I've just had a room thermostat controller fitted to my CH system.

When I moved into the house, it had only the controls on the boiler
itself and thermostatic valve controls on each radiator. I found
this inflexible because of the lack of timed control.

How do I set the radiator thermostats in the room with the room thermo
(they go 1-5) so that they don't override or interfere with the room
thermo operation?

I'm guessing set them on full in the room where the room thermo
is...but I am only guessing.

David

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
david thorpe wrote:

I've just had a room thermostat controller fitted to my CH system.

When I moved into the house, it had only the controls on the boiler
itself and thermostatic valve controls on each radiator. I found
this inflexible because of the lack of timed control.

How do I set the radiator thermostats in the room with the room thermo
(they go 1-5) so that they don't override or interfere with the room
thermo operation?

I'm guessing set them on full in the room where the room thermo
is...but I am only guessing.

David

Yes, set the TRV at max in the room with the room stat. Better still, remove
the capsule assembly from the valve. If the rad then produces too much heat
on a permanent basis, turn its lockshield valve down a bit. [This is only a
stop-gap solution, because . . .]

Ideally, you should balance the system by adjusting the lockshields - with
the TRVs fully open - to get a uniform temperature drop across all
radiators. Finally, adjust the TRVs in all rooms except the one with the
room stat to give the required comfort level, and set the room stat so that
it switches everything off when the whole house is at the required
temperature.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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Thanks for that clear advice, Set Square.

On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 23:06:40 -0000, "Set Square"
wrote:

and set the room stat so that
it switches everything off when the whole house is at the required
temperature.

That's not as easy as it sounds. I've just updated my CH and have put
the thermostat in the lounge on the basis that's where I want the
temperature to be most accurate. Trouble is that the background heat
in that room varies. Each person = 100W, Candles = 40W-110W (40W is
night light, TV watts all end up as heat as do lights etc. So you can
see that you can quickly unbalance the system.

Also, if the radiator surface in the sense room is on the large side
that too can make it difficult to sense the average house temperature
(or perhaps rather the coldest room temperature).

What I find happens is everyone ends up in the lounge at night and the
heating stops running at all. Come bedtime and the bedrooms are
freezing :-(.

I'm going to try the hall next to see if that is any better, but that
has problem of heat leakage from the kitchen or loss when the front
door is opened. Top landing is another area that I might try. Radio
thermostats are ideal for sort of messing around but I don't have one
:-( so it will be temporary cables until I find the best place.


--

Malcolm

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
, or ).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - www.CharteredConsultant.co.uk - The Consultant A-List

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Malcolm Reeves wrote:

On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 23:06:40 -0000, "Set Square"
wrote:

and set the room stat so that
it switches everything off when the whole house is at the required
temperature.

That's not as easy as it sounds. I've just updated my CH and have put
the thermostat in the lounge on the basis that's where I want the
temperature to be most accurate. Trouble is that the background heat
in that room varies. Each person = 100W, Candles = 40W-110W (40W is
night light, TV watts all end up as heat as do lights etc. So you can
see that you can quickly unbalance the system.

Also, if the radiator surface in the sense room is on the large side
that too can make it difficult to sense the average house temperature
(or perhaps rather the coldest room temperature).

What I find happens is everyone ends up in the lounge at night and the
heating stops running at all. Come bedtime and the bedrooms are
freezing :-(.

I'm going to try the hall next to see if that is any better, but that
has problem of heat leakage from the kitchen or loss when the front
door is opened. Top landing is another area that I might try. Radio
thermostats are ideal for sort of messing around but I don't have one
:-( so it will be temporary cables until I find the best place.

A single thermostat is necessarily a compromise - regardless of whether or
not you have TRVs in other rooms. The 'ideal' is an S++ system, with a
separate zone (and room stat) in every room - but that gets a bit expensive
to implement.

If your system could be split into two zones - maybe upstairs and
downstairs - this would help, and would keep the bedrooms warm even if the
lounge stat had turned off the downstairs zone.

I have a similar problem, with a single stat in the hall - but the hall
isn't particularly representative of temperatures throughout the house
generally, so I'm wondering about relocating the stat into the dining room.
Please post the results of your experiment. Others - myself included - will
probably find them useful.

