The Borg at your home, step by step
Is the verdict positive after your Inventory Interview? Is the Borg a good match for your home? After this great start, we will guide you through a brief sequence of steps, from quote to placement in your home.
From quote to placement in your home
The parts of the Borg T4 explained
The ingenious interplay between the different parts of the Borg accomplishes that your home uses heat from the buffer tank when the electricity price is high. The buffer tank is charged with heat at times when there is a lot of sun and wind - and the electricity prices are therefore low. And the beauty of it is that this is all automatically arranged for you!
The heat battery contains approximately 4.000 liters of water. That is an enormous storage facility, measuring around 4x3x2 meters (lxwxh). Luckily, it is out of sight, underground! Your heat pump converts electricity into heat, which you store in the battery. Whenever you want, you use the heat from your buffer tank.
The connection set consists of two boxes that together make sure the heat battery, the heat pump, and the home are in close connection. The central hub! A low-pressure connection set that is always placed somewhere on the ground floor - and a high-pressure connection set that can be placed wherever you want. For example, in the attic.
The wiring harness is the underground connection between the buffer and the low-pressure connection set. It contains all the sensors, water, and power lines necessary for communication between these components.
The Borg Control Box is a smart and predictive controller. It receives its strategy from the cloud and issues commands to the heat pump and heat battery. The data it uses as input are the weather forecast, dynamic electricity prices, and knowledge about the heat demand of the home in a certain (expected) weather type.
In an app on your phone, you can see how full the buffer is, and how much money you have saved.
Curious if you're Borg-ready? Do the QuickScan!
Veelgestelde vragen
The buffer tank is designed in such a way that it is strong enough to support a moving van above it on the driveway, for example.
Important: there is a good reason there are no moving parts in the buffer tank. Nothing can break because of wear and tear. The parts that you occasionally want to access for maintenance are in your home. We even update the software remotely.
The connection set is installed in your home. It consists of a low-pressure cabinet and a high-pressure cabinet. These are both approximately the size of a heat interface unit of district heating.
The high-pressure cabinet releases the heat for your heating and hot water. It can be placed anywhere in the home. If you are going off gas, the location of the boiler is a logical spot. All the pipes are already there.
This high-pressure connection box also comes with the Borg Control Box (Wi-Fi box format). This receives the strategy from the cloud and issues commands to the heat pump and the buffer tank.
The low-pressure cabinet is always placed on the ground floor and preferably as close as possible to the buffer tank. This could be in a boiler room in your home, an insulated garage, or a shed in your garden. From this cabinet, a high-pressure pipe goes to the high-pressure cabinet.
The location of the heat pump is pretty flexible. As long as it goes somewhere between the low-pressure and the high-pressure cabinet. This could be in the attic, on the roof, in a boiler room somewhere in the home, but also in the insulated shed or garage.
In the case of new construction, the buffer tank can be placed under the home (within the area of the foundation). For an existing home, the buffer will be in the garden or under the driveway.
To place the buffer tank, a pit of approximately 5x4x2 meters (lxwxh) is needed.
Depending on the type of soil, sometimes straight walls are not possible, but a slope is needed to make a solid pit. This requires more space.
During the Borg Inventory Interview, the best location to place the buffer at your home is examined. Expertise from external experts may be needed.
A (small) excavator is needed to dig the hole. The vehicle must of course be able to reach the spot.
The rule of thumb for digging in the garden is:
- In the case of a foundation on piles, the digging takes place at least 2 meters from the facade.
- In the case of a foundation on steel, the digging takes place at least 4 meters from the facade.
The first question, of course, is whether you have the space to place the underground buffer tank.
To use the Borg, you need an (all-electric) heat pump. For this, the home must be sufficiently insulated to retain heat properly.
It is also important to remember that a heat pump works most efficiently when heating at low and medium temperatures. So, it's best if your home is heated with underfloor heating or convectors.
The Borg is not suitable for homes heated by hot-air heating or district heating.
A rough estimate of the costs to place the system is € 3.000 to € 8.000 incl. VAT for a newly built house and € 6.000 to € 11.000 incl. VAT for an existing house. This depends on the accessibility of the location where the buffer tank will be placed. Is drainage needed, must the excavated soil be removed or can it remain in another place in the garden, etc.
In an existing home, modifications are probably also needed to make the house and installations Borg-ready. For example, installing and relocating plumbing and connection points for the connection set. Perhaps you want to insulate your shed or garage to accommodate the low-pressure connection set? If you don't have a heat pump yet, those are also costs you'll want to factor in.
So, costs for these home modifications depend on the baseline situation of your home. The installer who visits you after the Borg Inventory Interview can make a good estimate.
For new construction it is straightforward: you include the Borg in your design.
For thorough renovation and preservation of your existing home, it may be just as easy as for new construction. When your home and its installations are completely overturned, the Borg is easy to fit in.
The Borg Smart Software combines data from the temperature in the buffer tank, the weather forecast, dynamic energy prices up to 34 hours ahead, and the expected heat demand in the home for a particular type of weather.
With this information, the software knows how much energy is needed to heat the home for the next few days. We then know how necessary it is to recharge the buffer tank and thus if it is necessary to purchase energy at this time.
Weather conditions determine not only the heat demand in the home but also how efficiently the heat pump can generate that heat (Coefficient of Performance or COP).
The smart software constantly looks for the times when the COP is as high as possible, and the price is as low as possible. The software makes these calculations and trade-offs several times a day. In this way, the buffer tank is always prepared for the heat demand in the home and can constantly çherry-pick when it comes to the cost of heating the buffer. Now that's smart!