Condensing Boiler temprature

Lorian

RazBurley said:

Lorian said:

OP has a cylinder so it's S plan or Y plan. So he needs to keep his flow set high enough to heat his water.  He might want to heat his water above 60c if he is concerned about legionella. Still a little scope to come down from 68c though, but probably wants to reduce cylinder thermostat a bit too depending what it's on.

55c is probably a leap too far 

Remember reducing the flow will slow down how fast your house warms up in the morning so you may need it to come on earlier 

Hi,

Our boiler has seprate temp control for hot water which we have put on max  as we only do it twice a day. 

Its just about the heating which we want to run as efficiently as possible to keep the house warm and the bill down as well.

Thanks

Hot water priority system then maybe. Can you post a picture of the pipe work by the tank and the control you use to switch the water on?

FreeBear

Northern_Wanderer said: It depends on your house, the radiator/ room sizes etc.

When I replumbed my heating system, I crunched a few numbers using this calculator -> https://www.stelrad.com/basic-heat-loss-calculator/

Still fitted oversized radiators in most rooms, which means I can get away with running a lower flow temperature than most. Over Christmas, this was 45°C or less. Doubled the time the house took to heat up. The last couple of days, I've been running at 60°C which is giving me a temperature rise of ~1.4°C per hour.

@RazBurley - If you want to run the boiler at peak efficiency, you need to look at the return temperature. This may mean you have to balance the radiators and turn the pump speed down to suit (The "engineer" that installed my boiler had left the pump speed set to max, and I really struggled to balance the radiators effectively).

RazBurley

Northern_Wanderer said:

It depends on your house, the radiator/ room sizes etc. A couple of years ago I experimented with reducing the boiler temp. At 55C, it took a very loooooong time for my house to heat up with the boiler running full whack. At 65C it gets warm nice n quick (I think this temp is within the "eco" range of temp settings on my boiler where it runs most efficiently). Obvioulsy in these sub zero temps it is taking a bit longer to heat the house from cold but I'm not running up to the loft to change boiler temp each week.....it's trial and error for your house I'm afraid.

Re hot water - no point heating it so much that you have to add cold water. No point heating it at times it's not used, so timing the water heating to coincide with just prior to showers or baths important.

Hi, i am just trying with low boiler temp to see how long it takes for house to get warm and what diffrence it makes on bill. Probably need to do for couple of days and see how it goes. 
Thanks for you input 

Northern_Wanderer

RazBurley said:

Hi, i am just trying with low boiler temp to see how long it takes for house to get warm and what diffrence it makes on bill. Probably need to do for couple of days and see how it goes. 
Thanks for you input 

That's what I did. I took meter readings, set the boiler temp, took meter reading next day, repeated. Although it's difficult to work out as the outside temp is always going to be a factor. The lowest boiler temps probably work better if heating on all the time, like you would/ should have with a heat pump. I went for the comfort of the house heating reasonably quickly and I didn't see the point of a low boiler temp if the boiler has to run full whack for many hours to get up to temp. 

I'm sure you'll find a happy medium. I live in a cold part of the country, was -9C last night. My house had dropped to 12.5C yesterday when I was out and it did take a while to reach 19C. Tried to keep heating on all night at 17C but each time boiler kicked in it woke me up. So I re-set it to come on for an hour at 3am instead! Not wanting to risk frozen pipes as my boiler in the loft. Brrrr....

Chrysalis

Whilst I now have a better boiler than before, its still the same damp leaky house.

Flow temp of 70C will get average room temps up by about 2-3C after about 3-4 hours.  For comparison simply turning my PC on and using it for a while will provide 1.5C to the area around my thermometer . Dehumidifier similar.  Both consuming considerably less energy than the boiler.

My kitchen is probably the only room with reasonable insulation, if I shut the kitchen door, after a few hours that room will have about 7-8C above the starting point, its the only room that can exceed 20C just from a radiator, I leave the door open however as I prefer that heat to help the living room and hallway.  In addition if I go in there at 20C where you can feel the heat, it will make other heated rooms feel proportionally cold.

After I replaced my curtains with black out curtains, its definitely helping keep out the worst of the cold, so far its not gone below 12C.  Since they were fitted, and usually its nearer 13-14C in winter without heating.  The last winter on my old curtains room got as low as 4C.

The only way I can get bedroom up to close to 20C is the portable heater, its still more efficient than the boiler.  In terms of how quick it makes you feel warm, how quick the thermometer goes up, and overall power costs, although this will depend on the time of day as I am on a TOU tariff, at 5p for electric its comfortably more efficient, at 20p for electric it is moderately more efficient if the concern is just to heat that one space.

The big answer.  At 70C flow temp, with no help from portable heater, my bedroom in current weather would hit about 14-15C with PC and dehumidifier off, and door/curtains shut.  An idea of how bad some properties are, mine is a Victorian era building.  On the old curtains if I used portable heater the heat would be gone really quickly after turning off, but now it does linger, so using the heater as a kick starter to get things going alongside CH, the lingering heat can keep the room 17-20C for a while.  In summer I dont think I will have it below 65C for water, but will see if I can tolerate 60C.

Northern_Wanderer

Chrysalis said:

Whilst I now have a better boiler than before, its still the same damp leaky house.

Flow temp of 70C will get average room temps up by about 2-3C after about 3-4 hours.  For comparison simply turning my PC on and using it for a while will provide 1.5C to the area around my thermometer . Dehumidifier similar.  Both consuming considerably less energy than the boiler.

