Talk to me about thermostats

[gloriaaa]

We have just had a new combi boiler put in the kitchen. The plumber asked whether we were having a thermostat dial installed to control the heating in the house. Do we need this or can we control temperatures from the individual radiators?

You can do both.

If you put a thermostat in a cool part of the house (they often go in a hallway near the front door) then it provides a temperature at which the heating system turns on. You can then use the individual radiator controls to decide how high the temperature goes in an individual room.

That means you might have no heat at all until the temperature drops to 18C, but then have the radiators set to warm the sitting room but not kitchen or bedroom.

If you just have the radiator controls then the heating would have to be run by timer.

I like having the thermostat at this time of year when the temperature can be so variable. You can set the heating by timer, then have the thermostat set to 18c and the heating will only come on if it's cold enough to warrant it.

I fitted a wireless timer/thermostat to our combi boiler. We can move it into any room of the house, rather than having it stuck in a hallway. It also allows us to set different temperatures for different times of day.

I have to laugh at this one. It doesn't matter how or where they are fitted - I'm the thermostat in our house..

I think a thermostat is completely invaluable. Having not had one on our last boiler, we do have on this one and it makes all the difference comfort-wise.

PLus it's reduced our heating bills by £££s (probably also to do with a more efficient boiler, but our old system was ridiculous)

I would ALWAYS get one now. Agree the wireless ones are v good, and you can set different temperatures for every hour of every day, so for eg you can have it come on early on weekday mornings, drop to minimum while the kids are at school, warm up for the afternoon, and nice and toasty for the evening. Then on weekend mornings you can set it to come on later so you don't roast during your (theoretical) lie-in.

Roughly how much are the wireless ones?Does it need to be the same make as the boiler? Do you need anyone to help install it or is it easy to do yourself?

We had a wireless one fitted to our combi and it is in the hall (the thermostat that is).

It's been fantastic and much more efficient than having timed heating. So our heating setting on the boiler is set permanently to 'on'. Plus the temp control on the boiler is set to maximum.

Regarding the latter point, the engineer suggested this as he said it is more efficient re gas consumption.

He said that to reach a room temperature of say 21 then the boiler has to heat the water to about 30 degrees above this. So by having the boiler at its highest setting the thermostat temp is reached more quickly and stays at that temp for longer.

Certainly the boiler is firing much less than before. I would love corroboration of this point if anyone knows.

I paid about £80 for a Honeywell CM927 wireless thermostat/timer and wired it in myself. It doesn't have to be the same make as the boiler as they all use standard connections. It is expensive but I think it's worth every penny to be able to set temperatures for different periods of the day and not have to go to the boiler controls to change anything.

It also has a couple of nice extra features. If you're having a party or satying up to watch a late film you can just keep the heating on by pressing a couple of buttons then it reverts to the normal programme. You can also set it to holiday mode which will keep the house at a set temperature while you're away (to avoid burst pipes) then will restart the normal programme the day you come back.

The thermostat allows you to set a time and a temp. For example, you could set it to 20 degrees at 6am, 17 degrees at 9am then up to 21 degrees at 5pm. The one we've got allows 6 setting per day and different settings for each day of the week.

It can only control the boiler, not individual rooms. You'd need each radiator thermostat to be programmable to do what you want. Look for the Honeywell HR20.