When I replace my old boiler and heating controls I am wondering whether to fit motorised valves and controls so for example you could have the heating on in my bedroom only or just down stairs etc - obviously this is just done with a view to save cash on gas not heating areas of the house not in use.
The problem is say I did each room with a valve they are about =A350 or =A3100 each I think so that's =A33-600 before the more expensive control box (do they even do control boxes that can control 6 valves?) then the pain of the wiring and the chance of valves failing....
Is this worh it or should I just keep it simple and heat the whole house in 1 go?
Or perhaps a compromise and not heat the combined lounge/dining room on a morning?
It rather depends on the house layout and whether you are happy to have all the doors closed for most of the time. If you are going to leave them open - especially the downstairs ones, then it becomes academic.
There are packaged systems such as Honeywell Hometronic which will cover the entire requirement.
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you can do an S-plan plus system. The principle of this is that you organise the pipework to create heating zones and then put a zone valve on each. Each zone has a thermostat (timer/thermostat if you want) which controls opening of the valve and then the auxilliary switch on the valve is used to fire up the boiler.
Effectively, though, this means having all zones in "parallel" and not in series for it to work properly - i.e. you can't effectively put a zone arrangement downstream of another covering other parts of the house - each has to have its own supply. However, this does not mean that you *have* to rejig all the pipework to home run the zones back to the boiler. You can put valves belonging to a single zone in parallel. For example, let's say you have a large room with a radiator at either end but with the feeds arriving from different places. You could put a zone valve nxt to each and operate both with one thermostat choosing one to provide the boiler switching.
Another approach is to use Sauter electrically operated radiator valves. These fit in place instead of the normal thermostatic ones and can be opened and closed by applying 24v to them. This avoids the plumbing issue but there is still a lot of wiring to do.
3rd and cheapest option is a local bimetal thermostat + wallwart + R wire on the TRV head. Gives local thermostatic control plus the ability to turn any zone off locally, but not centrally. Since the cost is relatively low, investment is small and payback relatively easy to achieve.
That is what I used to think as I have only one door downstairs (between living room and kitchen and rarely closed) and stairs leading directly from the living room to the upstairs landing without the benefit of a door, but I eventually gave upstairs its own zone and during the day the upstairs is distinctly chilly compared with downstairs. The bathroom radiator is not zoned so there is a separate bypass so that radiator can function normally.
Being retired I am usually indoors when the weather is bad so some background heating is on (17C) all day. In late spring and early autumn the upstairs zone rarely comes on. I am not at all sure that those who spend the working day outside their home would get much benefit from separate zones.
FWIW I am now toying with the idea of converting all of the downstairs bar the kitchen to solid floor underfloor heating but am dithering as usual over the details. Principally whether to have the insulation over or under the concrete and what to have as the final covering. I had better make my mind up soon as I doubt whether I will have the strength to break up and remove some some 350 square feet of rather grotty 4 inch thick concrete and twice the volume of very stubborn stone filled clay for more than a few more years.
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