Gas central heating controls <clueless person>

[trinni]

Hi all

I think I should probably know the answer to this question....but I don't.

It's dawned on me, since having an electric shower installed, we really don't need to be heating a whole tank full of hot water, twice a day, via the gas boiler.

We do still however need the heating on occasionally. Can I switch the 'HOT WATER' control off and just leave the 'HEATING' one on the timer, or won't it work like this?

What I'm asking is...can I still have heating without having to heat a tank of water? I hope so because I've just switched the 'WATER' off and it sounds like the boiler is still firing up.

1. depending on how your system was installed, you might or might not be able to have CH on and HW off. Try it. If it needs changing it might cost you some £hundreds. With luck there will be a 3-port valve near the boiler or cylinder or pump with a black flex on it

2. If you have a modern HW cylinder, with factory-applied foam insulation, and the HW pipes between cylinder and boiler are well lagged, heat loss is very slight. If not get a red jacket (or preferably two) and some Climaflex or similar rigid foam pipe lagging. It will pay for itself in saved energy within weks.

3. Look at your cylinder and see if it has a cylinder thermostat strapped to the side of it, with a rubbery-feeling flex attached. Does it? If necessary it can be adjusted or moved.

btw energy from gas costs between a third and a half what energy from electricity costs

Thank you PigletJohn. Firstly yes, the tank does have a cylinder stat and it is a modern, factory lagged one.

The timer is a Lifestyle Model LP241 and it does appear to let me use just the heating alone, the rads are hot even though the water control is off - how does this work?

I appreciate the maths re; gas vs elec but we like to use the shower and a shower from the main hot water supply wasn't an option unfortunately.

if you have a Lifestyle, you probably have a 3-port valve. That allows water to be pumped to the rads, or the cyl, or both, depending on the settings of the timer, and the room stat and the cyl stat.

if you ever find some of the rads get warm when CH is "off" it means the 3-port valve is worn out and allowing some leakage to pass when it should be shut.

From memory, a modern lagged cylinder can lose about 1 to 1.5 kWh a day in esacaping heat. If you have a gas boiler that will cost you 5p to 8p per day over the cost of not heating the cylinder at all. So worth turning off HW when you go on holiday, but not on a day when you are likely to be at home and turning on taps from time to time.

An unlagged cylinder wastes a great deal more.

You can put a red jacket round a factory lagged cylinder if you have room, it will cut down heat loss just a little bit more and is worth it while they're on subsidised offer (see link above). I actually have two on mine because I'm barmy very careful. Do not insulate over the cap or cable of an immersoin heater.

Gosh PigletJohn, you're more than helpful and a font of knowledge, thank you!

So, it seems that, although I do have a choice, it's better to keep the hot water on?

It makes sense really because we are always switching taps on for one thing or another.

might as well.

You can have it on mornings and evenings if you like, it's unlikely you'll use a hundred litres of water just washing up during the day (it's a bathfull) and it will prevent the boiler wastefully firing up for multiple short periods to top up the cylinder.

I use a dishwasher! Very wasteful no doubt!

Anyway, I'll time the water for twice daily and see how it goes.

A dishwasher uses less water and energy than a washing up bowl, so mot wasteful at all. The water in a well-insulated cylinder will stay hot for more than 24 hours (unless you use it all).

I like you even more PigletJohn!

1. yes, if the wall stat is set to a temperature which is lower than the current actual room temp, the wall stat will not turn the CH on

2. yes, if you have a timer set to 6am-9am and 15:30 to ?, the CH will not come on at times when the timer is set to be off

3. yes, there are ways. You can have a Programmable Wall Stat, which enables to to set different temperatures and different times. So that if it gets unusually cold, at a time when the heating would normally be off, it will turn on the CH. When you have a programmable wall stat, you set the old boiler timer to "24 hrs On." For example, mine is set to 20C 07:00-09:00, 15C 09:00-16:00, 18C 16:00-20:00, 21C 20:00-23:00, 15C 23:00-0700
   During the night the house usually stays warm from the evening, but in very cold weather the stat will turn the heat on if the house gets below 15C. The time and temp setting can be the same every day if the week, or they can be different on e.g. Saturdays, different again on Sundays, and different again of Tuesdays. Programmable stats usually have a Holiday setting, so you can tell it you will be away for 13 days, and want top maintain the temp at (say) 8C min to protect against frost, then put the normal heating cycle on the night before you are due home. They usually have a button to extend the current timing, for today only, by 1, 2 or 3 hours, for example if you are staying up late or having a party. The programmable stat will usually fit in the same place and use the same wires as your old wall stat, and a heating engineer should be able to fit and test it in an hour. The stats cost in the region of £50 - £150 from trade suppliers. The installer may charge a retail price. Honeywell and Danfoss are good brands. You can also get wireless versions that you can move around the house at whim, but this gives an additional level of complication and possible failure. They sometimes lose connection when you change the battery.

The other way is to use a Weather Compensation system that monitors the external temperature, and decides that if it is very cold outside, you will want the heating turned on earlier. Better modern boilers usually have the ability to connect these. I have my doubts because the system is making its own decisions, and you don't always know what it is doing and why. The system also assumes it knows what the heat loss from inside the house is, which will be different depending on windows open, curtains drawn, sunshine beating in etc. A weather compensation that is working correctly is said to make heating more efficient and economical. When they aren't working properly they can be very annoying and some people end up ripping them out.

Has anyone got any experience of using British Gas remote heating controls?

no, but they are bound to be a standard model made by one of the big brands like ACL Drayton or Honeywell, with a BG/CG logo put on them under contract.

What do you meany by "remote?" Wireless?