Heating situation - can't get house temperature right

[sandydog]

Can anyone give any advice? I have a terraced house with a very cold upstairs, and a downstairs that retains the heat. The dump radiator (the one without a TRV?) is based in the front room and this is where the digital thermostat. The upstairs is usually about 2-4 degrees lower than the downstairs.

I've turned the dining room/kitchen radiators onto frost mode so that I can whack the heating up to heat the upstairs, and this is working but the front room is like an oven! It's got to the point where I've now tried turning the temperature of the water pumping through the radiators down on the boiler. This will make the upstairs take longer to heat, won't it? I've also moved the thermostat to the stairs.

I feel like I'm going round in circles! Please does anyone have any suggestions? Insulation is only so good in the attic because it is a bedroom. The radiators in the bedroom could probably do with being bigger, but that is an option I'd look at further down the line.

 

[big-all]

a heat dump needs to be in a room where its tend to be colder than most with minimum other heat input
to put it in a room where additional heat tends to be a disadvantage is a problem seems bad design and needs altering

 

[Doggit]

What's the loft insulation like. And have you tried adjusting the lockshiled valves; turn then down slightly downstairs, and open them up a little upstairs. Adjusting the pump, should wait till you've made the more obvious adjustments. The thermostat goes on the room where the radiator has no TRV, as that would interfere with the overall system, so move that back.

 

[sandydog]

Thanks. Big-All I completely agree - is that going to be a professional job to move it?
Doggitt - the roof is insulated but we have 2 skylights in the roof because it is a bedroom. I'm up here now and it's comfortable at about 20 degrees but it probably 22+ degrees downstairs. This is where I don't understand about the placing of the thermostat. Is it bad that the dump radiator is going all the time, during heating hours? I'm really not seeing the relevance and would be very grateful for an explanation!

 

[stem]

The dump radiator (the one without a TRV?)

Are you sure it's really a "dump radiator" and not just the radiator in the room where the room thermostat is located, which should not be fitted with a TRV on any installation. If you were to have a TRV in the same room as the room thermostat you would have two devices trying to do the same thing and they will 'fight' each other and not function properly.

A 'dump radiator' is associated with a solid fuel heating system and it remains permanently 'on' even when the room thermostat is 'off' to prevent the solid fuel boiler which can't be turned completely off from actually boiling.

I mention it because if is not a true 'heat dump' it will have an effect on big-all's comment.

 

[sandydog]

Hi Stem

That could be the case. We have a combi boiler system. So potentially I could turn that radiator off - it does have a knob with an on arrow.

I've just booked the annual boiler service for Friday so I can ask then about the setup.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Doggit]

You have a a radiator with no TRV, and you have a thermostat in that room, and that becomes the "control" room. Once the system has been balanced, so that all of the rooms come up to heat, the thermostat shuts off the boiler. Now some rooms will have a rad thats slightly larger than it needs to be, and will heat up quicker than the control room, so the TRV will shut that rad off whilst the rest of the house is still warming up. And during the day, the sun may warm a room up whilst another room doesn't get the warmth, so again, the TRVs will take over.

Now you've got insulation in the roof, so there are habitable rooms above the 1st floor, so the heats escaping up to the loft, but not as badly as if there was a cold loft, so I suspect the upper rads need opening up, and the lower ones shutting down slightly.