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 £50 or
£100 each I think so that's £3-600 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?

On 2007-12-04 09:03:02 +0000, 405 TD Estate said:

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 £50 or
£100 each I think so that's £3-600 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.


http://europe.hbc.honeywell.com/hometronic/home.htm


Otherwise 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.

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2007-12-04 09:03:02 +0000, 405 TD Estate said:

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 �50 or
�100 each I think so that's �3-600 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.


http://europe.hbc.honeywell.com/hometronic/home.htm


Otherwise 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.


NT

The message 47551e97@qaanaaq
from Andy Hall contains these words:

On 2007-12-04 09:03:02 +0000, 405 TD Estate said:

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 £50 or
£100 each I think so that's £3-600 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.

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.

--
Roger Chapman

On Tue, 04 Dec 2007 01:03:02 -0800, 405 TD Estate wrote:

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 £50 or
£100 each I think so that's £3-600 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?

They are much cheaper than that take a look at BES. They are pushing some
make for less than £20+VAT a go. It also uses the standard syncron motor.

You make you own control box fro six zones = you'd probably need to use
two standard wiring centres.


--
Ed Sirett - Property maintainer and registered gas fitter.
The FAQ for uk.diy is at http://www.diyfaq.org.uk
Gas fitting FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/GasFitting.html
Sealed CH FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/SealedCH.html
Choosing a Boiler FAQ http://www.makewrite.demon.co.uk/BoilerChoice.html