Grown up time- central heating logic!

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

I know, exciting stuff! So since we bought our house we had an old school combi boiler that just had a timer on the front and wasn't hooked into a thermostat so I just set it to come on for an hour in the morning, a couple of hours in the evening etc. over Winter and could manually stick it on if things got chilly.

When we had our extension built our boiler died and it made sense to upgrade so now we have one that obviously can still be programmed but also has a remote thermostat/controller so the question is how do you responsible homeowners set your heating? Do you have it on at certain times of the day only or do you set a certain temperature to keep the house at all the time or what? Interested too hear what people do as I'm sad like that!

[Wrayvon]

Twice a day currently. But obviously it'll only come on when it drops below a certain temperature. Now that I'm working from home almost indefinitely I should probably change it to longer hours but I'm a yorkshireman.... 

[MadManMike]

I haven't used heating in over 7 years here, I don't know if insulation is just incredible or the people below us are cultivating some of Jamaica's finest, but most evenings it's 25 degrees in here.

We're buying a house early next year, so it'll be quite a shock going back to cold houses and heating bills

[forteh]

I installed a complete central heating system (previously fully storage heated ) back in 2010ish, went with a veissmann vitodens 100 combi and it's been superb.  Set up on remote thermostat programmed to ramp the temperatures up and down at set times, it's always turned on though.

I think we currently use 18ºC from 7am, up to 21° from 3pm then drop back down to 16°C from 10pm, it can always be overridden at any time and happily gets the front room up to 28°C if needed.

The only issue I've had in the last 10 years is the plate to plate hot water heat exhanger blocked up, cost about 100 quid for a replacement and 70 quid to get it changed; the old blocked one can be soaked to clean it out and be refitted so I'll never need to fork out for the part again.

Since we fitted the range cooker (Esse Cat) the latent heat from it actually keeps the boiler from firing, it's not automatically kicked in yet this year since the spring

[J.KYDD]

We just stick to a basic timer with ours. We've got a thermostat on the wall, but find it easier to just to have it come on for an hour in the morning. 
We do also have a log burner though so during the winter we leave the heating off in the evenings and just have the burner on. 

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

Cheers for the replies chaps. I'll give the programme a try using the thermostat but might drop the daytime temperature down so that the boiler is unlikely to fire while we're out at work etc..

Out of interest does anyone get their boiler serviced? We never did with our old one but the new Gloworm has a 10 year warranty but only if you get it serviced annually (£100 a time is about the cost of a boiler after 10 years). From what I've heard servicing doesn't cover much more than taking the cover off and hoovering out the spiders...

[forteh]

I should point out that because we homeschool, there is always someone in the house so the hearing stays on.

I've had ours serviced once about 4 years ago, same setup of a 10 year warranty if serviced by a viessmman registered installer. I never bothered as like you said it's mostly just cleaning out the main heat exchanger, that said I think it's something that should be done on older units as it may uncover corrosion in places it shouldn't be. In the viessmman all of the components in contact with corrosives are either plastic or stainless.

edit: when working out the programming I would see how quickly the house loses heat, we're quite well insulated (for a 60 year old ex council house). It's much more fuel efficient to keep the temperature up and ticking over than trying to heat a house full of cold air.

Edited November 5, 2020 by forteh

[DrEvil270183]

If you're getting a modern boiler they are a lot better and modulating the heating to keep a temperature rather than just turning on and off constantly.

Ours comes on half an hour before wake up until half an hour before we leave the house. Then back on half an hour before we get home roughly and stays on until around 10 pm or if the temp is above what we've set the thermostat too it will shut off.

We've got a wireless set up so if I'm heading home early or out late we can alter on the go too, not used that often but can be handy if you've been riding and know you're heading home to a cold house.

A combination of a room stat in the living room and TRV valves on radiators in other rooms is a perfect combo. Set the stat for what temp you want and when, this would in the room you spend the most time in. For rooms not used often, set the TRV vales low so they shut off at a low temp, set the bedroom TRVs high so you're not cold in mornings and nighttimes.

Boiler wise, everyone you speak too will have different ideas about which is the best. The newer Worchester looks really nice if they are in site but I think the Ideal Voque boilers are slightly more reliable and beter internal parts. You want to get someone round to size up the rooms, check flow rates and current gas pipe size as this will determin what boiler size to go for and rough costs. Boilers work better when they are working hard so you don't want to oversize your boiler. Obvvously don't undersize it either or you'll never get the house warm.

[forteh]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that all rads have TRVs on so individual room control is dead easy.
I hadn't heard of veissmann before the guy came round and did the quote and he said that he would never fit anything else because the quality compared to the other market leaders (worcester/vailant/gloworm etc.) was so much better, also the fact that they're very quiet in comparison.  Essentially he came in, gave us a quote to do the work, talked nicely to my parents who lent me the cash (hooray for the bank of mum and dad!) and they were in and out in 7 hours - boiler fitted, 6 rads and a full set of pipework for about 4 grand I think it was.

[manuel]

I also did mine about 7-8 years ago, I’m currently using a tado room thermostat for the downstairs which keeps it perfect temperature in our open plan ish downstairs. It does geofencing and you can set time periods for different temps that come on as long as you are at home. It’s fantastic BUT our house has a really crappy extension which means a section of it upstairs (north facing open on 3 sides poorly insulated) can’t ever be warm enough because the boiler isn’t fired up for long enough when keeping the main rooms warm. I’m considering going to smart rad valves as tado for me works sooo well (it’s not about money saving it’s about comfort and convenience) but it is a big investment for all the new bits I’d need.

 

if you have an evenly heated house then a timer and simple trvs will work really well, a thermostat in your main living area will probably give you more control in that room but maybe less in others depending on what heats up quicker. If you just don’t want to ever think about it get a smart system and just have it take care of things.

[DrEvil270183]

It's funny because boilers are like bikes, each brand does a low spec, mid spec and high spec. All the higher spec ones are good and come with 10/12 year warranty on parts and labour so need to be good.

What the installer recommends is usually due to kick backs I've found. Vaillant gives more warranty to installers who sell their boilers the most, Ideal offer money back for each boiler sold, they all do similar stuff.