Another Google Nest Thermostat Y-Plan Install

I had something similar, also oil fired boiler, but in my case C Plan not Y Plan and with two pumps. How the original house owners used it I don't know, it was in a mess, had to go outside and down a set of steps and go into what was a garage and now a flat and plug in the pump. And it had at least 4 independent supplies.

So now all from one battery backed supply and added to motorised valves and relays to make it all controlled as it should be. I am using the T1 and T2 as that was the main reason for selecting Nest Gen 3, I have only two wires flat to main house, and they carry all the commands and power to the wall thermostat. I did consider a cradle, but how can one power the cradle during a power cut? The USB supply would need to be battery backed, which defeats the whole idea of having the system running from one single UPS supply.

What I may do is fit a second wireless thermostat in parallel placed in the living room, it would not matter if the batteries went flat as central heating will still work, and it will not matter if I light a fire in the grate as the hall one will still keep the system running, although the TRV's in the living room will stop living room being heated.

But either the thermostat needs to be total battery powered, or mains powered from same source as boiler, it will not work once the USB supply is lost, so the USB supply needs to come from the same FCU as the boiler, so may as well use the T1 and T2 options.

OK I have solar power, so even with a loss of grid power my freezers and central heating will still work, nothing else will work, but I have lived through the Winter of discontent and will never again rely on grid power for heating, once bitten twice shy.

I decided the only thing I could do was make out my own wiring diagram C_Plan_My_HouseS.jpgI still made an error, needs two relays really, but it works well enough. The oil boiler does not have a run on in my case, so has to use C or Y plan so thermo syphon can cool boiler into the DHW, no power to three port valve means it goes to DHW.

I sat there for ages tugging each wire to find out what each wire did, plus checking with meter. It is long winded, and clearly the installers could not be bothered, also the plumbing was up the creak, they clearly thought with two pumps they could control two zones, this did not work, when only one pump was running it forced water in reverse direction through the other pump, I have noted installers name, and this is on my black list of tradesmen I will never employ.

Although I can see where some wires go on your set up, I can't see where they all go, and to try and give you instructions put y with x may have some errors, hence answering in general terms.

It seems you have 9 cables, left to right.
1) Black Motorised valve orange (switched live) (9), grey (hot water off), brown & white (heating on)(4) and blue (neutral).
2) White Programmer
3) White
4) White
5) White Programmer
Next group
6) White
7) White Thermostat Power
8) Gray
9) White Thermostat Switching
If you try to complete the labels likely you can find errors, you can't do it without making notes, that's how I did mine and I wrote numbers on each cable so I could reference them. When I did it we did not have solar panels and back up battery, so it would have been easy to use USB power from any socket, now glad I didn't.
 
Take a break!
The point is you might have done nothing wrong. If you haven't touched anything else in the wiring centre, then all you have done is linked out a stat and replaced the controller.
The problem may be coincidentally with the valve. If that is the case, then rewiring the centre still won't get you anywhere!
 
So I'm looking into the wiring deviation from the standard Danfoss center. Can someone explain to me what 14-16 are for? The Cyl Stat stuff? For some reason, the previous cowboy bridged 15-16 with the bridge wire usually found between 12-13 for Boiler and Pump to start simultaneously (which would make perfect sense so no idea why anyone would mess with that setup).

@ericmark You bring some good points but that's what the Manual button on the Heatlink is for I suppose. I'm not in an area with power cuts but I'm sure I can get a next-day delivery on Amazon for a UPS if I see **** hitting the fan economy/country scale wise :ROFLMAO:.
 
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Take a break!
The point is you might have done nothing wrong. If you haven't touched anything else in the wiring centre, then all you have done is linked out a stat and replaced the controller.
The problem may be coincidentally with the valve. If that is the case, then rewiring the centre still won't get you anywhere!
Yes agreed he could be hunting for a fault he has not created.
Can someone explain to me what 14-16 are for?
Yes with the Y Plan the default is DHW, so to stop heating the DHW you need to power the grey wire to move the valve fully over, seems odd I know but you need power to turn it off. This is how inside of the valve is wired. mid-position-valve.jpg This is only true with Y Plan so with Y Plan both normal closed and normal open contacts in the tank thermostat are used, the normal closed fires the boiler when you just want DHW and goes direct to boiler it does not go vie the three port valve, the normal open powers the valve all the way when domestic hot water is hot enough. It is the same with the programmer both DHW contacts are used.

I do see what you mean, it seems 14 - 16 are unused. But they will be linked to 6 and 7 so maybe connected there?
 
Well I don't have a Cylinder Stat but I have an old immersion heater that I suspect is not working. There's no apparent wiring that I can identify for it coming to this box.