My kitchen is probably the only room with reasonable insulation, if I shut the kitchen door, after a few hours that room will have about 7-8C above the starting point, its the only room that can exceed 20C just from a radiator, I leave the door open however as I prefer that heat to help the living room and hallway.  In addition if I go in there at 20C where you can feel the heat, it will make other heated rooms feel proportionally cold.

After I replaced my curtains with black out curtains, its definitely helping keep out the worst of the cold, so far its not gone below 12C.  Since they were fitted, and usually its nearer 13-14C in winter without heating.  The last winter on my old curtains room got as low as 4C.

The only way I can get bedroom up to close to 20C is the portable heater, its still more efficient than the boiler.  In terms of how quick it makes you feel warm, how quick the thermometer goes up, and overall power costs, although this will depend on the time of day as I am on a TOU tariff, at 5p for electric its comfortably more efficient, at 20p for electric it is moderately more efficient if the concern is just to heat that one space.

The big answer.  At 70C flow temp, with no help from portable heater, my bedroom in current weather would hit about 14-15C with PC and dehumidifier off, and door/curtains shut.  An idea of how bad some properties are, mine is a Victorian era building.  On the old curtains if I used portable heater the heat would be gone really quickly after turning off, but now it does linger, so using the heater as a kick starter to get things going alongside CH, the lingering heat can keep the room 17-20C for a while.  In summer I dont think I will have it below 65C for water, but will see if I can tolerate 60C.

No heat pump for you then in your Victorian House.....sorry that is such a challenge to heat it! I do sometimes feel that a few of my rads are undersized. I also added curtains with thermal linings to my front and back doors and the kitchen window. I do notice a difference in the warmth of the kitchen (it's the coldest room). I know what you mean about entering the cooler rooms, this morning in the kitchen I was tempted to up the room thermostat, took stock and decided the living room was toasty (I keep that door shut) so no need to use more gas. If I opened the door I could have a more even heat between living room and hall/ kitchen but......

FreeBear

Chrysalis said: My kitchen is probably the only room with reasonable insulation, if I shut the kitchen door, after a few hours that room will have about 7-8C above the starting point, its the only room that can exceed 20C just from a radiator

By the sounds of it, most of your radiators are woefully undersized or the system is badly set up (there could also be blockages in the system reducing water flow). The former would need your landlord to invest in installing larger radiators after doing a proper heat loss calculation. The latter, you could try to resolve yourself. Check that the radiators are properly balanced and the pump speed set correctly.

Chrysalis

FreeBear said:

Chrysalis said: My kitchen is probably the only room with reasonable insulation, if I shut the kitchen door, after a few hours that room will have about 7-8C above the starting point, its the only room that can exceed 20C just from a radiator

By the sounds of it, most of your radiators are woefully undersized or the system is badly set up (there could also be blockages in the system reducing water flow). The former would need your landlord to invest in installing larger radiators after doing a proper heat loss calculation. The latter, you could try to resolve yourself. Check that the radiators are properly balanced and the pump speed set correctly.

I think its that and the property structure itself, it was built in the Victorian era.  In terms of the radiators, there isnt one in the hallway, and I think there should be a second in the living room, the one in there definitely wont be enough on its own.  I think my bedroom would be fine with current radiator if it had double glazed PVC and wall insulation.  The radiators get as hot as others else where I have touched, with the exception of the living room radiator which has developed issues with needing bleeding, I made a thread on MSE about it a few days ago.  But if bled it does heat up fully.  Some properties sadly just have really bad heat retention. 
The loft is also in a bad state which I found out from my new Neighbour upstairs. 

FreeBear

Chrysalis said:

FreeBear said:

Chrysalis said: My kitchen is probably the only room with reasonable insulation, if I shut the kitchen door, after a few hours that room will have about 7-8C above the starting point, its the only room that can exceed 20C just from a radiator

By the sounds of it, most of your radiators are woefully undersized or the system is badly set up (there could also be blockages in the system reducing water flow). The former would need your landlord to invest in installing larger radiators after doing a proper heat loss calculation. The latter, you could try to resolve yourself. Check that the radiators are properly balanced and the pump speed set correctly.

I think its that and the property structure itself, it was built in the Victorian era.  In terms of the radiators, there isnt one in the hallway, and I think there should be a second in the living room, the one in there definitely wont be enough on its own.  I think my bedroom would be fine with current radiator if it had double glazed PVC and wall insulation.

Victorian properties can be nice & toasty - Niece bought herself a Victorian terrace and doesn't have any issues heating the place. But then she does have double glazed windows all round and a decent level of loft insulation.

Single glazed windows are going to be the biggest source of heat loss for you. Secondary glazing will help to a certain extent as long as there aren't any nasty cold draughts coming in around the frames.

RazBurley

Lorian said:

RazBurley said:

Lorian said:

OP has a cylinder so it's S plan or Y plan. So he needs to keep his flow set high enough to heat his water.  He might want to heat his water above 60c if he is concerned about legionella. Still a little scope to come down from 68c though, but probably wants to reduce cylinder thermostat a bit too depending what it's on.

55c is probably a leap too far 

Remember reducing the flow will slow down how fast your house warms up in the morning so you may need it to come on earlier 

Hi,

Our boiler has seprate temp control for hot water which we have put on max  as we only do it twice a day. 

Its just about the heating which we want to run as efficiently as possible to keep the house warm and the bill down as well.

Thanks

Hot water priority system then maybe. Can you post a picture of the pipe work by the tank and the control you use to switch the water on?

Hi, i have attached the pics of boiler control and pipe work around hot water cyclinder.