I wish that heating engineers used a pipe bender. There are still 4 right angles to create flow disturbance. A nice smooth, bent pipe would be sooo much better, but 90° bends as so much simpler.
Agh this is a very frustrating problem, I’m not sure what else to suggest other than trying to contact Sharky technical support. I was on the phone with Adrian from Stockshed today, he’s received your email but not had a chance to look at it fully yet. Stockshed are very good, but they are a reseller, I think this is a question for Sharky directly.
Have you got some manual air release valves you can open to see if there’s any remaining air in the system?
As a side note the instructions for my Sika flow sensor that I had to install as part of my Samsung heatpump specify that the sensor should not be installed on a vertical downwards flow because of the increased possibility of air bubbles. I know Sharky don’t mention this, but if there is a bit of air still in the system it’s more likely it will be an issue since the meter is located on the downwards leg.
Kamstrup which uses the same ultrasonic measurement technique as Skarky advise against installed on a downward leg (D) but don’t go as far as prohibiting it:
I logged a support call directly with Diehl which went to their German helpdesk.
They punted it over to the UK support desk.
Who were going to get their local support technician to talk to me.
Only to change their mind and suggest I needed to report the issue to Stockshed!!
Agh what a nightmare. Is the meter manageable in its current state? Can you just avoid using higher flow rate? I run my system at 16 L/min, I didn’t notice any drop in performance when I reduced it down from 22 L/min. Assuming the flow rate is sufficient to deliver the required energy, running at a lower flow rate results in less pumping power required, therefore marginally higher COP.
On my Kamstrup heat meters, the default Meter-Bus IDs are the last 2 digits of the Serial Number. I notice the close-up of your meter (showing the E7 code) has 25 as the last 2 digits of the number below the barcode, so wondering if Diehl/Sharky follow the same convention. Does your friend’s meter have 59 as the last 2 digits there by any chance?
So we are now flat, with DN10 before and DN5 after as per the Sharky docs.
Guess what? It’s WORSE now than it was on the downward section.\
I’m all for giving up on this Sharky, I really am.
We had over 1000lph (16lpm) in heating mode yesterday, it was fine recorded with no issues.
But as soon as the hot water kicks in, even at just 700lph it craps out, errors and throws rubbish data to my emoncms and screwing up heat output data. It’s proper frustrating!!
My historical data is no ruined with a daily COP of 52.3!!!
Last thing I can see in the Sharky manual to try is…
We also urgently recommend installing the flow sensor in a tilted position (45°) in
order to remove possible air bubbles from the circuit.
After that, i’m out of suggestions apart from buy a Sontex?
I’ve heard nothing back from StockShed or Sharky themselves on this. That’s been poor too!!
I may be tempting fate but after much deliberation I’ve bought a 6m3/h (1" BSP thread) sharky 775.
Should be OK for the flow rates we’ll see with our HP (also checked with Stockshed) even though they are on the lower end of its rating. It also has really low pressure drop and matches the 28mm primaries.
Our system is being installed the week of the 20th so will report back on how it goes…!
Meanwhile it’s interesting that this larger unit does not have a tap for a temp sensor in the brass body - so you need 2 half inch tees one for each temp sensor…