--
Cheers,
Set Square
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The message
from "Set Square" contains these words:

A single thermostat is necessarily a compromise - regardless of whether or
not you have TRVs in other rooms. The 'ideal' is an S++ system, with a
separate zone (and room stat) in every room - but that gets a bit expensive
to implement.

If your system could be split into two zones - maybe upstairs and
downstairs - this would help, and would keep the bedrooms warm even if the
lounge stat had turned off the downstairs zone.

I did that some years ago and it would certainly address the ops problem
but I did in more because being home most days I needed at least some
heat downstairs all day while the bedrooms didn't.

I have a similar problem, with a single stat in the hall - but the hall
isn't particularly representative of temperatures throughout the house
generally, so I'm wondering about relocating the stat into the dining room.
Please post the results of your experiment. Others - myself included - will
probably find them useful.

We had quite a lengthy discussion on this ng some years ago in a thread
I think I started after the firm that serviced my brother-in-laws boiler
quoted what I thought was an excessively high price for modifications
and insisted the *only* correct place for a house thermostat was in the
hall.

I have advocated the living room as the obvious site for years but that
does have a significant problem if the house has a real fire or other
subsidiary heat source in the living room or, as in the ops case, the
living room has an excess of heating surface. However ISTM that there is
an easy workround in that thermostats in parallel and TRVs all round
would provide alternate systems with very little adjustment in shifting
from living room centred to the other thermostat centred heating.

--
Roger

"Malcolm Reeves" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 23:06:40 -0000, "Set Square"
wrote:

and set the room stat so that
it switches everything off when the whole house is at the required
temperature.

That's not as easy as it sounds. I've just updated my CH and have put
the thermostat in the lounge on the basis that's where I want the
temperature to be most accurate. Trouble is that the background heat
in that room varies. Each person = 100W, Candles = 40W-110W (40W is
night light, TV watts all end up as heat as do lights etc. So you can
see that you can quickly unbalance the system.

Also, if the radiator surface in the sense room is on the large side
that too can make it difficult to sense the average house temperature
(or perhaps rather the coldest room temperature).

What I find happens is everyone ends up in the lounge at night and the
heating stops running at all. Come bedtime and the bedrooms are
freezing :-(.

I'm going to try the hall next to see if that is any better, but that
has problem of heat leakage from the kitchen or loss when the front
door is opened. Top landing is another area that I might try. Radio
thermostats are ideal for sort of messing around but I don't have one
:-( so it will be temporary cables until I find the best place.


--

Malcolm

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
, or ).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and
Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips,
see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - www.CharteredConsultant.co.uk - The Consultant A-List

My present house has a central heating system which has thermostatic control
valves on all radiators apart from one which is necessary to allow to be on
all the time as a heat sink.
I decided to have this one in the hall.
Compared to my last house which had a central control thermostat controlling
all radiators such as you are discussing, I have found this system far more
satisfactory as I can set each room differently and if necessary can be
locally adjusted
Of course the main difficulty with any heating system is everyone feels cold
or hot in a different way. depending on their medical condition at that
time..
I have an oil condensing boiler which is very efficient and in a 3 bedroom
bungalow my average heating bill is £250 Being retired the heating is on
quite a lot in Winter (Perthshire, Scotland)
Blair Malcolm

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Blair Malcolm wrote:


My present house has a central heating system which has thermostatic
control valves on all radiators apart from one which is necessary to
allow to be on all the time as a heat sink.
I decided to have this one in the hall.
Compared to my last house which had a central control thermostat
controlling all radiators such as you are discussing, I have found
this system far more satisfactory as I can set each room differently
and if necessary can be locally adjusted
Of course the main difficulty with any heating system is everyone
feels cold or hot in a different way. depending on their medical
condition at that time..
I have an oil condensing boiler which is very efficient and in a 3
bedroom bungalow my average heating bill is £250 Being retired the
heating is on quite a lot in Winter (Perthshire, Scotland)
Blair Malcolm

The only problem with this setup is that there's no boiler interlock. So the
boiler wastes energy keeping itself - and your heat sink radiator - hot,
even when the whole house is hot enough. I don't know about Scotland, but
the Building Regs in England require all *new* heating installations to have
a boiler interlock.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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