Central heating, upstairs too hot

Hi,

Can someone tell me what the best solution is to get a balanced temperature in my house. I have a wireless thermostat programmer to control the CH. If I have it downstairs in the living room, it is too hot upstairs. If I move it upstairs it is too cold downstairs.

To solve this, should I simply adjust the control valves on the upstairs radiators, or should I install control valves which have thermostats on the upstairs radiators?

I recently changed my system from basic on/off timer without any thermostats, to "c plan" (gravity fed cylinder with thermostat on cylinder and valve to cut off gravity fed loop, programmer for hot water control, pump on CH circuit, and wireless thermostat programmer for CH control).

Cheers, EF

Reply to
EF
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Theromstatic valves upstairs make sure you put them on the feed (hot) side of the rad. MikeS

Reply to
MikeS

How about carrying it around with you? ;-) (Now who was it who suggested the only type of thermostat which would work would be a radio one which measured wife's body temperature?;-)

Fitting thermostatic radiator valves in the hot rooms would be a good solution. You could try reducing individual radiator temperatures by reducing the flow, but it's not likely to be a particularly satisfactory solution, e.g. slower warmup from cold, etc.

Another option would be to have separate zones upstairs and downstairs, with separate thermostats (and possibly separate time control too). This is easy to do with a new installation, but ease of retrofitting it would depend on pipe layout.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

The first thing is do is to balance the system in order to get equal temperature drops across all radiators. There is a FAQ all about this, but basically it means partially closing the lockshield valves on the hottest rads. If, when the system is in balance, some rooms are *still* hotter than others, it indicates that the hotter rooms have got over-sized ** radiators relative to the heat losses. The best way to deal with this is to fit TRVs on these rads, which will turn the rads off when the room gets up to temperature.

** OR, that the coolest rooms have under-sized rads - but you may not find out which until the middle of winter!
Reply to
Set Square

I'm not sure how easily you can zone a C-Plan system - because the volt-free contacts in the (gravity HW) zone valve have to be used in a cunning way which may not be adaptable for two or more valves. I suppose that you

*could* devise some sort of C-Plan/S-Plan hybrid - but it's starting to get a bit complicated!
Reply to
Set Square

EF,

One can calculate the output of a radiator if you can accurately measure the Temperature drop across the radiator and take account of ambient air temperature using a formula (which I can't remember as it was some twenty years ago since I designed my and my friend systems). You can find out about how to measure the output of a radiator at heating and ventilation news group ( or this one if there are any Heating and ventilation engineers lurking). Some electronic volt meters can measure temperature accurately but one has to have a probe to use it, I got mine from Halfords.

MikeS

Reply to
MikeS

sorry i dont mean to hijack this thread but i have a similar [but "opposite"] problem: the thermostat is downstairs and when we put the GCH on it usually gets stifling downstairs but coolish upstairs [we have to endure the heat to allow upstairs to warm up. I was thinking of getting TRVs for downstairs but i understand it is a no-no to put them on the radiator in the same room as the thermostat [and the 2 rooms downstairs are open to each other!

Reply to
Riz1

Thank you all for your advice. I shall read the balancing faq and go and buy an infrared thermometer. If that doesnt fix it I'll fit some TRVs.

Thanks, EF

Reply to
EF

See this site

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Reply to
MikeS

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