MUTTY1
Waste of bandwidth
We are both retired and it works well. The house is especially toasty when you arise from the Duvet. Only in the evening could it be criticised. Then fire up the open fire, sorts that out!
Disastrous and disruptive central heating installation; where to now?
- Thread starter Mike Reed
- Start date
We are both retired and it works well. The house is especially toasty when you arise from the Duvet. Only in the evening could it be criticised. Then fire up the open fire, sorts that out!
Mike if you're losing water then you'll lose it when using 'just' the hot water option, the cylinder coil is simply a radiator inside the cylinder.
As long as the stat/programmer is wireless you can do what you want with it, I've a wireless /programmable room stat and it just sits on a table it doesn't have a stand we move it from the hall to the porch and back however if it's wired then you can't move it.
I think that wireless controllers are now the norm, is that right 2 tone? Certainly I got one with my new boiler 2 years ago, it's great. It's handy to be able to carry it around so the heating is taking readings from the rooms that you use. If the hallway is at 15 deg C I couldn't really care, I don't spend time in there. The lounge and bedroom, at 15 I'd want the heating on. But if I take the stat in the lounge and it says 20 this evening while I'm playing music and watching TV, then happy days. The heating can have a rest.
venton
pfm Member
You have to be careful with taking wireless thermostats room to room. The radiator in the room the thermostat is in should be on full blast. This way you are guaranteed to reach the thermostat temp. But if you move wireless thermostat to a different room, you leave the other radiator on full blast, and probably the room you go to has trv set. The boiler may never be told to turn off in this situation.
Better I think to keep wireless thermostat in one room and use trvs on other rooms to regulate the temperatures.
Alternatively there are electronic trvs which have a 'call for heat' function but I've not tried that myself.
Better I think to keep wireless thermostat in one room and use trvs on other rooms to regulate the temperatures.
Alternatively there are electronic trvs which have a 'call for heat' function but I've not tried that myself.
notaclue
pfm Member
I'm assuming it's the Honeywell one with the basic LCD display and not fancy touch screen one? Something like this? As long as it is in range of the receiver (which is probably in the airing cupboard), you will be fine to use the thermostat elsewhere. The worst thing that can happen is that it might lose the binding to the receiver and need to be rebound. Which involves pressing various buttons in the right order. Only a 5-minute DIY job if ever needed. But merely taking the batteries out and moving the thermostat won't cause it to lose binding.
Though I had the square thermostat and upgraded to the round Honeywell thermostat, as you can get an app to control it from a phone/tablet or you can control if from the Honeywell website or an Amazon Echo device. Very useful to control the heating without the thermostat. Uses same receiver and also battery powered so very simple to upgrade.
The hot water or radiators are switched via valves, unless the leak is in that part of the pipe work you won't lose any water from the system.
Of course you will lose water, the 'systems' are linked through the return.
Depends Steve, some older customers, like Mike who's 82, just can't handle modern controls so they're better off with traditional programers and room stats.
I do exactly the same as as you do we basically use the stat as a switch ie it comes into the lounge at night and is turned up to 23-34 and when we get hot we switch it off/turn it down but in the morning I stick it in the porch, which can be as cold as 10 degrees some mornings, to heat the rest of the house.
Basically use it to suit yourself there's no right or wrong ways of using them.
I thought his leak was dependant upon the water temperature ?
Well the pipe-work is leaking so shutting down 90 % of the pipe-work will exacerbate the leak.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Oh dear; confusion here. If/when we stop using the htg for any length of time, the flow rate back to the boiler drops; at the mo' to 17/18 degrees or so. At this flow rate temp., the mains starts dripping into the tank, so I assume the leak has been activated by the pipe contraction. When we simply don't need htg (and that's a tricky one to judge in early February), I'll need to tie the ball-valve up, simply to save mains water (assuming it's still leaking).
In this event, we still want to heat the cylinder by boiler. There are 2 valves (tin boxes) which I gather divert the hot water according to the programmer. I'd think this is a different circuit to the c/h pipes as the cylinder is directly above the boiler and all the gubbins are in this cupboard. I sincerely hope I CAN do this, as even though it's a new immersion heater, it's elec. hungry and doesn't heat the whole cylinder.
lawrence001
Basic Member
There are definitely wrong ways to use them. For example if you are in a room where the TVR is set lower to turn off at 18degs and the thermostat is set to 22 then the boiler will keep running until the heat from the other rooms heats the room you are in up, which is an extremely inefficient and costly way to heat the room you're in.
