Hall heating up too quickly & thermostat cutting out

sindersoot

Sorry, if I have posted this in the wrong place.

British Gas updated the central heating system in my house three years ago to a Condensing Combi Boiler, fitted room thermostat and TRV's but kept old radiators and pipes from the previous system. They fitted TRVs to all the radiators with the exception of the hall. There is a room (wall) thermostat in the hall. The hall is L-shaped and the wall thermostat is situated round the corner from the radiator. The problem I am finding is due to the hall being fairly small the wall thermostat cuts out too quickly due to that area reaching it's temperature before for example the living room where it can still feel cold. I have mentioned this to every engineer that comes out to service the boiler under the annual contract since I had the new system installed. The last engineer that was out suggested that the thermostat be moved to the living room but I would need to pay to have that work carried out. Bit of a pain as it was them that installed it in the hall in the first place. Another suggestion he made was to leave all the internal doors open so as the hall did not heat up so much but I had been told in the past by engineers that GCH was more economical to run if the doors were all shut:rolleyes: Should say it is a bungalow.

The hall becomes unbearably hot even when the temp is at 19 or 20 degrees but the rest of the house can be a lot cooler. The living room TRV is at max and the others rooms are all set at lower temperatures as they are not used much.

Does anyone have any advice or experience of this type of problem?

richardc1983

Simple... just set the wall thermostat to Max and then control room temperatures using the TRVs.

TRVS much better as you can control individual rooms. Once your lounge is warm enough play about with the TRV and set it at that so that it holds the room at that temperature.

If the hallway is too warm then your wasting heat so try to turn one of the valves down a little so that there is less flow of water going through them, this should then be cooler.

The wall thermostat are pointless really as they only measure the temp in the room its in, so when this room warms up it turns the whole system off whereas the TRVs just control individual rooms so when the rooms are warm enough they turn off individual radiators but the system keeps running.

As long as one radiator is fully on all the time (most people use the bathroom one) there will be no worries.

Advised this many times on the forum and always helps other people.

sindersoot

richardc1983 wrote: »

Simple... just set the wall thermostat to Max and then control room temperatures using the TRVs.

TRVS much better as you can control individual rooms. Once your lounge is warm enough play about with the TRV and set it at that so that it holds the room at that temperature.

If the hallway is too warm then your wasting heat so try to turn one of the valves down a little so that there is less flow of water going through them, this should then be cooler.

The wall thermostat are pointless really as they only measure the temp in the room its in, so when this room warms up it turns the whole system off whereas the TRVs just control individual rooms so when the rooms are warm enough they turn off individual radiators but the system keeps running.

As long as one radiator is fully on all the time (most people use the bathroom one) there will be no worries.

Advised this many times on the forum and always helps other people.

Thanks for reply. Having a blonde moment here, I'm a bit confused, I'll try and explain. If I turn the wall thermostat in the hall up to max would that not cause the hall to become warmer? Or, by restricting the flow of water into the hall radiator is that what would prevent the hall getting even warmer? The valves on the hall radiator do not have a TRV so does it matter which one I would turn?

I had actually asked the engineer if it would be better to have a TRV on the hall radiator when the problem arose but he said that would mean the bathroom not having one but it would end up far too hot - all very confusing to me!

Dave_save

Could be a matter of your radiators being incorrectly sized or the system balancing incorrect. In a balanced system (in an ideal world) all of your radiators should heat up (and shed heat) at the same rate at the same time. It may be a simple matter of checking the balancing. A better flow to your living room could be obtained by opening the lockshield valves on your living room rads. Was the system rebalanced after the boiler change? It should have been.

richardc1983

The wall thermostat controls the hall temp. If it gets warm enough in the hall it turns all the rads off and the boiler. The trvs are idependant they can turn off one at a tine in diff rooms and it don't affect the boiler as the boiler will keep the other rads going. The wall thermostat is pointless when you have trvs as the trvs are doin the job of warming ur rooms up. U need to set wall thermostat to max though so that it don't shut off. Yes it will get hotter in all but there should still be a shut off valve on the radiator that u can turn off it might be under a plastic cap. Turn it the same way u wud turn a tap off. Is that clearer?

mikey72

If you close the valves on the hall radiator, when the TRVs shut the water will have no where to go, so it's not ideal.
I normally leave the TRV off the bathroom radiator, as no one complains if the bathroom gets too hot normally.
What is the heating temperature set to on the combi? Usually 3/5 or 7/10 is a good temperature, or about 60C.

DVardysShadow

The correct fix is to fit a smaller radiator in the hall which is only barely capable of heating the room to temperature - so that with conditions as at present, the thermostat does not cut in and the other rooms are controlled by their TRV's - but when the weather is warmer, the thermostat should cut in.

However, now is not the ideal time to change the radiator, so what you need to do is cover the radiator partially with a thickish blanket or rug. You will need to experiment with the amount of radiator to cover - I would suggest 50% to start with and increase or decrease as required.

Premier_2

Just turn the radiator off in the hallway.

Just because it doesn't have a TRV doesn't mean you can't turn it off - all radiators have valves to turn them on & off; a TRV is just a fancy one that does so automatically.

You don't have to turn it fully off it that would result in the hallway becoming too cold; you can always turn it partially off.

DVardysShadow

Premier wrote: »

Just turn the radiator off in the hallway.

Just because it doesn't have a TRV doesn't mean you can't turn it off - all radiators have valves to turn them on & off; a TRV is just a fancy one that does so automatically.

You don't have to turn it fully off it that would result in the hallway becoming too cold; you can always turn it partially off.

You could, but people are making the point that for most CH systems with TRVs, one rad should not have a TRV and by implication should be left on so the boiler always has some flow.

Cardew

The eternal problem of where to site the room stat.

I would adopt the method suggested above of 'lagging' the radiator with a heavy blanket; that effectively will make it smaller.

I have my roomstat in a large hall, I turn off the Radiator and put the stat to max; however I have an Automatic Bypass Valve(ABV) which overcomes the problem of having to leave a radiator on to act as a bypass.

richardc1983

DVardysShadow wrote: »

You could, but people are making the point that for most CH systems with TRVs, one rad should not have a TRV and by implication should be left on so the boiler always has some flow.

THats fine just make sure you leave one of the others on instead, perhaps the bathroom you like the bathroom warm when you come out of the shower.