Can I run my radiators without also heating water?

CL

Hi everyone,

This may be a stupid question but here goes, its it possible to turn on my central heating for the radiators but not heat hot water for the tank. we have a dishwasher and an elctric shower so we don't really need much hot water. Is this psoosible or will the water heated for the radiators always go to the tank as well. The reason I ask is that I can turn the HW on itself but not the Central heating on my controller, should this be the case?

espresso

CL wrote:

Hi everyone,

This may be a stupid question but here goes, its it possible to turn on my central heating for the radiators but not heat hot water for the tank. we have a dishwasher and an elctric shower so we don't really need much hot water. Is this psoosible or will the water heated for the radiators always go to the tank as well. The reason I ask is that I can turn the HW on itself but not the Central heating on my controller, should this be the case?

Yes you should be able to achieve what you want. Some programmers seem to assume that it will always be HW or HW & CH but others allow them to be used independently i.e. HW or CH or both. If your programmer does not allow CH without HW, you should be able fit a different programmer like the Danfoss MK 18 Time Control on this website. Plumbimg, Central Heating, Central Heating Controls. Alternatively a switch in the right place would stop the HW from being heated.

HTH

CL

It seems that it depends on whether or not I have a gravity feed or fully pumped CH system, anyone know how I can check which I have?

dovemeister

it depends entirely on the type of system you have - my old system was gravity fed HW pumped heating where the water in the HW tank was heated if HW OR heating was on but only pumped around the rads when heating is on - you could not have the heating on without HW because of the design of the system - see here for explanationhttp://www.idealboilers.com/gravity_hot_water_pumped_central_heating.html
if you have something similar then the answer is no without changing the controller AND other parts of the system

dovemeister

CL wrote:

It seems that it depends on whether or not I have a gravity feed or fully pumped CH system, anyone know how I can check which I have?

do you have 2 big (30mm?) pipes running from the boiler to HW tank? If so then looks like gravity fed system. If you have a motorised valve somewhere (airing cupboard?) then it's probably fully pumped - this is by no means the definitive way of deciding but should give you an idea

Skiduck

CL wrote:

It seems that it depends on whether or not I have a gravity feed or fully pumped CH system, anyone know how I can check which I have?

the easiest way is to see if you have one of these motorised valves in the airing cupboard:

http://www.plumbworld.co.uk/images/pwhv0012s.jpg

if you have, then it's a fully pumped system, if not, more investigation is required.