Central Heating

[Bazile]

How does a room thermostat work in conjunction with the radiator thermostat ?

[nicebloke1]

22.03 Bathrooms are normally a cold area, so either really just choice if you like, or nearest the room stat. 

[Old_Geezer]

My use is to put the house thermostat at max so it doesn't interfere, then set the individual radiators to the setting that suits.

[Bazile]

Have all modern boilers got a button or something that can switch the boiler off completely , for example , overnight , rather than turning off the radiators , between certain hours ?

[Buenchico]

^^^ Under the 'Boiler Plus' legislation, which extends Part L of the Building Regulations, since 6 April 2018 all newly-fitted boilers must incorporate a timer.

[Buenchico]

You might find this useful, Baz:
https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/boilers/boiler-controls

[nicebloke1]

Bazile 23.17.  There is no need what so ever to completely turn off the boiler. If your room thermostate is set well below the outside teperature then the boiler won't come on. Lets just say that the outside teperature outside today is 23° and inside your house its a little cooler @20° and you have set your room thermostate 17/18° your boiler wont kick in and start heating the radiators.

Am I right in thinking you had a new combi boiler a little while back? If so you should have had a mannal with it showing you all the basic controls. Are you having a particular problem with the boiler??

[The Builder]

If only folk in general understood these systems even half as well as the posters here, life would be a lot easier for anyone in the trade.

I will underline one thing though. Something M'lud touched on. When TRVs became popular we were all fine with no roomstat to control overall temp. With climate change, someone decided it would look good to re-introduce roomstats by law. An absolutely pointless move.  

TRVs sense 'local' temps. The air around them. Roomstats, wherever they are, essentially do the same. The difference being that TRVs control their room only. Roomstats are global. If a roomstat dictates, then the whole system goes off. In many cases, a stone cold area down near the front door where roomstats are often placed, closes the system while a room maybe at the other end of the house, is still struggling to reach the temp. its TRV is set at.

The problem is largely psychological. It's counter-intuitive to wind your roomstat up to 30+ degrees to effectively bypass it. Forget your roomstat. Use your TRVs.   😁

[Bazile]

Had a new boiler fitted recently .

This one comes with a room thermostat, which is portable  ( the old one did not have  a room thermostat ).

Been looking at the thermostat handbook and wondered how to use it in conjunction with the TRV's

Amongst other things , it comes with factory program settings for

5/2 day mode Mon - Fri /sat- sun 

Programming mon-fri as one block and sat and Sunday as a second block . Each block can have 6 different times and temperatures 

 

7 day mode - programming all 7 days individually with different times and temperatures 

24 hour mode - programming all 7 days as one block with the same time and temperatures .

Lol - you need a degree 

 

[Buenchico]

>>> "you need a degree"

Nah! 

You just need that 10-year-old kid who lives next door 😁

[nicebloke1]

You should be able to do away with all that programing by flicking a switch, over to manual control. You won't need a degree to look for this switch or button it will say... Auto/ manual.

[davebro3]

I don't have TVRs (old system/smallish flat). I have the (portable) room thermostat set to manual & turn it up/down or off as required for comfort. Simples.

[The Builder]

Yes, a wireless one Baz. I had one in my last house. My boiler guy left it at factory settings so that I could decipher the instruction booklet myself to set timings as I wanted them.

Persevere Baz. You'll figure it out. Forget all the 'features.' I just picked 'Monday', set the on/offs for morning and evening, selected the desired Temp, then used the 'Repeat' function to copy all those settings to the other six days. Got there in the end. 

That was the Timings sorted.  I soon got fed up with constantly fiddling with the Temp. After all, the controller only senses the air Temp for wherever you put it, ignoring the rest of the house. That's when I set the Temp to maximum as I would with a rotary dial. (The on/off periods were still there of course.) Then I just set each TRV to what I wanted for each room.

Very few people will do it that way though. As I said above... it's counter-intuitive.

[Bazile]

Thanks all 

TB - To set the stat to maximum temperature in your example , do i take it you need to set each day on the stat  to maximum temperature ?

[The Builder]

Not on the one I had Baz, but I can't speak for all of them. I just set it once then it stays untill I ever feel like changing it.

 

[Atheist]

Modern controls are far too complicated and offering far too much choice. It's a bit like finding 20 square metres of shelving for toilet rolls or flour or milk in the supermarket. A simple mechanical room stat can be used as a switch (do I want heating on or off?) and, coupled with TRV's, you have an easy way of coping and understanding your system. Turn the heating on, and then let the TRV's look after each room.

[jameskennedy]

A room thermostat controls the overall heating system, while radiator thermostats adjust the temperature of individual radiators for more localized control.