how long is a realistic time for boiler to heat the house from cold?

londonTiger

Hi

landlord has recently fitted an energy efficient boiler but I don't think it's up to the job to heat up 3 floor house.

The pump appears to be too weak and does not have a booster pump for a house on 3 floors and 12 radiators.

The boiler is running on 2.2 pressure all the time and it takes 90+ minutes for the boiler to get to 65 degrees celcius.

It's a bit ridiculous because when we turn the heat on in the morning by the time it gets to temp the sun is shininh, it's 11am and the atmosphere is warm anyway.

We can't put the heater on timer because british weather is unpredictable. some days it's warm, other days it's cold so it's pointless putting it on auto and racking up the bills.

we put it to the landlord that the boiler is inadequate for the job and needs a booster pump so it can relieve the pressure a bit and allow it to heat the house better but landlord insists boiler is fit for purpose and we have to accept it or use plug in electric radiators.

JJ_Egan

2 story SD old boiler On Timer and Thermostat 18 degrees 7-30 am .
Warm enough by 9 am . Decision is then taken dependant upon weather on at a lower setting or off .

londonTiger

so is it acceptable for the boiler to take that long or not. The house used to have a potterton which was notorious for being unreliable. But it did heat the house up far quicker than the current boiler.

The reason why the LL changed from the potterton was each winter it required 2 callouts to get it fixed because it would just cease to work during the peak of winter.

The PCB is apparantly atrocious and each time the engineer would come and cahnge the PCB entirely as they were unable to diagnose the fault.

Biggles

90 minutes in winter doesn't sound too far off. But it can only work properly if you use the timer. Sure, unless it's an intelligent controller it might get the place warm a bit early or a bit late depending on the weather, but you're probably wasting more gas by not turning it on till you get up and then, as you say, finding it's already warmed up outside.

stator

I'm afraid there are too many variables to say how long it should take.

When it's 5C outside my house would take longer than 90 minutes.

Have you balanced your radiators so some are turned up higher than others?

If the radiators at the top of the house don't get hot, then it might show a problem. But if you've got all radiators on full blast then any boiler would take a while to get up to temperature.

sk240

It sounds like its not ramping up to full power, my boiler can heat itself within seconds to that kind of temperature, especially if the radiators are balanced correctly.
My boiler ramps down to less than 1/2 "throttle" pretty quickly after turning on.
Mine is a vaillant 831 with 12 large radiators on the circuit.
Often new boilers have a kw output setting that is adjustable, it maybe sat too low, set it higher or to auto etc

WestonDave

Chances are even in warm weather you'd need the heat topping up a bit in the morning so surely putting it on a timer that makes it run for an hour before you want to get up with a view to turning it off if its not needed is one approach. The other option is to see if the landlord will fit a programmable thermostat rather than just a timer - shouldn't cost much (certainly cheaper than changing the boiler).


If what you are really asking is whether the landlord can be forced to change the boiler because it doesn't heat the house up as quickly as you'd like - the answer is almost certainly not - you have a working form of heating which is all that is required.

footyguy

londonTiger wrote: »

Hi

landlord has recently fitted an energy efficient boiler but I don't think it's up to the job to heat up 3 floor house.

The pump appears to be too weak and does not have a booster pump for a house on 3 floors and 12 radiators.

The boiler is running on 2.2 pressure all the time and it takes 90+ minutes for the boiler to get to 65 degrees celcius.

It's a bit ridiculous because when we turn the heat on in the morning by the time it gets to temp the sun is shininh, it's 11am and the atmosphere is warm anyway.

We can't put the heater on timer because british weather is unpredictable. some days it's warm, other days it's cold so it's pointless putting it on auto and racking up the bills.

we put it to the landlord that the boiler is inadequate for the job and needs a booster pump so it can relieve the pressure a bit and allow it to heat the house better but landlord insists boiler is fit for purpose and we have to accept it or use plug in electric radiators.

The pump only pumps the water around. If you can hear the water moving in the system, then it doesn't sound like a pumping issue.

Furthermore, the fact it takes so long for the boiler to heat to 65 degrees, also indicates the pump is working fine.
(Consider what would happen if the pump was not pumping at all - the boiler would soon reach the 65 degrees )

Any fault, if there is one, would be that the boiler is perhaps a little undersized for the system. However, I'm not convinced this is an issue as the boiler does heat up eventually. Putting in an oversized boiler would end up costing you more in running costs.

Yes, on a conventional central heating system, it can take on average about 45-90 minutes to warm up (but this depends on many variables, such as but not limited to, insulation levels, outside temperature, initial indoor temperature, etc)

To obtain much more rapid warm up, you would need a thermal store system - hot water is maintained 24/7 in a thermal store (insulated tank) and pumped direct to the radiators when called to do so. Such systems tend to be expensive compared to traditional systems.

Pincher

It's very simple, if your radiators are not hot, the house will not warm up.


My radiators are from the old days, when the non-condensing boiler outputs around 70 degrees C. The new condensing boiler outputs around 50 degrees, for maximum condensation, so obviously it takes forever to warm up from cold, but once it gets there, it is very good at maintaining the set temperature. I can force it to go full blast by turning the set point to 25 degrees. This doesn't work with the old style click on/click off thermostat, naturally.


Eliminate all the other possibilities first:


Bleed the radiators.

Balance the radiators.

Check for sludge: bottom of the radiator doesn't heat up.

My hunch is the boiler has some kind of ECO mode, set by DIP switches, so it doesn't want to go full blast.

macman

But it's insane to have CH and not use it on the timer. The outside weather and temp is irrelevant, because what you are trying to achieve is a consistent temp inside-and that's what the room 'stat or TRV's are for. You won't 'rack up bills', because if it's warmer then the 'stat will shut the boiler down as soon as the set temp is achieved-which will be sooner than when it's cold..
Are you saying that there is a programmer but no room 'stat? if so, this is a breach of the building regs for a new install.

r2015

Are you saying that there is a programmer but no room 'stat? if so, this is a breach of the building regs for a new install.

Seemingly not in Scotland it's not.
New install of combi and radiators with thermostatic valves and digital programmer on boiler but no room thermostat.

Room thermostat not necessary if all radiators have thermostatic valves.