Drayton Thermostat Control In Our Newly Purchased House

[sunsocks]

Hi - is anyone familiar with this Drayton heating control which is in the old house we have moved into? It says that it needs to be plugged into a power supply all the time. Are they efficient? I ask because it is costing a fortune to heat this house (LPG - what a rip off!) There is a different thermostat upstairs. Many thanks for any advice.

[KARL]

Thermostats are temperature dependent electrical switches, nothing more. At temperatures above the chosen setting they break the circuit ("off") and when the temperature again falls below the set temperature they make a connection again ("on"). When connected to a boiler or other such device, then they cause the boiler to produce heat until the space covered by the thermostat has reached the set temperature - then they switch the boiler off. All thermostats have a narrow margin on either side of the setting - a fall slightly (somewhere between 0.5 an 1.0 degrees) below the setting is required to trip the switch to "on", and vice versa.

Heating efficiency is not so much dependent on the thermostat itself but much more on other factors. Arguably the two most important ones are draughts and insulation, in my opinion to the virtual exclusion of everything else. UK housing stock is generally shockingly backward in both respects.

It is always going to cost money to heat a dwelling using fossil fuel, and even more so where so much of the heat is being lost to the outdoors. I do not know the relative cost of coal, oil, LPG, mains gas fuelled systems of equal design under equal conditions but my immediate guess would be that there is not a huge difference. The losses will dictate the final outcome and without knowing anything about your house I would guess that your losses are high, simply from what you say.

Is your house well insulated (uppermost ceilings, outer walls and floors) ? Are the windows double or even triple glazed with 20mm or more spacing between panes ? Are all windows and external doors nearly completely airtight ? Is the house totally without any chimneys or open vents through walls (central cooling) ? Are all radiators placed below or at least directly beside windows and external doorways (and NEVER beside internal doorways) and fitted with thermostatic valves ? My guess would be that your answer is NO to some or all of these.

Not only will houses with high heat losses be difficult and expensive to heat but cold spots and internal draughts due to lack of insulation and bad system construction will cause discomfort up to and past temperatures that otherwise would be adequate. Additionally, timing heating on/off depending on time of day, as is the norm in the UK, will make matters worse in terms of comfort and cost. Heating houses up to, say, 18 degrees or beyond is not common in the UK but is common elsewhere where houses are better built/fitted - central heating of some sort is a relative novelty for more people in the UK than in several other countries.

Any house with high heat losses can be improved significantly by paying attention to insulation and draughts. Radiator positioning, etc. is probably the cheapest one to correct, the rest can be done piecemeal and by priority as is convenient and fits the budget. There are grants available for some of the necessary work, simply because as a nation the UK is wasting vast amounts of energy, adding unnecessarily to emissions and leaving people in totally unnecessary and, to both nationals and foreigners alike, much poorer living conditions than are necessary or acceptable.

But then, for a lot of people in the UK, heating to a comfortable level is a lower priority issue than other things that receive better access to the budget. That is a cultural issue.