Back boiler, old controls - heating water only but radiators are on upstairs?

weston800 wrote: »

I haven’t tested it as I haven’t really needed to. It’s on the least amount of time possible (twice a day) to heat the water. We have the old controls as per the picture in my initial post, the controls A&B as well as C&D are touching so that they’re on the lowest setting for time to heat the water. It’s just over an hour each time (I can’t lower them anymore unfortunately) we have plenty of hot water on the current settings and haven’t run out as of yet (there’s only 2 of us)

Ah yes, I had an old control system when I moved in too. But I broke it so I had it replaced with a modern control system. Much easier to use and complete flexibility. Might be worth getting a quote from a gas engineer. It would also save money in the long term, as you could have the heating and hot water on at different times of the day even in winter. At the moment I guess your system is always heating the hot water if the heating is on, so that's got to waste energy.

Depending what your long term plans are will lead to what to do to stop it. When the time comes to change the boiler would you have a combi boiler or keep the hot water tank design? If your going to keep the hot water tank design you may as well look at converting the system to a fully pumped y or s plan system. This will give you complete independent control over hot water and heating, you will have to have it converted to this design when you have the new boiler so would not be dead money.

If you think you would have a combi then don't spend much money on it as it will all get ripped out when you have a new boiler, the quickest and cheapest way to cure it will be to put a gate valve on the heating flow so you can isolate the heating in the summer, if this is not possible look at getting trv radiator valves that you can turn off in the summer or if the current radiator valves work ok just shut them off, that option will cost nothing but if there old they may be seized or leak. Make a note of how many turns it takes to turn off and when the time comes to turn them back on open them the same amount of turns.