Lay man’s advice on gas central heating

Bluefairie56

I need info in simple terms to help with my gas central heating. 

Boiler is recently serviced so not a problem with that it’s just controls. I have a manual dial thermostat on landing which I suspect is not working. There are also knobs on my boiler for water temp and radiator temp. 

The radiator temp knob ( edit I should have said the boiler temp knob) is turned to 1 of 6. If I put heating on it seems no matter what temp I chose on the thermostat on the landing whether it be 10 degrees or 20 the radiators all seem to get quite hot. My sister sets her thermostat at 15 and you can barely feel heat from rads but mine are hot. I thought that the thermostat in the hall regulates the air temperature but this is where I am confused a bit. If I buy one of those digital thermostats like hive but a cheaper version which by passes the manual hall dial would this give me more accurate control of the radiators. 

doodling

Hi,

The aim of those valves on the radiators is to control the temperature of the room   if there is a significant difference between the temperature set by the valve (there will be a rough equivalence between the numbers 1 to 6 and actual temperatures) and the air temperature around the valve then the radiator will be hot.  As the temperature of the air round the valve rises, the amount of water flowing into the radiator will reduce and the radiator will start to feel cooler (assuming that the radiator is the right size for the room).

I suspect that you aren't waiting ffor everything to settle down (which may take an hour or so from cold).  Alternatively, the valves may not be correctly fitted or may be defective.

If you are going to set valves in different rooms to different temperatures then you need to keep doors closed.  Things won't work well if you set the hall to 15 degrees but the valve in the living room is set to a number which gives 20 degrees and the door between them is open.

Bluefairie56

Thanks for comment but I made an error in my post. I stated that radiator temp knob was set at one but I meant to say the boiler temperature knob was set to one.

WiserMiser

If the radiators are permanently red hot right up to the top but fail to warm the surrounding area to the desired temperature (check with a portable digital thermometer), that suggests they're too small or that the boiler output flow temperature is too low.

Vitor

There's so much to unpack in the OP's questions probably best to ask Gemini or ChatGPT to explain

vacheron

The first thing we need to do is conform if the room thermostat is wired and working.

As you say you have a dial room thermostat, turn it all the way down to the minimum temperature and wait 2-3 minutes and then check your boiler to see if it is running (it should be off) . 

If the boiler is indeed now off, turn the dial thermostat all the way to the highest temperature, again, wait 2-3 minutes and then check you boiler to see if it is running, (it should be on).

If the above is working correcty, then your thermostat is wired correctly.

The next thing to do is:

• Slowly turn down the room thermostat down until you hear or feel a "click".
• Note the reading on the dial as soon as this click happens.
• Then turn the dial up again until you hear ir feel another click
• Note of the reading on the dial when this happen

The actual room temperature should be half way between these readings, so if the down click happens at 16C, and the up click is at 20C, the thermostat thinks the room is at about 18C.

If this agrees with roughly where you think the temperature of the room is, then the thermostat is working!  

Once we have established that the room thermostat is working we can move on to the boiler settings! 

vic_sf49

Just to add ref the twist/dial thermostat on your wall... I had an old one in this property when I moved in, that would work sometimes, then would "stick" on, in my case.

I'd be sitting here melting, wondering why the heating hadn't gone off, as it felt up to temp... it was....it was just the  thermostat was stuck again. 

So it might work while turning manually, as per some of the advice above, but could still then stick again.

Definitely needs testing though, before working through other things.