How do you set up your central heating?

[ineedagallardo]

Hi all,

Recently moved into a new property that has a Gas boiler with water storage tank.

It has a control on the actual boiler - numbered 1-6 an electronic timer on the wall that you can adjust for when the central heating comes on and the thermostat in the hall.

Me and the Mrs are at work all day and return around 6ish.

How would the PH Experts recomend me set this up to keep the house nice and warm at night and when we wake in the morning - and also not to kill me in gas charges.

Thanks in advance.

[y2blade]

the boiler temperature is set to halfway (no numbers just a max-min marker)
our hot water is on all the time
the heating is on the timer..comes on from 04:30-06:30

then on again at 17:00-22:00

thermostat set to 16degsC


works for me

Edited by y2blade on Tuesday 15th December 10:55

[sherman]

set the times at 15mins before you get up and 15mins before you leave for work. 30mins before you get home from work and 30mins before you generally go to bed. The heating doesnt need to be on during the day unless you are home and its cold.

Set the thermostat to a temp that the house is warm enough for you to walk around without wearing a jumper and leave the hot water on all the time it takes too long to heat up all the time.

Edited by sherman on Tuesday 15th December 10:57

[Defcon5]

I generally turn the thermostat all the way down when I leave the house, and turn it up again when I get back in

[ineedagallardo]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Jut to confirm, Dont mean to sound like a dummy,

The electronic device that you set for what time the heating comes on - does this control the water heating up - as it has a red light to indicate when this happens.

Do i then need to control the temperature via the thermostat which will then circulate the water to the radiators at any time? or only when the red light is on?

Thanks again.

[y2blade]

ineedagallardo said:

Thanks for the replies so far.

Jut to confirm, Dont mean to sound like a dummy,

The electronic device that you set for what time the heating comes on - does this control the water heating up - as it has a red light to indicate when this happens.

Do i then need to control the temperature via the thermostat which will then circulate the water to the radiators at any time? or only when the red light is on?

Thanks again.

mine has two seperate sliders on the timer, one for hot water the other for heating.

I have the hot water set to "aways on" (the temp panel on the hot water tank is set to 55degsC iirc)

the heating one is set in the "twice" position so it comes on at the times mentioned earlyer

is that any help to you?

[Ricky_M]

The programmer allows you to set the times the boilers is switched on and which circuits it is heating up. Either the Heating or the Hot Water.

The knob on the boiler, controls the temperature of the water inside the pipework. So the higher you set it, the hotter the surface temperature of the rads and pipework. Also the higher you set it, the more gas you will use, the lower, the less gas, but things will not heat up properly if you have it too low, you need to find a happy medium.

The room thermostat, just switches off the boiler when the target temperature in the room is achieved.

You shuld also have a thermostat on the cylinder to control the temperature of the domestic hot water.

Sorry if I have insulted your intelligence with these descriptions, but a lot of people don't understand how these things work.

If you want to keep the house warm during the night, leave the heating on and just lower the temperature on the room stat.

Alternatively, you could fit a programmable room stat, which allows you to manage time and temperature together.

[ineedagallardo]

I'm going to set it to the times mentioned earlier.

However it was more of a case of does turning the thermostat up circulate the water or does it only cirulate within the times set on the electronic device?

[f13ldy]

CH on 5:00am off at 7:00am. Then again at 5:00pm through 9:30pm.

Hot Water same times and set to 55/60c on the tank.

Boiler knob turned onto 4 out of 6.

[Ferg]

If you have a fully pumped system you need to wind the boiler thermostat up pretty much as high as it'll go. I normally tweak it down slightly incase any air through the boiler tips the overheat stat over the edge.

Someone has designed that system to run radiators which were sized to a BS output chart probably to run at 80 degrees. If you don't put that flow temperature in then the rads won't provide their quoted output.

We used to set boiler thermostats to control water temperature, but that was with gravity systems.

[ineedagallardo]

Ricky_M said:

Sorry if I have insulted your intelligence with these descriptions, but a lot of people don't understand how these things work.

No not in the slightest. Sums it up perfectly - exactly what i was after, a "dummys" guide if you will.

Thanks.

