidy and leak free with pipes no longer pulled tight at jaunty angles...

In the process I discovered two radiators suffering from low heat output didn't have pipes blocked due to sediment build up on the walls as I expected, they both had kinks in the pipe under the floor several feet from the radiators! (Presumably due to rough handling by whoever ran the pipes) So I ended up replacing a couple of metres of pipe on those radiators to go back before the kinks and both radiators warm up quickly and put out full heat now.

Half a day crawling under a house with a flashlight, blow torch and bag full of soldering goodies and coils of 8mm pipe is not really my idea of fun!

[benwillcox]

Thanks for posting, comforting to hear that I'm not the only one, it's a bit like therapy to share the pain!

I've done plenty of 15mm copper work in the past, as well as plumbing an entire heating system in 15 and 22mm plastic in another house, but this one is 10mm and I've never worked with that before. I find dealing with existing old pipework much harder than plumbing in brand new stuff, working with old crusty fittings of different sizes.

I wish I had been able to go under the floors and run new tails but in this house the tails all come out of the walls even on the upstairs. This makes it all the more worrying as any mistakes could be disastrous as I didn't want to start ripping walls open!
I'm glad you mentioned about the olives - this is one thing I hadn't anticipated, is that the reducing olives don't like to be re-used. I got away with it on a few rads, but I did have a couple of minor leaks discovered on my first test pressurising. When I took the joints apart I found that the reducer olives had split into two, and looked like they had been over compressed originally as they had cut quite deeply into the pipe. The safest thing was for me to cut off the last 10mm at the compression line, drop the rad 10mm on the brackets and scrape/sand away all the old paint back to fresh shiny copper. Much more reassuring applying a new olive on a fresh piece of pipe.
Still had to also trim about 5mm off each radiator tail too, to get the width correct between the pipework.

I had a head-scratcher with a towel rad that had quite short stubs coming out of a tiled wall into what I think were 3/4" lockshield fittings, which when removed were too short to go into the new TRV and lockshield especially after cutting off the compressed last bit. The only way to do it was to solder an 10/15mm external reducer to take up the length. From previous experience I know that trying to solder to old pipe that can be wet inside is a bad idea and I always now try and use compression fittings for the coupling to older pipework. Luckily I was able to dry the pipe on the inside and there was no continual drip of water which sometimes can be an issue, got the outside nice and shiny, and it soldered a treat - phew!

[DBMandrake]

Thanks for posting, comforting to hear that I'm not the only one, it's a bit like therapy to share the pain!

I've done plenty of 15mm copper work in the past, as well as plumbing an entire heating system in 15 and 22mm plastic in another house, but this one is 10mm and I've never worked with that before. I find dealing with existing old pipework much harder than plumbing in brand new stuff, working with old crusty fittings of different sizes.

Yep, working with 15mm and 22mm is a breeze compared to the smaller stuff. I converted my gravity hot water system to S-Plan which meant cutting out some of the old pipe work and running quite a bit of new 22mm pipe including elbows, T joints etc, all soldered, fitting two new 2 port valves and I actually quite enjoyed the work.

And 15mm stuff if you need to you can usually reuse the same pipe end and olive when swapping the valve body as long as the lengths match up.

I don't have any experience with 10mm but with 8mm it's usually not possible to reuse a joint - sometimes even trying to refit the same pipe back into the same valve will leak as the size adaptor are sometimes single use, especially the split types. Which means cutting the pipe back past the old adaptor and fitting a new one. In one room the crawl space underneath was too cramped so I had to solder the joiner on the top side of the floor with only a few inches of pipe sticking out of the floor. Nervous times!

I wish I had been able to go under the floors and run new tails but in this house the tails all come out of the walls even on the upstairs. This makes it all the more worrying as any mistakes could be disastrous as I didn't want to start ripping walls open!

I'm guessing concrete flooring with the pipes running through the walls instead ?

I'm glad you mentioned about the olives - this is one thing I hadn't anticipated, is that the reducing olives don't like to be re-used. I got away with it on a few rads, but I did have a couple of minor leaks discovered on my first test pressurising. When I took the joints apart I found that the reducer olives had split into two, and looked like they had been over compressed originally as they had cut quite deeply into the pipe.

Depending on the type of reducer it can be normal for it to split into two parts when tightened - some are designed to split when you tighten them, the two pieces then form overlapping cones such that when you tighten further it clamps down tightly on the pipe and makes a seal. My old peggler bulldog valves used this type of reducer and looked similar to this:



You have to tighten them fairly tight before the two parts shear and it's difficult to tell when they have done so - if you don't tighten them enough to shear into two pieces they will not seal properly! I had that on one where I replaced one of my old bulldog valves before I realised what was happening. And if you over tighten them it will crush the pipe and start leaking. I'm not fond of these splitting type reducers as you need to be very careful to fit them right and use the right amount of torque or they will leak.

The 8mm version of the Valencia has a solid, single piece reducer of a different design which is MUCH better and does not have to shear to work. They are much more forgiving of variations in tightening torque and very easy to avoid leakage, in fact I did not have any leaks with any of them, they all sealed perfectly first time.

Like the shearing type though once tightened they dig into the pipe and can't be reused on a different pipe as it's impossible to get them off the pipe again.

The safest thing was for me to cut off the last 10mm at the compression line, drop the rad 10mm on the brackets and scrape/sand away all the old paint back to fresh shiny copper. Much more reassuring applying a new olive on a fresh piece of pipe.
Still had to also trim about 5mm off each radiator tail too, to get the width correct between the pipework.

Yeah when fitting new seals it's critical to have smooth clean undamaged pipe. Any grit near the olive and it won't seal, or a deep scratch. I find kitchen scourers (the plastic abrasive type not steel wool) work great for cleaning up old tarnished copper pipe for reuse - they're rough enough to get muck and tarnishing off but not so harsh to scratch the copper.

I had a head-scratcher with a towel rad that had quite short stubs coming out of a tiled wall into what I think were 3/4" lockshield fittings, which when removed were too short to go into the new TRV and lockshield especially after cutting off the compressed last bit. The only way to do it was to solder an 10/15mm external reducer to take up the length. From previous experience I know that trying to solder to old pipe that can be wet inside is a bad idea and I always now try and use compression fittings for the coupling to older pipework. Luckily I was able to dry the pipe on the inside and there was no continual drip of water which sometimes can be an issue, got the outside nice and shiny, and it soldered a treat - phew!

I prefer solder joints for joints where ever possible myself - as long as you do it properly and they test OK they last pretty much forever, but you can't solder them while there is water in the pipe nearby as it completely saps the heat away... which means trying to do it while the pipes are drained. And it's "fun" trying to do it on a short stub out of a wall with a heat shield mat so you don't set the skirting on fire!