general very stupid questions about gas central heating, please help a tragic loser

[youretoastmildred]

Hi,

we have a back boiler. It appears to be completely inaccessible, inside the old chimney breast and walled in... surely it can't be? Don't they need to be serviced, like any boiler? and.... what if... it ... breaks? Does anyone know about back boilers?

Secondly, we have radiators throughout the house, but only one of them has rotating on off knobs (it appears to have an on-off knob at one end AND an adjusty temperature knob at the other). The rest are just, apparently, always on if the central heating is on. If I want to change this (I do, because I don't want to heat the whole house when we are all downstairs) can you ask a plumber to fit knobs to radiators, or do you have to get new radiators? (Or are they just broken? It seems bonkers to me that the heating would be deliberately installed as all-or-nothing)

Thank you for helping!

if you have a back-boiler, and it works, it is probably attached to a gas fire, the things are sold as a single unit. Any gas engineer over the age of 17 will be familiar with them.

Amazingly, they are still made.

Mostly they are very old, and although still servicable, are ripe for replacement.

p.s.

It sounds like you have no room thermostat (and possibly no timer?)

a basic room stat costs less than ten pounds (better, programmable stats cost up to a hundred) and a gas engineer should be able to fit one in an hour, if he can get at the pump.

Thermostatic radiator valves (with numbers on them) should be turned to a comfortable temperature and left alone. They do stop working with age. The major brands can have a new thermostatic head of the same design fitted as an easy DIY job. If you need new TRVs fitted, they are cheap to buy but it will probably be more than a day's work to fit them. an experienced and competent plumber can do it, you don't need to pay gas engineer prices.

p.p.s.

you can buy replacement knobs and fit them yourself.

The more often you turn a radiator valve on and off, the sooner it will wear out and leak. If it leaks round the spindle, quickly turn it all the way off, or all the way on, and it will probably stop.

Top quality valves can be repaired, but if you have to pay someone, it will be cheaper to buy new.

Thanks, PigletJohn.
Room thermostat - can you have one in each room? I just want some radiators on, some off.

Same with the TRV thingy - don't really care if we have these - I just want to be able to have some radiators on and some off (at the moment they are all on when the heating is on)

Can you (by which I don't mean you, still less me, but a plumber whom I will contract) put a TRV or on-off valve on any radiator?

Oh - I probably don't want TRVs if you are not supposed to footer with them ("turned to a comfortable temperature and then left alone"). I just want to be able to heat parts of the house only. I don't want to decide that the bedroom will be 20 degrees for ever, when we are all in the sitting room all evening

your radiators already have a valve at each end, even if the knobs have been lost.

A plumber can fit TRVs to any radiator, although the room with the wall stat (usually your main living room) should not have a TRV as they would be in contention.

It is possible to "zone" your heating system ino upstairs and downstairs, but I doubt that will be worth thinking about until you need a new boiler.

You can turn TRVs up and down if you want to, but it is best to have the max and min fixed inside the knob. Otherwise it will be like trying to bake a cake when you keep turning the oven between "off" and 240C, which is very uneconomical.

Thanks again, Piglet.
Why do you think we need a new boiler? I don't think it is that old - I think the gas fire was fitted in the last 5 years (I will check paperwork, we were given it with the house)

I'm afraid I don't get what this means at all: "You can turn TRVs up and down if you want to, but it is best to have the max and min fixed inside the knob" - see I told you I was stupid!

I am not sure they are what we need at all, maybe we just need very simple on / off knobs replaced on the valves.

On the cake thing: to torture the metaphor (perhaps to death) I see the "whole house constant temperature" thing as being like having the oven always at 200 in case you want to make a cake, and not allowing for the times you don't want to cook anything, or perhaps want to make meringues.

I actively like a cold bedroom. I would be happy to have the radiator off there all the time except maybe an hour each on a Saturday and Sunday morning.
Certainly don't want it on at 5.30pm when the kids come in, I will not even be popping my head round the door of my bedroom till 11pm (I wish)

If we are watching a film on a freezing rainy Sunday afternoon, are we not allowed to put the radiator on in the sitting room and turn the others off? No one is in any of the other rooms; the oven might be on, heating the kitchen, so when we go and eat dinner that room is warm anyway....

