Winter is coming, what changes can I make to improve heating?

[ericmark]

I have an oil boiler on a C Plan with two pumps and two motorised valves heating two abodes, the flat not a problem, it is so small, the house however the boiler is large enough to maintain the temperature, but attempts to zone have not worked very well as the main living room can't sink all the 20 kw the boiler produces so boiler cycles, and the hot then cold causes the TRV's to over shoot in some rooms, but never in the main room, which is often cool.

Not as yet lit an open fire, but been tempted, I think answer is like a fan assisted radiator, but control does not seem to be that good. A silly Nest Gen 3 wall thermostat in the hall and 9 electronic TRV heads which don't connect to the hall thermostat, the hall is slow to cool, which adds to the problem, but with 5 x eQ-3, 3 x Energenie and one Kasa which has replaced an Energenie that was damaged, I really don't want to rip it out and start again.

The DHW gets far too hot, and has no control on it, just thermo syphon, and the central heating is all micro bore, and throttling back on the lock shield valves seem to cause some by-pass as yet un-found to open, so hot water returns to boiler but no radiator is hot.

I clearly don't want to remove all the plaster board to find missing valve, or to find where the thermostat wired change colour from red, yellow, blue to brown, black, grey. Considering using the thermometer we got at start of colvid to look at wall temperatures to try and trace pipes, but so much covered up when garage made into a flat, so open to ideas on how to find out where the by-pass valve is, if in fact there is a by-pass valve and not just a restriction.

 

[blup]

If you can’t afford to rip it all out and start again, or pay around a grand for a state of the art thermal imaging camera, then start an open fire, one hot room in a very cold winter is 80 per cent of the solution.

Blup

 

[ericmark]

If you can’t afford to rip it all out and start again, or pay around a grand for a state of the art thermal imaging camera, then start an open fire, one hot room in a very cold winter is 80 per cent of the solution.

Blup

It does seem the last owners of this house did exactly that. Likely a quick fix is a USB cradle for the Nest Gen 3 and put it in the living room, not a good idea as then getting power for a different circuit, so with a power cut the internal battery will soon deplete.

May be better with a second thermostat in parallel with Nest, powered with AA or AAA cells, so even if it fails, the Nest is still working.

I jumped in to fitting Nest clearly an error, I don't want to get a wrong a second time, hence asking for ideas, there may be a cure I have not thought about.

The main problem although not only problem is the hall is too well insulated, and cools slower than rest of the house. I can adjust how fast it heats with the lock shield valve, but not how fast it cools. Not knowing where the by-pass is does not help, but the house will get warm, but slowly, so main problem is if anything causes the wall thermostat to switch off boiler, and let house cool, then it takes ages to recover after.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Not as yet lit an open fire, but been tempted, I think answer is like a fan assisted radiator, but control does not seem to be that good.

As a trial, add some sort of fan, switched on by a simple pipe temperature sensor. A fan heater, set to just run the fan would do it.

 

[DiyNutJob]

Wear more clothes.