If the house is cold in the morning it should just switch the heating on regardless of where you place it. If it doesn't you should turn the setting up a bit.
notaclue
pfm Member
It's a different flow circuit, but the point is that it's still same water in both the flow (red) and return (blue) pipes in a heating system. It's just one big circuit.
In terms of finding the leak, weather looks reasonable after this week's chilliness so perhaps a good time to get someone in. Norwich showing no lower than 5c at night next week and 13 during the day.
If you tie the ballvalve up you’re going to effectively drain the heating via the leak. You’ll have to turn the boiler off altogether then and use your immersion heater to heat the hot water if you have one.
This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it. You really need to stop dithering and get it sorted before your whole system (and new boiler) ends up ruined. I’ve seen cast iron heat exchangers and radiators leaking like a sieve after barely months of fresh oxygenated water running through them.
This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it. You really need to stop dithering and get it sorted before your whole system (and new boiler) ends up ruined. I’ve seen cast iron heat exchangers and radiators leaking like a sieve after barely months of fresh oxygenated water running through them.
notaclue
pfm Member
Yes, plus I would not wait for the installer to sort this out or find a company to detect the leak.
Hi Mike, those two 'boxes' are motorised valves one for the heating and one for the hot water they close when the stats (cylinder and room) are satisfied ie the room's hot or the water's hot or when the programmer switches them off they don't divert the hot water they simply close the circuit to stop one or both parts of the heating system heating but you'll also have a by-pass which allows the pump to pass water round the system when either or both valves close then the pump stops after a short delay this by-pass circuit allows the hot water to dissipate round the by-pass circuit otherwise you would get noises from the pump pumping against closed pipe-work/motorised valves basically it's designed to protect the pump and to cool the system down otherwise you might have the boiler over heat stat kicking in and shutting down the boiler.
The temperature of the water in the heating system is determined by whatever the boiler's thermostat is set at, not the other thermostats, they only control the temperature of the room or the hot water in the cylinder ie the cylinder stat will be set to 55 or 60 degrees C and the room stat to 20 degrees C but the boiler stat can be set to anything really but you won't get hot water at the above temperature if you set the boiler stat below those settings so typically the boiler stat would be set at about 70 or even 80 if it's really cold outside or maybe 45 if it's pretty warm ie springtime or late summer but that's a bit low for the hot water temperature but you can set all of those thermostats to whatever you want.
I've a combi boiler so it's a bit different for me but the boiler's hot water thermostat is set to 50 degrees, the boiler flow temperature is set to 75 degrees cause it's winter and the room temperature stat is set to about 24/25 degrees depending on where the stat is in the house if it's in the porch then it's set to about 18 degrees which gets us about 23+ degrees in the rest of the house.
Yes, mine is in the kitchen most of the time and I can confuse it now and again. Leave it near the stove while cooking, obviously a bad move, or on a shelf over a rad, likewise, or as you say in a room with
TRVs. The other favourite, and my installer warned me about this, is don't sit with it in your lap while you work out how to operate it. If you do it gets to high 20s or so in a nice warm lap and tells the boiler to turn off. So as you say there's a few wrong ways.
lawrence001
Basic Member
I was just thinking some more about it and realised it's even more complicated than I realised. For example if you have it in the first room the water flows to from the boiler it will heat up quicker than the last room. So the boiler will switch off once this room is warm leaving the other rooms cold. You should therefore set the TVRs to be at the temperature you want and have the thermostat in the last room the water flows through. I think.
venton
pfm Member
You balance the rads using the valve at other end of rad so there's less water going through the first ones. They should all heat up at same rate.
All correct, but I think that you are overthinking it a bit. In any system there will be warmer and cooler rooms, and it's a rather crude control system anyway run by only one simple device. Other than obvious howlers like putting the stat in a room with the TRVs set to a very low temp, or standing the stat over a radiator, it will work. All you want is the system to come on when the house is cold, off when hot. Fine tuning and balancing radiators between rooms can be done with TRVs and the like. It doesn't really matter whether you have the stat in the hall set to 16 or in the lounge and set to 20, the thing will tell the boiler to come on at 6am in January and knock off when the place has warmed up a bit. The rest is fine tuning, and a simple thermostat like this is never intended to be a precise tool. It's only a comfort thing, and when I went to bed last night the bedroom was at 16.5 deg C, which is a bit cold to be wandering round without clothes. "Bloody hell" quoth I, "It's a bit sodding parky in here!" so I hid under the duvet and all became good.