is it cheaper to have the boiler turned up and the raidiators turned down ?

naughty_but

Hi,i was just wondering what's the cheapest way to run the boiler over the year?
I have no thermostat on any walls in my house.
I can higher or lower the heating and hot water on the boiler and i can change the dials on the radiators from 1 to 6.
I live in a 3 bedroom house which is 3 storey and usually cold.
There are 7 raidatorsin the house and there are 5 people at the house.
I would be very grateful if you could tell me which is a cheaper way to run.
Many thanks
Dana :mad:

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

It doesn't make a huge difference what water temperature you set on the boiler for the Central heating. The hotter the water the quicker the house will heat.

The dials on the radiator - TRVs - determine the temperature the room will reach. You should simply set them at a level where you feel comfortable - that is their sole purpose.

Turn down the radiators in the rooms not in use - e.g. bedrooms when you leave in the morning and turn them on shortly before you go to bed - if the rooms are too cold.

Foggy

I am in almost exactly the same postion. I moved into a house recently which has a modern gas condensing combi boiler, 9 oldish rads and no room thermostat. I can set the temps of the heating and water separately on the boiler. It goes up to 80 on heating. The manual recommends I set it to this in the winter but this feels wrong somehow. It goes against my mindset that lower is cheaper.

Two questions. Although the rads are adjustable from 1 to 5 are these definitely TRVs or is there an older system which just simply restricts water flow? They look quite old so I'm not sure.

The boiler was fitted just over 3 years ago so I'm surprised that a room thermostat was not fitted at the same time. The installer has not entered their details in the intallation manual. Is it straightforward to have say a wireless one fitted now and would it be cost effective?

aelitaman

Why do you need a room thermostat when you have TRV's. The TRV's allow you to set the temperature per room.

Foggy

aelitaman wrote: »

Why do you need a room thermostat when you have TRV's. The TRV's allow you to set the temperature per room.

2 reasons really. I'm not 100% sure they are TRVs like I mentioned above and I was also wondering if a room thermostat allowed a greater degree of control

aelitaman

TRV;s offer greater control you can set different temperatures in different rooms by setting the trvs at differernt settings and when that temp is reached that individual radiator will be in effect turned off when the temp is reached and if in another room the set termperature has not been acheived then that radiator will still be on.

With a room thermostat you may have it in one room and when the temp in that room has been met the termostat will turn the boiler off even if the temp in another room has not been met to the temp set on the thermostat.

If you have numbers on the valves you have trv's mine have 0 = off then "snowflake" = frost setting then 1 to 5. 3 on mine is about 20C.

Foggy

That's really helpful thank you. I assume in that case that I can set the boiler temp to max and leave it to the rads to regulate.

aelitaman

Depends if you have young kids as sometimes the highest setting on the boiler means the radiators get very warm, too warm to touch comfortably.

The benefit of a higher temp on the boiler is that the radiators get to a higher temp so the rooms heat up quicker. So if you are of a mode to just turn the heating on when it feels like it is cold, like in the weather we have at present, then the max temp on the boiler might be best. If you are going to have it on a lot then it does not really matter, with a higher temp the rooms may over heat from the TRV setting because of the residual amount of hot water in the radiator still heating the room after the TRV has shut it off.

So you may have to use trial and error and work out what suits you a low setting, a mediaum or full temp. You might use more gas having the setting set to high because of the over heating I mentioned above but in theory the same amount of gas should be used.

Foggy

Thanks once again. I have a good search before asking but that is the best explanation I have come across.