Heating tips

A[L]C;13241272 said:
Because I dont understand how it works. When you set the thermostat to 22... is that only measuring the temp in the room that the thermostat is in? ie in our hallway?
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The thermostat will only control the temperature in the hall where it is and just turns the heating on and off, the radaitor valves control the temperature of each radiator and in turn the rooms they are in. With the valves set to full they offer no control of temperature so the raditors are all at full pelt when the system is on.

If you set them to to say 3 the raditors will turn off when they reach a certain temperature which reduces the amount of water the boiler has to heat saving gas. This is turn with turning the hall thermostat to a lower tempeature overnight means the boiler will be doing a lot less work saving you money.

I personally would leave the system on all day if there are people in the house however drop the temperature to 15c overnight but do this an hour before you go to bed as it takes time for the temperature to drop in the house. If you are ever out for a few hours drop the thermostat to say 18 and put it back up when you get back in.
 
Drop temperature down to 18-20 and then set it to come on at certain times when you need it, or do it manually. I set mine to 16 degrees before bed and when I go to work, manually as I do shift work and the times always change.

How can you live in 22+ thats like a sauna.
 
Might be worth investing in £5-10 worth of heating pipe insulation and reflective foil type underfloor stuff - lag any pipes you have easy access to, and fit some foil (even kitchen foil would do to start with) behind your radiators to reflect heat.

I dont have any stats for how useful either of these measures are in % terms, but they can't hurt?
 
Why not turn off the radiators in the other rooms, just keep it on in the lounge and shut the door to keep the heat in.

You should also be able to turn down the temperature of the boiler somewhere - no point pumping boiling water round the system all day if the radiator will turn itself off due to the room being too warm already.

I really think the expense is just down to you wanting the flat really warm all day - that costs. Your flat may not be as well insulated as some modern buildings but it's council so will have had the usual stuff done (cavity, windows).

Only other advice I could give is to move to a first floor flat, you'll benefit from downstairs heat then :)
 
matt_fsr said:
Might be worth investing in £5-10 worth of heating pipe insulation and reflective foil type underfloor stuff - lag any pipes you have easy access to, and fit some foil (even kitchen foil would do to start with) behind your radiators to reflect heat.

I dont have any stats for how useful either of these measures are in % terms, but they can't hurt?
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Practically all of the pipes run along the walls, none of them are insulated


Thanks for the tips guys
 
Sorry to hijack this thread, but can anyone offer me advice?

I have an underfloor heating system, with a main central boiler, with each of the rooms having a little box to control the heating in that room.

The boiler setting goes from 0-100. The plumber seems to think that this should be kept at 70c in order for all the rooms to get adequate heat/warm water.

Is this true or lies??
 
I've found the problem here;

A[L]C;13240661 said:
The wife is at home with our baby and toddler, so the house needs to be kept warm throughout the day quite a lot.
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Everyone know's if you leave a women in a house alone (no-one is in the house to disagree and argue with them, so they do what they want), the natural instinct of them; is to turn the heating up to full belt, then still complain that it's cold. Bet she turns it down when you're due home, lol.

"Most" (ALL; stereotype meh, but it's true :P) women would turn the heating up, and it would be so hot, Satan himself would be dropping in every now and then to warm up a bit.
 
Mucky_Pup said:
I've found the problem here;



Everyone know's if you leave a women in a house alone (no-one is in the house to disagree and argue with them, so they do what they want), the natural instinct of them; is to turn the heating up to full belt, then still complain that it's cold. Bet she turns it down when you're due home, lol.

"Most" (ALL; stereotype meh, but it's true :P) women would turn the heating up, and it would be so hot, Satan himself would be dropping in every now and then to warm up a bit.
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lol probably
 
Mucky_Pup said:
I've found the problem here;



Everyone know's if you leave a women in a house alone (no-one is in the house to disagree and argue with them, so they do what they want), the natural instinct of them; is to turn the heating up to full belt, then still complain that it's cold. Bet she turns it down when you're due home, lol.

