Cold Winter in tandem with a Poor Boiler = Cold House?

[dpm_dpmartin]

Hi all,

This is a boiler and central heating question that can't be related to DIY for me... I'm hoping someone out there can just give me some genuine advice, without having too much of a laugh at the predicament I currently find myself in.

Situation is pretty simple. House is darn cold. Got levels of insulation and all that... but no real help. I think it's my boiler. (I'll provide more info. on that later).

I'm coming to this conclusion because I've been taking notice when I've visited other folk's houses recently... their boilers are often little nondescript things... example is an Alpha (a make I'd never heard of)... but their radiators can be scalding hot to the touch... mine never are.

Everyone else's boiler controls (remote for the Alpha I mention above) I have seen (I'm not a boiler spotter BTW) has temperature levels that sound reasonable, i.e. like 21 degrees - in that range. My boiler starts at 38 degrees and goes up to 60 or so.

When my friend's boiler is at 21 degrees, everything is snug and the radiators are really hot to the touch... uncomfortably so. Even when I put my boiler up to the highest levels, my radiators can't get that uncomfortable.

Onto my boiler... it's a Saunier Duval, Themaclassic F24E Plus. It was fitted by a registered installer when I was getting an extension done about 3 or 4 years ago. Since then - please don't laugh - it has been nothing but trouble again and again... I had two leaks (apparently from a part with a known fault) and one of them warped all the wood flooring in my kitchen.

Each time the manufacturer has had to come out and look at it, a service has been done on it... or a sanity check at least... the last time would be just over a year ago now, I think.

It's huge. It's noisy. It doesn't seem to put out much heat - or am I wrong? maybe it's all in-line with what you'd expect. But I thought that this combi boiler heating only 7 radiators would be not too much to ask.

Apart from having a giggle that I have this boiler... is there anything I can do (or have done) to assess whether things are all as they should be? Or is it really time to consider cutting my losses (maybe this summer) and having something better installed?

The reason I am so concerned is down to the fact that the people I have visited don't have amazing boilers - just normal small stuff - and all is nice and warm at their places. Should I be pumping my control up to 55 degrees and over to ensure the house is warm? I am reticent to do so.

Seriously - any help, advice and guidance appreciated here. I am seriously frustrated with this and have been thinking about it on and off over the holiday period.

 

[mogget]

Are you sure you're not confusing the room thermostat with the boiler thermostat

Usually the room stat is set to the temperature you want the room to end up, 18-21 degrees usually.

The boiler stat will usually be between 60 and 80 degrees, this controls the temperature of the water in the radiators.

It works like this, here's a hypothetical example: Room stat set to 21 but temperature in room only 17, so room stat asks boiler for heat. Boiler stat set to 75 degrees but water colder than that, so boiler turns on and heats water to send to the radiators. Water temperature gradually rises until it reaches 75 degrees, at which point boiler throttles back so the water doesn't get too hot - radiators heat up to 75 degrees. Heat flows into the room until it's at 21 degrees when the room stat turns the whole system off.

Hope that helps.

All temperatures in centigrade by the way.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

Yes, that would make absolute sense to me. There is a dial in the wall at the bottom of the stairs that goes from 10° to 30°. Twiddling this seems to have no effect on what the boiler is doing, so I am assuming it is not connected.

Could this be because of an oversight? Or an incompatibility when my boiler was changed over to this Saunier Duval combi. all those years ago?

I went to the boiler control panel, I had set it manually to 50° previously and I watched the readout on the digital screen for a while... over a period of minutes it cycles between 46° and 52°, turning itself off and on as necessary I presume.

I was curious how high the CH ° could go... it went all the way up to 80°. That was a surprise, to me, as I've never taken it anywhere near there - I was concerned about how much that would cost - so I'd never gone beyond 55° on the boiler itself.

I set it to 80° for a test and observed it... it turned itself on and the ° on the digital panel started slowly going up. I think it might have got to 80° but I turned it back down to 70° when it was getting to 69°.

Now, of course, I can feel the house getting warmer. You'd expect that. I probably don't have to be too concerned about setting the boiler CH figure to be something like 60° or 70° if that's what I need, but I should really be controlling it via a thermostat or some radio control if possible.

When I was getting concerned before, raising my boiler control to over 50°, I really have no need to, as we are saying this is nothing to be concerned about. Because if I raised my *non-connected room thermostat* to, as an example, 21° then it would actually be doing the same to the boiler anyway... i.e. setting it to 50° or somewhere around that mark... probably far in excess of that actually.

Conclusion - having my boiler set to 50° manually (not via thermostat) means, basically, no wonder my house was cold... as I'm telling it to be cold.

 

[mogget]

It won't cost much more to keep the boiler stat at, say, 70 degrees rather than 50, as the room will heat up more quickly (this is ignoring the condensing/non-condensing issue).

It sounds like you'd do well to get a new room thermostat, wireless ones are available if the cable routing is difficult. A programmable stat would allow you to set different temperatures for different times of the day, for example 14 degrees at night, 18 in the daytime, and 21 in the evening. The wiring is much simpler for a combi than for a conventional system.

 

[dpm_dpmartin]

mogget - thank you very much.

I have set the boiler control panel to 68° and I am now pretty snug. Most importantly, I am now snug without concerning myself about costs. Definitely, costs will increase - but probably not drastically, which is what I'd always been reticent for.

Without having a thermostat which talks in ° values you want, rather than ° values in boiler terms, and being able to translate between the two, I had always thought that 50° sounded extremely high. Now that I know this is well within the normal range, in fact - 60° to 80° is really normal - then I am much happier.

I will look into getting a new thermostat (I have little idea why I had never been offered the opportunity to say I wanted one all those years ago when it was installed), preferably a wireless one. We shall see.

 

[mogget]

Your costs will increase a little, but only to the extent that a warmer room will lose more heat to the outdoors.

Here's an example of a wireless thermostat

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/84067...ng-Controls/Honeywell-Y6630D-Room-Thermostat#

The wired stats are much cheaper, so if you can route a cable reasonably easily, may be worth a look.