Old System reconfigure

[hazey7]

Hello All,

My new (old) house has a glowworm hideaway boiler. There are no separate controls for the hot tap water and the central heating, ie, switch the system on and the boiler heats the tap water and the radiator water. The thermostat just cuts the heating circulating pump in and out as required.
I was wondering if this was very inefficient, all my other houses had separate controls. Should I get the boiler piping reconfigured? Some hand-written instructions at the boiler tell me to switch off the pump in the summer to stop the radiators coming on...sounds a bit ropey...


Any advice would be appreciated

 

[MANDATE]

It don't sound any more ropey than mine. A roomstat in the lounge switches pump on or off according to desired room temperture. A boilerstat switches the boiler on or off according to desired boiler temperture.
The hot water plus bathroom radiator are gravity fed.
I have no motorised valves or cylinder stat and its been in use since 1973.
I would say quite quite effective and efficient.
I do have a timer and switch so I don't need to turn heating on in summer.but when I do, all it does is switch the pump on.
The downside is that you can't have heating without hot water but I don't consider that to be a problem.
I would probablely advise adding a timer/programmer then you can come back to a warm home.

 

[oilman]

Try this for upgrade information.

 

[ChrisR]

No disrespect to others but I think it's crap! You have no proper control over your HW temp, and it will take a long time to heat up. On a cold morning, as your ch & hw will come on togeether, the house will heat slowly.
Change it to fully pumped. I also recommend programmable room thermostats.

 

[oilman]

This might be a better reference. It refers to the building regs which you should comply with if you are altering your system. The regulations are quite a good guide in some respects, even if you don't think much of regulations in general.

Refer to this for various options. S-plan gives less problems than Y-plan in IMO and you could consider two pumps instead, the shut off is not as definite but a pump is cheaper than a valve.

 

[ChrisR]

One way to improve things is to add a pump to the gravity loop, with a cylinder stat and a pipe stat - so the pump comes on if the cylinder stat is calling and the pipe is hot. The feed/vent arrangement may need to be altered. More options for that if the boiler has a high limit stat.

Can be a lot less work than a trad rip out and replace.

 

[hazey7]

Cheers lads, thanks for the advice.

Will definitely be fitting some kind of hot water tank stat and pump or motorised valve with its own elec supply from its own timer. This way I can just have boiler concentrating on the heating only in the morning when its really needed and the hot water is still (hopefully) hot from the previous night.

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how much this would cost for me to get a professional in? Ballpark of course!

 

[ChrisR]

£250 - £300, depending.