"Most" (ALL; stereotype meh, but it's true :P) women would turn the heating up, and it would be so hot, Satan himself would be dropping in every now and then to warm up a bit.
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See here

http://www.realmofdarkness.net/sounds/fg/peter-soundboard-12.htm

look under group quotes and press thermostat it's true
 
Our 2 bedroom flat uses <£30 a month, the last bill was 28 for a month and a half i think, I'm now paying by direct debit.

Have it set as you do to only come on when you need it (mines set 6.30am to 8am and 6pm to 10pm).
Use the local Thermostatic valves to only heat the rooms you need heated, close the doors to the rooms not needing heating and shut off the valve.
Set the thermostat as low as you can hack (I use 18c), the energy required to heat is not a linear function so a few C can save buckets of energy.
During the day, make sure all southern windows have the curtains open as you will be amazing how much free heating you will get from the sun. When the sun goes down shut the curtains straight away. If radiators are behind curtains, tuck the curtain behind the radiator (around 60% of the heat comes off as radiation so blocking it with a curtain is a bad idea!).
Make sure the system is fully bled.
Make sure the boiler isn't over heating the water. If you are really anal run a hot tap and use a thermometer.
Make sure you don't have anywhere you are leaking air eg front door frame, window frames etc. If do are, buy draft excluders and get frames sealed. If your bathroom has an extractor fan make sure its not being heated much and keep the door closed to avoid leaking hot air.


Pretty generic advice but it should help.
 
Unlight said:
Sorry to hijack this thread, but can anyone offer me advice?

I have an underfloor heating system, with a main central boiler, with each of the rooms having a little box to control the heating in that room.

The boiler setting goes from 0-100. The plumber seems to think that this should be kept at 70c in order for all the rooms to get adequate heat/warm water.

Is this true or lies??
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That sounds about right however the 0 to 100 isn't going to directly relate to the heatings temperature. I run mine at around 90-95% which results in a water temp of around 70c. You don't want to turn it down to low as the system will take longer to heat the house where at a higher setting it will take less time so you have to balance the time/gas usage.

At 95% our boiler uses the same amount of gas and less time to heat the house than running it at 60% and taking longer to heat the house. Its easy to work out just take a meter reading before and after.
 
Thanks, was a bit worried about the gas useage at such a high setting. Currently set it about 60-70, costing about £100 a month to heat a 4 bedroom detached - bearing in mind this is in NI where the gas prices are much higher! :(
 
Your radiators are designed to work at quite high water temperatures (60c or so), so if you set the boiler too low the radiators will be working very inefficiently. Its probably being better set slightly too high than too low, at least if its set too high the local control valves on the radiators will close. if its too low you will suffer constantly inefficient radiators.
 
ok guys,

interested in this as well,

Our radiators dont have the temp valves on them?? just taps? so to speak, you open the flow of water or close it.

Is this the same thing? If so how much should these valves be open by?

Cheers
 
Thats not the same thing. Thermostatic valves allow you set a temperature (turn the nob to a setting, normally 1 to 5), once the radiator is at a certain temperature the valve closes. If you only have taps you are manually opening or closing a valve which wont change unless you are there. Do you have a thermostat or any other main control?
Id be tempted to open them in the rooms you use and either totally or at last mostly close them in the rooms you hardly occupy. If the radiators get stupidly hot in your occupied rooms, look to close the taps a bit. With a system like that it will be trial and error really.
That or just buy thermostatic valves, they will pay for themselves fairly quickly with the price of gas being so high!
 
If you've got v****ble thermostatic valves on you radiators I don't see why you have a thermostat as well. Having both is pointless and possibly counterproductive.
 
[DOD]Asprilla;13243218 said:
If you've got v****ble thermostatic valves on you radiators I don't see why you have a thermostat as well. Having both is pointless and possibly counterproductive.
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This is true. But 95% of the houses I go to have a room thermostat as well as TRV's. It usually ends up with the room thermostat being used as an on/off switch in the majority of cases.
 
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