At present I have a system which has individual heating controls on all radiators apart from the one in the hall which is not controlled individually. There is a temperature control on the boiler What is the best system for CH Control ? Many years ago I had a system where there was a central thermostat control with no controls on the radiators Is it possible or desirable to have individual controls on the radiators but in addition have a central thermostatic control as well Blair
Ideally you should have the rad valve setup that you have, plus a main thermostat in the hall. That allows the boiler to be shut off once the house is up to temperature. With your setup as it currently is, all the time the programmer has the heating "on", the boiler will have to keep running and cycle on its own internal water temperature stat, even when the house is already warm enough.
I do not have a combi boiler My boiler heats the water in the storage tank and the central heating. My wife wanted a storage tank which was a useful hot cupboard for drying clothes etc. In addition my experience with a combi boiler is that unless the hot runs slow the water will not be warm enough. so it takes a long time to fill a bath Your idea of a wireless thermosat sounds the answer as wiring an existing house would be difficult Many thanks Blair
Honeywell for wireless stats. They are the only makers that use the 800+MHz band (800mHz?), so dont get interference from other wireless devices. They are also 'paired' at the factory, so should be plug and play.
I would go for one of the programmable ones, probably the CM 927, then you can set different temperatures for different times. They are £20 - 30 more than other makes, but worth it for the 'no hassle' of getting the wireless to work. I've fitted 2 Salus room stats, and both needed return visits, as the wireless was being interuppted by some other wireless device, so always fit Honeywell now.
It will also make a big difference to your heating bill - I couldnt beleive how little the boiler was burning when I fitted my own, previously, like yours, I had my boiler on its internal stat, and it would be on all day burning away, i've been in this afternoon, and it has only come on 3 or 4 times in the last hour, with the temperature a comfortable 20 degrees. I think it helps with balancing out the house temperature too, if one room is too hot, turn it down, and once balanced, the system will be efficient. You'll get your money back in reduced gas bills after a year or less by fitting a room stat.
As are pretty much all you buy these days... I think Geoff was commenting on combis and slow water delivery. You need a very powerful one to be able to get a reasonable flow of hot water out of it. With a storage system like yours then you can specify a lower powered boiler for running the rads, and heating the cylinder, since it does not need to do the hot water on demand, but can take its time over it!
That can be true - depends on other factors. You typically need some form of "bypass" to allow the pump to keep circulating water through the boiler. If all the rads had TMVs then once the house is warm and they all shut off, the water flow would be blocked. One solution to this is leaving at least one rad "open" (with lockshield valves at both ends so that its difficult to accidentally turn it "off"). Other options include an automatic bypass valve (a pressure sensitive affair that only passes water when there no other path through the system), or a boiler with an internal bypass capability.
Alas there seem to be lots of plumbers out there who either do not understand the significance of proper controls, or are penny pinching by not fitting them.
Hum, where abouts in 800MHz? Presumably 863 to 870MHz aka Ch70. It might get "interesting" when the switch over to digital television is complete and the "800MHz band" is sold off for 4G mobile broadband use. They will have access to Ch69. Of course Ch70 is currently used by quite a bit of stuff already a lot of which uses a continious carrier for radio microphones or cordless headphones. Unlike kit in
433Mhz that is mainly just a short burst when required, AFAIK there are no continious carrier devices in 433.
Aye, a system without a means to shut the boiler right down when the house is warm will waste expensive gas. A programable stat also enables sensible temperatures through out the day rather than just a single one. Be aware that some programable stats are 5+2 days only, fine for a M-F wage slave but not if your life style or work pattern is not that boring. Go for one that can do true 7 day programing, you can set it up for 5+2 if you want but you retain the flexibilty.
50C is a bit warm for baths but not for washing up, in fact 50C is probably a bit cool for that...
50C is about what the mixer valve on the DHW output of our thermal store is set to. Put the plug in, fill the bath with HW only and it's about the right temperature when the about 4" deep, the pipe run is a quite long to the bath though.
The house we bought some 18 months ago is fitted with a heat store, and I love it to bits - although recognising there's no CH/DW backup if things go wrong. However, the chap next door is a Gas Safe engineer and familiar with the system as he has one as well.
The store runs at 72C max, and the boiler fires for a top-up when this drops to 66C. Observation suggests this happens about every 9 hours with no other demand for CH/DW, the heat-only 15 kW boiler burning for ~5 minutes for the top-up.
The rads heat up in less than a minute, but if the store temp drops below 60 the CH is shut off until the store gets back to that temperature.
SWMBO doesn't like my taking the front cover off the store and observing the various temperature readouts, but I'm sure the boiler can increase the store temp while someone's having a shower, for example.
A nice simple unpressurised heat-only boiler; hot water on demand
24/7, and instant-heating rads - it has a lot going for it. OMMV...
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