Help with why my combi boiler has a dual programmer?

Two things, one no reason why a programmer designed for CH and DHW can't be used to work two zones, but second is this picture.
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That black coiled up cable seems to have an orange core, so looks like the wires for the motorised valve, you said you heard it ticking, was that simply expansion of the pipes, or the valve moving, as to if when combi fitted pipe work left behind, or if it does some thing don't know, when my dad had new central heating fitted they left loads of the old pipe work in place, not connected to anything.

You clearly want better control, that boiler looks like the one my dad had, the electric control was simply, on or off, no opentherm or any other cleaver controls, however it was a modulating boiler and worked well with the radiator thermostatic valves (TRV) so all I did was fit electronic heads the the TRV's and controlled the heating that way. eQ-3 are cheap enough found them at £10 each, OK I used an expensive one the MiHome Energenie, I had intended to fit Nest, but when mother died we sold the house, so never fitted.


From that is seems you can install Hive TRV heads without needing a Hive wall thermostat, so like I did with mothers house you can start with the TRV heads then if you still need it install the Hive wall thermostat latter. The big thing is to fit a TRV head is really easy, no wiring involved.

Thanks for the reply, so as for the pipes expanding noise I had my ear at the side of the valve and it definitely sounded like it was that. It was like a motor noise/ ticking over noise. It’s a noise I’ve never heard before and we’ve been here for a year now. I don’t know if because the boiler had been put in service mode that caused it to do something.

As for the hive TRVs we did look at those and they set you back £50 a radiator so would be a hefty sum for all the radiators to have abit more control of the system.

like I’ve said previously I would be happy to pay hive to come out and fit it but from what’s been said I don’t want them to come out and be like yea this ain’t going to work. Also I need to know if I need a single or dual controller, only thing they go off is if you have a separate water tank or not.
 
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Thanks for the update.

I’m not bothered about having the lounge on a separate circuit, so what would you suggest?
easiest way ? just remove the head on the zone valve set it in the open position and wire the hive in as a combi stat , not a big deal to do , the room stat and the zone valve wont actually do anything
 
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easiest way ? just remove the head on the zone valve set it in the open position and wire the hive in as a combi stat , not a big deal to do , the room stat and the zone valve wont actually do anything

well that sounds more promising, I was beginning to think It wasn’t going to be possible. So I’d get the single program hive?

I have seen on some other posts about people installing the hive with having a separate thermostat and they’ve not been able to get the hive working without disconnecting it completely, is it just a case of trial and error with different systems?
 
I also flinched at the idea with 15 radiators fitting 15 TRV heads, so 5 have standard heads, of those 4 are on a motorised valve and in real terms not used, the bathroom no TRV, and the shower room/toilet is the other standard TRV.

So brought 4 wifi TRV heads from old house, it was claimed they worked with Nest, but didn't, these were expensive think around £80 a pair, so not as bad as Hive, but still cost a lot, so I bought 5 x the bluetooth version of the eQ-3 at £15 each, and I have been very pleased with the results. In fact if anything they are better than the expensive Energenie I brought with me from other house. The bluetooth version is required if two radiators in one room so radiators can be paired together, but although the bluetooth made them easier to set up, not really required, and without bluetooth seen at under £10 each.

If it were me I would check to see where that cable with orange core goes, it looks like a motorised valve cable, maybe there is a second valve?
 
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It is the cable for the motorised valve, in the previous post I said from what I can see the valve wire is not linked up to anything. So if the valve is just sat on the pipe and not wired up, I’m guessing it’s already set to open constant?

that picture help more?
The more I look at the picture and think about you saying about old pipe work, the more I think maybe it was from before they changed to a combi, because if you look closely behind you can see the bend or the pipe coming from above going down and behind the valve.
 

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yep just set it at open and wire 1&3 on your hive to the boiler thermostat controls, obviously L&N to power the receiver too but not difficult to do
 
yep just set it at open and wire 1&3 on your hive to the boiler thermostat controls, obviously L&N to power the receiver too but not difficult to do
Just took another look at the two way valve and it was already set to manual on the side of the box, so it should just be a case of wiring up the new hive and getting rid of the old thermostat.

Cheers for the help everyone.
 

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Just a little update on the final result of having the hive installed. The British Gas engineer come out, I told him about the radiator in the front room being controlled separately or so I was told by the previous owner, he told me this isn’t the case after looking at the wiring, and decided to by pass all the wiring downstairs that ran up to the boiler and where ever else downstairs by cutting the power to it all and installed the hive hub directly next to the boiler in the loft.

Everything seemed to be fine till later on and I realised that my front room radiator would not come on at all, so I give hive a call back who are useless, they passed me from
Pillar to post and told me the hive is installed fine so that’s all they care about. Said I’d have to wait until January 21st to have someone come back out.

So after having two engineers tell me the front room radiator was not controlled separately this was the only thing that I could think would be the case why it wasn’t working so I had to pull up my front room carpet and hunt for a zone valve that I thought would be the issue... turns out there was one controlling the radiator separately so I switched it to manual mode, which fixed the issue.

cheers for all the help previously.
 
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