I think the orthodoxy of "pick a temperature, set the thermostat, and stick to it" is outdated, based on a time when people could afford to do this. I can't, but I actually hate the feel of uniformly hot houses in winter anyway (weirdo)

I think you are going to need to replace the boiler sooner or later, because you said it was a gas back-boiler and I assumed it was very old. They were at their most popular in the 1970's. When it goes wrong and needs an expensive repair, it will not be worth spending much money on. A new condensing boiler will probably knock 25% off your gas bill.

One incidental point is that if you have the oven on, warming the kitchen, a TRV will automatically turn the radiator down and off, to prevent warming the room above your target temperature. Similarly if you have a room where the hot sun beats in through the window.

I think you do need TRVs. You set each one to the temperature you like in the room concerned (they are just marked in numbers so will need some experimenting). That way you CAN have a cooler bedroom and a warmer lounge.

the T stands for thermostat. Marvellous device! :-)

In the summer you turn them fully on when the heating is off. Stops them sticking.

you should also check if this ancient heating system needs a clean. Feel your radiators when they are on.

cold at the top, warm at the bottom? They need bleeding?
other way round? Full of sludge. Powerflushing may or may not be the answer, perhaps a chemical clean will work.

Does the system have inhibitor in? When was the boiler last serviced? Do you have a carbon monoxide detector?

don't know when boiler was last serviced, which is why I think I should be arranging this and am wondering about access

don't think the system is ancient.

all the radiators work well.

"You set each one to the temperature you like in the room concerned" - but what if I like the temperature in a given room to be different at different times? PigletJohn leads me to believe you can't or shouldn't just turn them up and down as you feel like it?

hm no carbon monoxide detector (to my knowledge). If I get someone to service the boiler would that be a good person to advise how to get them, where to fit them etc?

if you really want to turn your rooms up and down frequently, and it is not worth spending hundreds of pounds on zoning, which might have a ten-year payback, then I do recommend setting the restrictors in the thermostatic head to (say) max and min that you expect to need in that room. So your bedroom might be max 16, min 12. When the downstairs room is heated, warmth leaking through the floor will generally keep it above 12 so the radiator will turn itself off. 16 because you said you like a cold bedroom. Your insurers will probably insist that the house is maintained at 12C if unoccupied in winter to prevent frost damage, and with the help of sunshine, this uses very little gas.

Some people insist on turning thermostats down to zero and up to 30C because they think it will make the room cool down and heat up faster. It won't, it just makes the temp overshoot, and then they turn it too far the other way. Makes my teeth curl.

ha ha you mean Jeremy's boiler theory. Even I know that is not sensible!

I find this tragically hilarious

CO detectors available at any DIY shop for about £20, complete with instructions.

May I hijack this thread please?!

I've moved into a new house which has a fancy wireless thermostat. Which doesn't do as it told. I've read the manual upteen times but it just seems to stay on all the time at a really high temperature even though it's on a time and set to 18°. It's a Towerstat rf. I have to resort to turning the boiler off otherwise it's always on. Boiler is a gloworm and has been fitted in the past 5 years.

Thanks and sorry to be cheeky op!

start by changing the batteries. it's possible the transmitter and receiver have lost contact and need to be reinitialised. I don't like wireless controls as they have two additional points of failure. If you have a wired one it may be more trouble to fit, but IMO more likely to be reliable.

then decide whether to get a heating engineer to look at it, or just bite the bullet and get a new one, possibly saving the cost of one visit.

Tower is an economy brand. Honeywell is the best for programmable stats at the moment.

We had a back boiler attached to the gas fire. It went wrong and was condemned (and so by default the gas fire) we had a combo boiler put in which is now in the airing cupboard in the bathroom replacing the old water tank. Our bills had gone down by £35 a month! (averaged out over the year, in 6mlnths we have become £4oo in credit)The month we had no heating (last feb so bloody freezing) and were using a million electric heaters we also didn't see an increase in our bills.

Thank you PigletJohn. I'll get some batteries and try that.

We have British Gas insurance and they've said they can change it over to their standard one as part of the package of we want to. Do you think it's worth it? At least they can show me how to work it properly!

Thanks again.

Where are you based? DP said he will have alookif you are close

if BG will give you a new one free it's certainly worth it!

they usually have major brands like ACL Drayton and Honeywell with a BG badge stuck on.

if you were paying, a Honeywell programmable stat would probably cost you £80-£100 plus fitting. A basic dial wired stat can be £10 or so plus fitting. A programmable stat is very much better, and worth it.

Thank you, I shall double check that I've got my facts correct about British Gas and go from there.

Thanks for your advice. :)