Advise on Central Heating temperature/schedules & Cost Savings & Supplier

Bucki

Hello All

Apologies in advance, this is a topic & inquiry to seek advise.
Will attempt to be as descriptive as possible and give a breakdown of my inquiry, how to be more effective & cost saving and potentially better supplier?

So ... let's start:

• Property: 18years old, a 3 floor house with 11 radiators
• Boiler: Ideal Vogue Max 18kW (new).
• Thermostat:  Ideal Halo System WiFi Thermostat
• TRVs: Tado Smart Radiator Thermostat v3+

Note:

• the system boiler's max temp is set to 60c
• don't think I can go lower because there is a cylinder tank due risk of bacteria build up

Silly question:

Is it more efficient to set the Thermostat at 20c and leave it run on constant temp OR rather schedule times where the boiler runs at X degree for X amount of hours and switch off (maybe reduce to 16c for when nobody is at home alternatively through the day?

What's the most effective way to ensure the boiler is modulating, not wasting energy and ultimately safe money?  Scenario: set 21c on thermostat for an hour or set 25c for an hour, assuming the 25c will heat up radiators quicker but also spend more??  Fun part: how does someone calculate by how much extra £ you would spend for the 4c difference?

Tried to look around for the best/optimal schedule templates out there whilst a lot say: keep the bedrooms between 18-20c and living-room at 21c whilst other suggest to leave the thermostat at 20c and boiler will just modulate when needed? 

Not to complicate it further but how is OpenTherm/Weather Comp supposed to aid in all this?


Furthermore:

What approach you guys taking when it comes to saving money and be efficient and ultimately not freeze to death lol. ?  Is there "the best reasonable" energy supplier out there ... as I am with E.ON on NextFlex Assist tariff at following rates:

Electricity 25.33 p/kWh
Standing charge: 58.65 p/day

Gas 6.25 p/kWh
Standing charge: 34.12 p/day

*just been notified the rates will increase for electricity and slight decrease on gas.

• Does boiler still burn gas and use kWh even when the thermostat is set on 15c whilst room temp is between 17c-19c throughout the night?
• would expect to burn gas when it goes below the 15c, right?
• or would it need to be manually switched or or set temp to Zero .C degree to avoid usage unnecessarily?

In regards to suppliers: what to look out for? what to aim for? any hints or tips?


Would appreciate your patience and advise on this.
Thank you in advance.

Bucki

Hi All

Sorry about the recent new topics.
Sorry if it feels like I am spamming but I am not... I am just in dilemma with lots of uncertainties. 

Anybody here has detailed knowledge on central heating and balancing of radiators?
The radiators have been bleeded and there is cold patched what so ever.  The aim of it is to ensure the radiators are getting the hot water passed through accordingly and ensure all radiators are heated up.  Now, do I simply open the shield lock to fully open for all of them or do I almost close it on the 1st radiator ... or does it not matter at all because new boilers use wheather compensation to modulate anyway and balancing (have deltaT of 11c between cold - hot pipe is no longer relevant?)

Please advise

Thanks

slipthru

I've found from balancing my radiators that my boiler is condensing a lot more than when they were not balanced. So i would recommend it. 

QrizB

I'm not sure starting three separate threads about your central heating system is the best way to approach this.

jennifernil

What parts have you purchased/fitted for the tado system?

We also have a tado system, different boiler, and a HW. cylinder, smart TRVs on all radiators, but we also have the tado wireless thermostat, it came as part of the starter kit.

   As I understand it, this is required in the system to operate the heating of the hot water.   As we had the Smart TRVs everywhere, we thought that we did.not need the thermostat so packed it away in a drawer, but then found that the hot water would not turn on.

You will need to experiment with times and  temperatures to see what you need , will depend on your lifestyle,  but basically if you set a higher temperature you will use more gas.

We do not use the thermostat as a main thermostat, we set every room individulaly.  Before we got our new boiler we did not use a central thermostat , just ordinary TRVs.   Thermostats and TRVs will fight each other IMO.

You can have a maximum of 10 “rooms” in the system, so when you have more than 10 radiators you can group 2 or more into 1 “room”, and choose one device to be the reporting/controlling device.  This could be either the thermostat or one of the TRVs.   For example, we have the 4 radiators in the hallway and landings grouped together with one TRV being the reporting device, and 2 radiators in the lounge/dining room where we use the thermostat as the reporting device but still have smart TRVs on both radiators.

We have set the times and temperatures to what we need in each room, and set mainly unused rooms, such as the spare bedroom and bathroom, to 14 degrees.    We also use 14 degrees as the minimum overnight temperature, but when away on holiday we just switch everything off.

Being  retired, some days we are home all the time and on others we are away looking after our grandchildren or out somewhere else, so we have chosen to set all days individually to a basic regime, then adjust as necessary when we are home more.

How long things take to warm up will depend on the sizes of the rooms, the level of insulation in your house and the boiler settings, but setting a thermostat to 25 rather than 20 will not make the house warm up any faster.

We do not use weather compensation.

The boiler will only use gas if your settings call for it to be running, so if a room drops below the set temperature the boiler will run.

For supplier, we are on a fix with Octopus, who seem to have decent customer service.   As we have solar panels, they also pay us a decent rate for our export.

Bucki

QrizB said:

I'm not sure starting three separate threads about your central heating system is the best way to approach this.