Thanks to everyone else who has helped as well - It's much appreciated

[.:ian:.]

Ricky_M said:

Alternatively, you could fit a programmable room stat, which allows you to manage time and temperature together.

Do this

Something like a honeywell cm927, you can set different temperatures at different times, (and different settings weekdays/weekends) e.g. 16 all night, 19 at 6am, 16 at 9am, 20 at 5pm, back to 16 at 11pm, etc

It will work out how long it takes to heat up the house, and start earlier when colder (it tries to get the temperature to the level you set at the time you set)

Becauses its set and forget, you wont forget to turn it down/off at night and when no-ones in, and if you do tweak it up a degree, it will reset to the pre-programmed values at the next time point.

It also duty cycles the boiler which is apparently more efficient, (ie the on-off cycles get shorter the closer it gets to the set temperature.)

[Deva Link]

sherman said:

set the times at 15mins before you get up

15mins! Is your CH instantaneous or something?

[ineedagallardo]

.:ian:. said:

Ricky_M said:

Alternatively, you could fit a programmable room stat, which allows you to manage time and temperature together.

Do this

Something like a honeywell cm927, you can set different temperatures at different times, (and different settings weekdays/weekends) e.g. 16 all night, 19 at 6am, 16 at 9am, 20 at 5pm, back to 16 at 11pm, etc

It will work out how long it takes to heat up the house, and start earlier when colder (it tries to get the temperature to the level you set at the time you set)

Becauses its set and forget, you wont forget to turn it down/off at night and when no-ones in, and if you do tweak it up a degree, it will reset to the pre-programmed values at the next time point.

It also duty cycles the boiler which is apparently more efficient, (ie the on-off cycles get shorter the closer it gets to the set temperature.)

I was actually going to ask this;

The digital timer that controls when the ch and water is honeywell and i have a honeywell thermostat in the hall.

If i were to change the thermostat to a honeywell cm927 would it still be compatible with the digital timer?

[Jonny_]

Since I bought my house just over 2 years ago I've relied solely on the 24-hour timer on the combi boiler - no thermostat was fitted, so whenever the weather got colder/warmer I had to fart about with the timings to compensate!

So last week I fitted one of these: http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Heating/Controller...
and it's bloody excellent. Lets me set 5 different temps throughout each day and can either have 7 individually programmed days or it can run one programme Mon to Fri and another Sat to Sun.

Weekdays
21C 5:30am to 7am (nice warm house when I get out of bed)
14C 7am to 5pm (stops house becoming too cold when I'm at work, although it hasn't dropped below 17C... yet)
19C 5pm to 8pm
22C 8pm to 10:30pm (nowt worse than getting out of hot shower in cold house!)
14C 10:30pm onward (again, stops house getting too cold if it's a really cold night, but normally it won't drop this low)

Weekends
21C 7am to 10am (no good having a lie in and freezing your gonads off)
16C 10am to 4pm
19C 4pm to 8pm
22C 8pm to 12am
14C 12am onward

[Ricky_M]

ineedagallardo said:

.:ian:. said:

Ricky_M said:

Alternatively, you could fit a programmable room stat, which allows you to manage time and temperature together.

Do this

Something like a honeywell cm927, you can set different temperatures at different times, (and different settings weekdays/weekends) e.g. 16 all night, 19 at 6am, 16 at 9am, 20 at 5pm, back to 16 at 11pm, etc

It will work out how long it takes to heat up the house, and start earlier when colder (it tries to get the temperature to the level you set at the time you set)

Becauses its set and forget, you wont forget to turn it down/off at night and when no-ones in, and if you do tweak it up a degree, it will reset to the pre-programmed values at the next time point.

It also duty cycles the boiler which is apparently more efficient, (ie the on-off cycles get shorter the closer it gets to the set temperature.)

I was actually going to ask this;

The digital timer that controls when the ch and water is honeywell and i have a honeywell thermostat in the hall.

If i were to change the thermostat to a honeywell cm927 would it still be compatible with the digital timer?

The CM927 would take care of the heating side of things, but you would still need a timer for the hot water, you can leave the existing timer in place and ignore the heating side of the programmer.

You could use the existing timer with the new CM927, but would be pointless.