I have a 1970s house with a fairly normal S-Plan setup. There are three bedroom radiators and one bathroom upstairs, fed from the floor void. Downstairs are another four rads (lounge x2, hall, kitchen) with pipes buried in the solid floor. Heating control is by a programmable room stat in the lounge, while no rads have TEVs.
The existing setup is well balanced so that an empty house or with the doors open will heat to suitable temps, even without any TRVs.
The thing that does bother me is that when the lounge gets up to temperature and is maintained by people being in there, the stat will not put the heating on for the rest of the house.
Here are some options and what I think of them:
1. Leave it alone. Obviously easiest, but while redoing my lounge, having the ceilings down and moving a radiator, now is the best opportunity to change if need be.
2. Fit TRVs to all rooms except the hall and move the stat to there. This should solve the problem, though comfort in the lounge could be reduced. Having a thermostat keeps the room at a good temperature but I am not sure whether TRVs will be as effective.
3. Split the house into upstairs and downstairs zones with a S-Plan plus type of layout. I think the second stat would be best in the main bedroom. The landing would be pointless because the only heat would be coming from the hall in the other zone. TRVs would be added to all rads except lounge and main bedroom. It would mean not going to bed cold but the hall may stay chilly in the winter evenings.
4. As 3 but put the hall rad on the upstairs zone, which is do-able without enormous disruption to the remaining buried ground floor pipes. This keeps the 18 degree target hall and bedrooms in the same zone. The opposite problem to 3 is that the hall could be colder in the morning if body heat in the bedroom cuts the call for heat earlier.
5. Go for something flashy such as Honeywell CM Zone. I looked at this a couple of years ago, and had a reason to dismiss it based on controllability though cannot remember the exact reason. However, on the face of it, this should have been the most controllable of all.
2 & 3 are the more conventional approaches but what are peoples thoughts on the others (or are there any better alternatives)?
While I'm asking, what are people's (or regs) views on a separate bathroom zone, with or without a zone valve? I'm aware my boiler needs to keep its existing bypass, but with the no valve and a TRV on the rad, the bathroom rad would heat up whenever either heating zone or hot water are being heated and the TRV is not closed. The latter point would be of benefit when it's not quite cold enough for the normal heating to be on, but the bathroom would be warm enough and the towels would dry.
The existing setup is well balanced so that an empty house or with the doors open will heat to suitable temps, even without any TRVs.
The thing that does bother me is that when the lounge gets up to temperature and is maintained by people being in there, the stat will not put the heating on for the rest of the house.
Here are some options and what I think of them:
1. Leave it alone. Obviously easiest, but while redoing my lounge, having the ceilings down and moving a radiator, now is the best opportunity to change if need be.
2. Fit TRVs to all rooms except the hall and move the stat to there. This should solve the problem, though comfort in the lounge could be reduced. Having a thermostat keeps the room at a good temperature but I am not sure whether TRVs will be as effective.
3. Split the house into upstairs and downstairs zones with a S-Plan plus type of layout. I think the second stat would be best in the main bedroom. The landing would be pointless because the only heat would be coming from the hall in the other zone. TRVs would be added to all rads except lounge and main bedroom. It would mean not going to bed cold but the hall may stay chilly in the winter evenings.
4. As 3 but put the hall rad on the upstairs zone, which is do-able without enormous disruption to the remaining buried ground floor pipes. This keeps the 18 degree target hall and bedrooms in the same zone. The opposite problem to 3 is that the hall could be colder in the morning if body heat in the bedroom cuts the call for heat earlier.
5. Go for something flashy such as Honeywell CM Zone. I looked at this a couple of years ago, and had a reason to dismiss it based on controllability though cannot remember the exact reason. However, on the face of it, this should have been the most controllable of all.
2 & 3 are the more conventional approaches but what are peoples thoughts on the others (or are there any better alternatives)?
While I'm asking, what are people's (or regs) views on a separate bathroom zone, with or without a zone valve? I'm aware my boiler needs to keep its existing bypass, but with the no valve and a TRV on the rad, the bathroom rad would heat up whenever either heating zone or hot water are being heated and the TRV is not closed. The latter point would be of benefit when it's not quite cold enough for the normal heating to be on, but the bathroom would be warm enough and the towels would dry.