Yeh and I did apologies, right?
Because technically they are different topics and I wanted to keep them separate to avoid confusion.

Thanks for your input tho!

Bucki

Hi @jennifernil

Thanks for your input.
We only use Tado Smart TRV's and use Ideal Halo Thermostat on a Ideal Vogue Max system boiler.

Till recently, I assumed the smart TRVs will give you accurate room temperature but little did I know that they temp monitoring is only for a very close proximaty around radiators and depending on the radiators position they may give you a very bad reading anyway.  Although, yes, you got the offset options and even after setting it up correctly = it wont take long until the temp reading on the TRVs are very inaccurate. 

So, to try and take the TRV as source of truth for temperature measurement = is wrong move.
Instead, have purchased a few digital thermostats from Govee (recommended) which are very accurate and then am attempting to utilise the automation process via Google Home Automation. 

At this stage, I am still in dilemma how to approach the overall heating methodology:

- leave boiler/thermostat at a constant 20C all day/night and it will work its life out
- or set up a schedule for specific times to warm house up

ultimately, the goal is to be efficient + warm the house and be cost effective.

Bucki

slipthru said:

I've found from balancing my radiators that my boiler is condensing a lot more than when they were not balanced. So i would recommend it. 

Please enlighten me, what approach did you take to balance the radiators?
What was your starting point .. what did you do exactly?

Do you also have a system boiler, or does balancing of rads not make  adifferent whether combi or system boiler?
Would appreciate to sort of guide me through ...

So far, from reading, they say:

- identify the first radiator
- turn both sides OFF
- turn the shieldlock slightly open but the TRV fully open
- move to next one and repeat.


Some say, because it's a 3 floor house: you need to fully open all valves on all radiators on the ground floor but close all valves on the radiators located on the 2nd and 3rd floor. Then move one by one on 2nd/3rd floor to gradually opening the shieldlock.

Easier said then done ... right.
I just cant get the hang of it, if you could advise.

Note: yep get a plumber, easy but they seek 200+ quid for this and I aint got that money.

jennifernil

I must admit that I am rather confused about exactly which tado parts you have fitted, and what this other thermostat actually does?

Did you buy and fit  a tado starter kit which, as well as the wireless thermostat also has the internet bridge and the receiver which sends instructions to the boiler?

We do not have a particular problem with the TRVs getting false readings due to their proximity to the radiators, but we do not block the flow of air round them with large pieces of furniture or long curtains.

Why would you set your thermostat to 20 degrees when you do not need all rooms to be that warm all the time?   That would be very wasteful.
Where is this non tado thermostat situated?

You do need to have some device  with which to set up a heating schedule with times and temperatures to suit your circumstances.

The type of boiler you have does not affect how your radiators work, other that when a combi is supplying HW it stops heating the radiators for a while.

slipthru

Bucki said:

slipthru said:

I've found from balancing my radiators that my boiler is condensing a lot more than when they were not balanced. So i would recommend it. 

Please enlighten me, what approach did you take to balance the radiators?
What was your starting point .. what did you do exactly?

Do you also have a system boiler, or does balancing of rads not make  adifferent whether combi or system boiler?
Would appreciate to sort of guide me through ...

So far, from reading, they say:

- identify the first radiator
- turn both sides OFF
- turn the shieldlock slightly open but the TRV fully open
- move to next one and repeat.


Some say, because it's a 3 floor house: you need to fully open all valves on all radiators on the ground floor but close all valves on the radiators located on the 2nd and 3rd floor. Then move one by one on 2nd/3rd floor to gradually opening the shieldlock.

Easier said then done ... right.
I just cant get the hang of it, if you could advise.

Note: yep get a plumber, easy but they seek 200+ quid for this and I aint got that money.

I live in a flat, so I'm not sure when you have more floors. 

I actually had two radiators that were taking a long time to heat up and also not getting as warm as the others. these were the furthest two radiators from the boiler. All the lockshields were fully open. 

Yes what you've said is the method I used. Basically turn the lockshield fully off on the first radiator then open it a quarter or half turn.

It's easy enough to do but takes a bit of time, you will probably be adjusting them over a few days when ever you put the heating on to get it right. 

But just find a guide and read it a few times then give it a try. 

born_again

Bucki said:

Silly question:

Is it more efficient to set the Thermostat at 20c and leave it run on constant temp OR rather schedule times where the boiler runs at X degree for X amount of hours and switch off (maybe reduce to 16c for when nobody is at home alternatively through the day?

What's the most effective way to ensure the boiler is modulating, not wasting energy and ultimately safe money?  Scenario: set 21c on thermostat for an hour or set 25c for an hour, assuming the 25c will heat up radiators quicker but also spend more??  Fun part: how does someone calculate by how much extra £ you would spend for the 4c difference?

Tried to look around for the best/optimal schedule templates out there whilst a lot say: keep the bedrooms between 18-20c and living-room at 21c whilst other suggest to leave the thermostat at 20c and boiler will just modulate when needed? 

No one solution suits all.

Ours stat is set @ 19.5C 07:00 - 21:45 & 18C 21:45 - 07:00 
But someone is in pretty much 24/7 

Boiler can only heat radiators at a fixed  speed. Governed by the temp of the water being pumped round. 
Getting you room stat from 21 to 25 will all depend of how much heat your house loses & the size of the rads.