In article ,
Hugo Nebula abuse@localhost writes:
I'm leaving for a new job 200 miles away. I haven't yet sold my
house, so I'm going to have to leave it empty for a while. What
should I do with the central heating? It's a standard boiler fed from
a header tank, with a pump, radiators, a hot water tank and a
three-way valve.

I've had to sort out similar situations for grand parents houses
in the past, one of which stayed like this for 3 years.

I presume turning everything off entirely is not a good idea?

I thought of leaving the heating setting to 'On' permanently and
setting the room stat to low, just in case we get a late frost.

Yes. You could probably set the house to around 10C, unless it's
an older 9" brick wall construction in which case I found 13C was
required to keep any damp smell away.

Should I also set the hot water to come on for a few minutes, just to
keep the three-way valve turning, and also to ensure that the boiler
does fire up at least once a day?

No. Actually, conventional three-way valve connections are that the
resting position is hot water, and the fully driven position is
central heating. What you could do is fire up the heating for a few
minutes every time you visit, if the outside temperature is such
that it is unlikely to have run for some time otherwise.

With the C/H running, I can't turn off the gas or electric. What
about the water?

I did turn off the water. On visits, check the level in the central
heating header tank. It will drop anyway -- I kept a saucepan in the
loft to top it up from the cold water storage tank. Might want to
check your boiler isn't going to burst into flames if a leak should
develop and empty the primary heating circuit.

I certainly didn't turn off the electricity. Various timers and the
like were rigged to make the houses look occupied (actually they
probably looked more occupied than when they were really lived in;-).

Probably not a good idea to do what one of my neighbours did though.
Each time I walked past the house, you could clearly see the giant
TV was on, but it was rather a giveaway that he apparently spent the
2 weeks watching a big blue screen with "No Signal" displayed on it;-)

--
Andrew Gabriel