Dual zone heating - simple or complex?

ukri

Hi,

My sister and family recently moved into a detached house and have been struggling with the heating. There is one downstairs dial thermostat near the door which controls the heating for the house. Understandably, upstairs is always warmer than downstairs but it's significantly so. If it's comfortable downstairs, it's boiling upstairs and if comfortable upstairs its freezing donwstairs. I checked using a mobile thermometer and there a 4-6 degree difference! They both work from home with the kids downstairs during the day so both floors are occupied all of the time. 

Sorry for waffling. My question is, how easy is it for a gas/heating engineer to install dual zone controls so that the heating for the ground and first floor are independently controlled? Is this is fairly straightforward job or does it involved ripping apart a lot of stuff, replacing the boiler etc?

Thanks!

fenwick458

well it's quite hard if all floors and carpets are down, it involve re-piping the system so they are on 2 separate loops. you'd then have 2 x zone valves, controlled by 2 stats, and each loop would work independently of the other.
how about adjust the trv's, put all upstairs at 2-3, and have all downstairs on 5

FreeBear

Fit TRVs to the radiators if they haven't already got them. There should be a little chart accompanying the TRV to show what number to set it to for the desired temperature (No.3 is usually around 20°C). Set the upstairs TRVs to the temperature they want upstairs, and downstairs should heat up a bit better.

Jeepers_Creepers

ukri said:

Hi,

My sister and family recently moved into a detached house and have been struggling with the heating. There is one downstairs dial thermostat near the door which controls the heating for the house. Understandably, upstairs is always warmer than downstairs but it's significantly so. If it's comfortable downstairs, it's boiling upstairs and if comfortable upstairs its freezing donwstairs. I checked using a mobile thermometer and there a 4-6 degree difference! They both work from home with the kids downstairs during the day so both floors are occupied all of the time. 

Sorry for waffling. My question is, how easy is it for a gas/heating engineer to install dual zone controls so that the heating for the ground and first floor are independently controlled? Is this is fairly straightforward job or does it involved ripping apart a lot of stuff, replacing the boiler etc?

Thanks!

WHY is it 'boiling' upstairs when 'comfy' down?

Yes, warm air rises, but what I mean is there can only be two reasons for this large disparity between the floors. One is that - simply - hot air does rise so the upstairs becomes 'boiling' just from the heat flowing up from below, in which case separating the zones ain't going to help.

The other reason is a combination of 'hot air rises' and the upstairs also having some heating going on - in which case the question is 'why'?! Ie, why have the heating on upstairs if it's already too warm?

So, for (1) there's nothing you can do about it, and adding a zone won't help. For (2), turn the upstairs heating off!

Anyhoo, assuming you do want them zoned - and that is generally a very good idea - how complex it is comes down to where the plumbing 'flow' pipe from the boiler 'tees' to supply the ground and supply the upstairs. If the two floors are separately piped with a flow pipe splitting into two to serve each, then adding a zone valve to the upstairs pipe at that point - and another for the downstairs - should be 'easy'. You then fit a wireless Prog Stat upstairs (in the main bedroom or in the hallway).

You don't need a new boiler. You might need to rearrange the pipework, it all depends on how it's been done. Sometimes, for example, the pipes will be run in the ceiling and this feeds the upstairs rads AND the downstairs ones (by dropping down to each behind the walls) in which case you're stuffed without major replumbing. But if the two floors have a 'main' flow to each, you should be fine.

By why can't you just turn down the upstairs rads? 

EssexExile

FreeBear said:

Fit TRVs to the radiators if they haven't already got them. There should be a little chart accompanying the TRV to show what number to set it to for the desired temperature (No.3 is usually around 20°C). Set the upstairs TRVs to the temperature they want upstairs, and downstairs should heat up a bit better.

This.

We used to have two zones, now we only have one zone and thermostatic radiator valves on all the upstairs radiators. Much better control now.