Can anyone help with CH confusion!

[daven.s]

First off, I'm a complete noob when it comes to this sort of thing, so please bear with me

We just moved into our new house which has a combi system for the CH and DHW. Our last place had white meter heating and thermostatically controlled water tank... it was much simpler.

All our radiators have control valves on them except the one in the hall, in the hall there's a Siemens thermostat and to top it all off, the boiler has a "Heating Temp" dial on it as well!!

I don't know what sort of system it is, but I can tell you that we have a Glow worm SwiftFlow 125 boiler which takes the mains in and feeds it out to the taps. There are no visible water tanks at all.

My question is how do I efficiently control the temperature, I mean, where should I set the room temp? At the radiators or with the Thermostat in the hall? And what on earth is the temp control on the boiler for, there's nothing in the manual? My biggest concern is that with all these temperature controls I could be making the boiler fire up more often than needed or vice-versa (probably not though as the house is lovely and warm)

Any pointers on how best to control this sort of set up would be mucho appreciated. Thanks.

 

[breezer]

each radiator you have has a trv (Themostatic Radiator Valve) this governs the maximum temperature of each raditor (acording to the air around the trv)

the temp control on your boiler sets the maximum temp the rads can get too

The room stat you have then decides if the house is hot enough and turns off the boiler.

in theory:

house cold boiler comes on, heats water and pumps to rads, each rad warms room, when room warm trv closes rad.

when house warm (by room stat) it tells boiler to close down) one rad must have no trv (hall in your case)

if you use one room less often turn its trv down.

if house is a little too hot turn room stat down

if rads very very hot turn boiler stat down.

its alleged you can save money by turning room stat down by 1 degree.

(i say alleged cos i am not sure)

 

[oilman]

You can save more money by turning everything down a lot and putting another jumper on. Or turn it down even further and put thermal undies on.

 

[daven.s]

Thanks for that guys, all your suggestions make sense!!

I'm still a little confused though, shouldn't I then whack all the rads up to max, turn up the boiler and just use the thermostat to control the temperature? Although I'm still not sure because surely the thermostat can only measure the temperature in the hall which is a cooler room anyway..?!?!?

I think I'll take the cover off the thermostat and make sure it's wired up to something. I'm sure the house wasn't built with a combi originally and judging by the number of switches I've found that have nothing connected to the out terminals, it wouldn't be surprising if the last bloke just left it on the wall.

 

[ollski]

Basically run your system from the room stat in the hall set a little higher than is comfortable and use your TRV's to individually control your rooms. If your boiler makes any noises as the water gets hot tur it down a touch and they will probably go away....it's a balancing act.

 

[oilman]

If you feel like spending some money replacing the thermostat with a programmable type, or even a wireless programmable would make running costs less if you have your heating on during the day. These allow you to have the daytime lowered automatically. You can then get up to a warm house, once you are on the move the temperature can drop to 15 C (or whatever you choose) and in the evening the temperature will automatically go up again. Some are programmable for different temps at the weekend too.

Thermostatic radiator valves are crude controllers, and are only able to set a maximum. Better used for bedrooms where you probably want low temperatures almost all of the time. If you had a wireless thermostat, you can use it to set the temperature in the room of your choosing, without having to put in a cable.

 

[IanDB]

The whole point about thermostatic rads is that you can control the heat in each room - if you want to. In rooms you are using a lot you would normally have the rad on a high setting to keep the room warm but in others - say bedrooms - you can turn them down so the rads get warm and provide a bit of heat but not so much that you feel as though you're suffocating in bed.

They are also good as they will let the radiator get to a controlled temperature rather than get red hot when the heating is on.

Of course, you don't want to turn down the radiator in the room where the main thermostat is (normally the hall) otherwise the central heating will never turn off! Never mind that the hall way is cooler than other rooms, the whole point is that you set your main thermostat to heat the house to the temperature you want it. If it was in your living room and you were all in there the room would heat up quite quickly and then the heating would shut down leaving the rest of the house feeling cold.

That's a bit of a ramble isn't it. Never mind, have a warm weekend!

 

[daven.s]

Thanks to everyone for all the info. It's all a bit clearer now.