Hi everyone,
We've just had our house rewired and part of the work was to fit a new programmer and digital thermostat to our central heating system. It's just one of the many major jobs on our list since buying our place last year.
Before the rewiring started, we had a crusty old digital programmer and an old-style rotary room thermostat. The electricians finished the rewiring yesterday but failed to connect up the central heating electrical components properly, so last night we had no heat from our radiators. When I went into the garage to investigate, the boiler was running fine but the pump for the central heating wasn't doing anything.
The electricians came back this morning to sort it out... and their solution was to remove the room thermostat altogether! As I understand it, the boiler and pump will now run continuously when the programmer is set to be on. This just doesn't sound right to me, and certainly sounds expensive! We don't have thermostatic radiator valves at present (although plan to have them fitted on all but the bathroom radiator at some point in the near future).
So here's the first question: does this setup sound wrong to anyone else, or is it just me? Reading around Google Groups, it seems that this might actually contravene 2002 building regs.
The electrician's parting shot was to say we should get a plumber in if we want the room thermostat installed again. Personally, I'd have thought wiring the boiler and pump to the appropriate gubbins would be an electrician's job. Assuming the electrician's a dead loss, who should I call? A plumber? The folks who service our oil boiler? Another electrician?
Final question (if it can be answered briefly!): how exactly should the programmer and room thermostat be wired to the boiler and pump? Before the rewiring started, I could swear that the the room thermostat connected to the pump (and not the boiler) and the programmer to the boiler. I guess that means that the boiler was still trying to heat water when it wasn't needed before the rewiring work started? It just wasn't get pumped around....
It wouldn't surprise me if it was incorrect before the rewiring, as much of the work on the house has been done by cowboys prior to us buying it. We've already found a lot of other things that were done without any attention to building regulations.
If anyone could offer their opinions, it would be an enormous help!
Many thanks,
Chris Wood