I'm quite stumped atm. I tried to arrange the center wiring box as per its diagram but I'm having trouble figuring out the Grey boiler wire in relationship with valve movements and itself switching On/Off. I've had limited success with different configurations, feels like I'm close all the time but much like a truth table, I get some things working while others are false. ie. CH on works but HW won't, then HW will work but CH won't, or both work but the boiler never shuts off once it starts. Etc. Atm I can't get anything to work after I've messed around with it so much, but I know it's close . Strangely, as I went along redoing it all, I've moved away from Room Stat side to Cyl Stat, which I'm not sure it's right.
image.jpg


I appreciate the help. Hope to be able to get this over the line today as I'm leaving for London for a week and I'll forget everything...

I'm having trouble with 11 and 12 and 15 I think. 11 is mains power essentially but in any diagram or example I've seen only the L for the heatlink is in there. This makes no sense to me as the boiler and pump can never start without any commonality with 11. That's my understanding and that's what I can observ when I don't respect this.

So I think some wires need to be joint connections or bridged together and I can't figure out which. So from one place the valve needs to initiate move, pump and boiler need to start, and then another place to shut off.

The problem is if I common all Ls 11-12-13 and then the diagram tells me to also link 13-14 then the pump is constantly going because of constant L from 11.

I suspect the diagram for Mid Position System isn't entirely suitable for my installation, despite it seemingly being a simple Y Plan.
image.jpg


If you look at my initial pictures it doesn't seem like I had any Cyl Stat. Which would explain why the immersion heater never seemed to work regardless of wall On/Off. But also I can't find any wires going to it so perhaps not.


I've only moved to this house about 3 weeks ago so learning as I go (first time buyer).
 
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Grey is hot water off, or in 16 it’s for the cylinder thermostat satisfied, which won’t work if you’ve no cylinder thermostat. An immersion heater wouldn’t be wired in there, it would have its own feed.
 
The Grey for the boiler I meant. I've only got Brown, Grey and Earth and Blue on the Boiler.

Brown seems to me like it should be always L, but then where do I put its Grey? Link it with HW Off? What about CH how does that tell the boiler to turn Off?
 
The immersion heater doesn’t use the cylinder thermostat, the 3 port does. An immersion heater has its own thermostat.

Re: heating - the 3 port turns it off via the room thermostat
 
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This seems to work. Can someone check the logic of the cables please? The HW does seem to take a while to turn On so I'm thinking maybe there's a conflict on the Orange and HW On (6 and 8, which I linked into 12)
WhatsApp Image 2023-10-14 at 11.28.42_055d0d3d.jpg

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I created a little table map for how things are atm:
1697280156894.png

12 is the link between Valve HW, Heatlink HW and Boiler Switch Grey. Is that correct?

Also is my understanding correct that this Danfoss Center Wiring console is nothing but a junction box and it doesn't do anything else? So all that matters is to link up the wires together and there's no actual switches/solenoids activating anything? So all the labels are just arbitrary?
 

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I am wondering if it is Y Plan? Can't see how a Y Plan can work without a tank thermostat, however C Plan can work without one, my system is C Plan and yet has two two port valves, they are to select flat or main house, not CH or DHW. So may be your valve is also not to select between CH and DHW but between two zones of the central heating?

Nest Gen 3 will work on C plan but they don't publish how to connect it. I worked it out shown C-Plan_basic_Nest.jpgthe feed out uses com rather than feed in, not a good system as DHW is controlled by time alone. I use solar panels and an iboost+ now for summer DHW, but as said default with three port valve is DHW, the main difference between C and Y plan is with C the DHW is thermosyphon but with Y it is pumped.

With a non condensing boiler it does not matter if water returns hot, it does with a condensing boiler it will reduce boiler output.
 
It is definitely split between HW and CH. The HW pipes go to the HW tank and the CH pipes go to the CH loop.

I am also wondering about this immersion heater in my HW tank. It doesn't seem to work overnight as it should as I am on Economy 7. I am thinking I should switch my plan off E7 now because that Immersion heater either is faulty or is not hooked up to work. If I don't use my Oil Boiler for at least 1h of HW every day, I have no HW.
 
Your not the only one with that problem, run my boiler and water will stay hot for 3 days, but the immersion heater which is powered from an iboost+ so is only active when we have solar power spare, will only last over one day, reason is the immersion only heats up top 9" in the tank.

The fact you are using both the n/o and n/c contacts on DHW does seem to point to Y Plan.

When I moved in here, I could not believe a heating engineer had stuck his label on the boiler, if I had wired up a heating system like I found it no way would I want to admit it. Supplied from two different distribution units to start with, I had to go outside, down a set of steps, and plug in the pump to get central heating in the main house.

It had a Danfoss 3060 programmer, clearly marked "H - Twice W - Once" etc. But there were only two wires main house to flat where boiler is, so it could have never controlled the DHW and CH independently and with a C Plan impossible to have CH without DHW, so it could have never worked.
 
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