Central heating

[CountryFan]

I have these ones . Do they need to be fully open . Thanks for your help mate

It depends as the heating system needs to be balanced. As above it seems likely a stuck microswitch in the motorised valve.

 

[Mottie]

I’m surprised nobody has chipped in "It’s not a pump, it’s a circulator……"

 

[ericmark]

What is this pump and what does it do .

circulates the water.

And what is the best number to have it on .

lowest that will work

2nd my heat does not seem to turn down .

this is controlled by the thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) and lock shield valve in the main.

Should the valves on the radiators be fully open .

No.

So the system is, the pump circulates the water either through the radiators if the TRV is open, and the by-pass valve if all TRV's are closed, and the boiler monitors the return temperature and adjusts output, so the return water is cool enough to gain the latent heat from the flue gases.

This system has a flaw, the boiler would never switch fully off, it would cycle off/on all the time, so we try to include a method to turn it fully off, the traditional method was to put a wall thermostat in a downstairs room, with no alternative heating, and normally kept cool, and no outside doors, there is often no such room. So there are other methods, like the TRV linked to a hub, and the hub turns the boiler on/off, or up/down if that type of thermostat.

The boiler often does more than heat one set of rooms, either zones of rooms, or room and domestic hot water (DHW) and to do this we have zone valves, inside the zone valves there is often a micro switch and if that switch sticks closed, then the boiler will not stop running.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have this one . But it's near the front door . Probably the coldest part of the house . Is this why the radiators are so hot . Because this is cold .

As a check - turn that thermostat down to minimum, less than 10 then check you radiators, after an hour. They should all be completely cold.

 

[ericmark]

I have this one . But it's near the front door . Probably the coldest part of the house . Is this why the radiators are so hot . Because this is cold .
The lockshield valve. Should I have this fully open mate . Sorry to be a pain . I'm a joiner and this is all new to me .
Cheers mate

Had same problem with mother's house, long large radiator along the wall, then a doorway, then the thermostat then another door. Theory is great, but to get circulation with a staircase opposite the radiator is simply not going to happen. So close the lock shield valve, so rest of house can heat up, and open door, and hall freezing cold, open up the lock shield valve, so hall is warm, and rest of house is cold.

Only method seemed to be to fit a thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) the mechanical TRV has a massive droop, (difference between on and off temperatures) and it is analogue, so set at say halfway between 2 and 3, it would start to close at 17°C and not fully close until 20°C so a wall thermostat set at 19°C would switch off in fullness of time, but it would take long enough so rest of house warm first, but from 6°C after door opened to 17°C recovery was fast. This was OK with a simple warm thermostat.

But I moved to a programmable thermostat, so now for it to work, the TRV also needed to be programmable, this is more of a problem, as the droop on an electronic TRV head is more like 1°C not 3°C, so it becomes harder to set up. So start to look at linked TRV heads, the Drayton Wiser system will auto combine the wall thermostat and TRV head if both assigned the same room name, and the Kasa TRV head can have remote sensors to control it.

The main problem, is the installers, don't live in the homes they install the systems into, except their own home, and users often have no idea of the options available. To get someone to say, I have use Tado, Tapo (Kasa), Evohome, Wiser, Hive etc. And you set it up like this, seems to be rare, we get the "we do it this way, because we have always done it this way." brigade, who are still living in the 80's before we had condensing boilers, I have also worked with the old one pipe system, steam goes in one end, water drips out the other, but only because a work on a heritage railway, where boilers still boil water, today if a boiler boils water we consider it faulty.

So in my house I have eQ-3, Energenie, Kasa, and Wiser TRV heads, I got it wrong to start with, was told Energenie worked with Nest, it does no work any more, when I got them eQ-3 were cheap, (£15 each) and I used Kasa as already using Tapo, both are TP-Link so use the same hubs, but Wiser transformed my system, it works, so once I got it working, did not need to try anything else.

Having a wireless thermostat that you can take room to room, or move around the room, to test where is the best place, is a huge advantage, until the cat sleeps on it and one is left scratching one's head why is the room so cold.

But my first two homes worked well, both open plan, so a single thermostat was enough, mother's house and this house had the thermostat in the hall, silly single place really, but one has to look at 1970's houses to understand why, the central heating was to get the home warm in the morning, before going to work, or evening having just got back, but main heating was still the open fire in the living room, at that time we wanted the living flame, central heating back then was only to warm house while one laid and lit the fire, so a thermostat in the living room would not work, as the fire would stop central heating working in any other rooms.

But today is all about each room being its own zone, with a thermostat in every room, OK that thermostat may be a TRV, but the whole concept has moved on.

 

[denso13]

But today is all about each room being its own zone, with a thermostat in every room,

You keep saying that but not everyone agrees.

 

[ericmark]

You keep saying that but not everyone agrees.

Yes, you make a good point, people want to cut corners, and will read laws and regulations to suit what they want to do, rather than what they know jolly well what they were meant to require, seems, so many people need to return to school and learn to read.

The bi-colour combination green-and-yellow shall be used exclusively for identification of a protective conductor, and this combination shall not be used for any other purpose.

(Note the full stop)

Single-core cables that are coloured green-and-yellow throughout their length shall only be used as a protective conductor and shall not be over-marked at their terminations, except as permitted by Regulation 514.4.3.

(some it seems thought this meant that if not single-core then could be over-marked).

The same with having just two RCDs in a consumer unit, and latter the regulations clarified what was meant, which is a problem for those who chose to misread the regulations.

We all know the TRV can be used to give us numerous zones, each one can be controlled independently, and we also know people chose not to use the function. I have 14 electronic TRV heads, and I have chosen to only link one to the hub, so only one can turn on the boiler, that was my choose, I considered a £15 eQ-3 head which is not linked, but still programmable was enough for the other rooms.

Now the Energenie head is a different story, I read it would work with Nest, and I expected them to work with Nest in the same way as the Wiser ones work, I was conned, they don't work with Nest since Google took them over. And even before that they worked the wrong way around. The Nest told the TRV what to do, rather than the TRV telling Nest what to do.

I also made a mistake with Kasa, this was my error for not checking there was a wireless option, think there is now? But I am an electrician not a heating engineer, to me engineer means trained better than level 3, so at least Fdeng behind their name.

 

[denso13]

Yes, you make a good point, people want to cut corners, and will read laws and regulations to suit what they want to do, rather than what they know jolly well what they were meant to require, seems, so many people need to return to school and learn to read.

There are no regulations that require each room to be zoned.