Do Building Regulations cover room thermostat location?

[caravanboy]

My house is undergoing renovations and as part of that the hot water cylinder is being moved from bathroom to utility room and changed to a mains pressure one. (FYI, work being done by a certified installer).

Anyway, the plumber is also changing all the old radiators for new more efficient finned ones, adding TRVs to all of them, and also adding an extra radiator in a previously unheated room. The existing 6 year old LPG boiler will be re-used.

The plumber mentioned this morning that current regulations require him to move the room thermostat from the upstairs hall to somewhere downstairs. I can't find any reference to that in the Part L1B document. Can anyone tell me if that is definitely the case or not? For various reasons we have nowhere downstairs that a Room Thermostat would give a sensible useful control (e.g. larger semi-heated dining/hall which has a wood burner that we use on some days but not all, front porch would be affected by cold air when opening front door or garage access door, lounge would be affected by another sometimes used wood burner, kitchen seems daft, etc etc). The existing upstairs landing position is ideal and we've used it there without issue for 18 months since we moved in.

Also, I see in the regs something about converting to two zone systems. That would be impractical for us since the pipework from each upstairs rad also drops down to the room below due to downstairs being solid floors. Because the water tank is being changed does that really mean we have to re-pipe the whole central heating system? The plumber hasn't mentione this so I probably just misinterpreted the docs I read.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[D_Hailsham]

There are no regulations requiring the thermostat to be placed downstairs. However it should be in an area which has a radiator without TRVs.

You haven't said where the upstairs stat is located; if it's on the landing it will get affected by heat rising up from downstairs, e.g the wood burner. So the boiler may get turned off before the other rooms on the same floor have reached temperature.

If all you are doing is changing the cylinder and replacing the rads, there is no requirement to re-pipe the house to make it two zone. In any case, zoning only has to be done if it is cost effective.

 

[caravanboy]

There are no regulations requiring the thermostat to be placed downstairs. However it should be in an area which has a radiator without TRVs.

You haven't said where the upstairs stat is located; if it's on the landing it will get affected by heat rising up from downstairs, e.g the wood burner. So the boiler may get turned off before the other rooms on the same floor have reached temperature.

If all you are doing is changing the cylinder and replacing the rads, there is no requirement to re-pipe the house to make it two zone. In any case, zoning only has to be done if it is cost effective.

Thanks, that's good to know. The upstairs landing does have a small rad which didn't have a TRV before and presumably will continue to not have one. You are also correct that every part of the upstairs landing would get some rising heat from the wood burner too since it is actually an open galleried landing with the open plan hall/dining room (with the larger wood burner) directly below it. The downstairs inner-hall is off that and has no radiators at all and we often have the doors to the lounge, kitchen and study closed so it wouldn't really get any direct heat at all. There just isn't an obvious place to put the stat!!! Perhaps the kitchen wall farthest away from the cooker is the only semi-sensible place?

Anyway, as long as it isn't a building regs requirement then we'll leave it where it is and I can always go wireless in the future if it becomes an issue.