Central Heating Setup For Girls

[pinktamba]

I dont know where else to post this but I need some advice on setting up my central heating. Being a girl I know nothing about plumbing and such.

I recently had a thermostat installed in my house along with a timer switch for the boiler. What confuses me is that all the radiators have individual valves which have settings 1 to 5 and even if I set the thermostat to 20 the radiators still come on and rapidly work their way up to blistering because I have them set to 5.

Whats the best way to set up my heating system? Whats te basic idea behind a Thermostat and what are the individual valves on my radiators for? The winter is nigh and a girl needs to keep her skinny ass warm.

Thanks muchly.

:|

[[Slip]]

The thermostat tries to maintain the temperature at whatever the thermostat is set at by automatically turning the heating system on when the temperature drops below and automatically turning them off when it goes above the chosen temperature.

The valves on the radiators control the heat to a small degree (pun intended ) at each radiator
If its too hot in one room and cold in another then adjust the cold room up and the hot room down.

Try putting them all at 3 round the house and see which rooms get too hot etc and adjust appropriately

Remember, there's no substitute for a jumper

[MsDG]

A little bit of over kill on you setup. A quick rundown on what you have...

A) obviously the timer on your boiler sets the times in which the bolier has the "potential" of turning on. I say potential because even if the timer is set to "on", it won't heat the house unless it is cold enough (as defined by the thermostats)

b) You have a central acturate thermostat (which you have set to "20") that switches on the boiler only when it is colder than 20 and the time (as set by the timer) is in the period that you want the boiler to come on.

c) Each radiator has its own thermostat (valve) so when the room gets hot enough the radiator for that room will switch off - leaving the other radiators working. If all the radiators switch off inividually the water flow is totally resricted and the boiler will autoswitch off anyway (until one of the rooms cools down).

Anyway, there are three ways that your heating will switch off.

1) If the timer is set to off
2) If the temp of your central thermostat reaches 20 degrees
3) If all the radiators have reached the temp set for each room

If your house is too hot then you have two issues.

Firstly your radiator thermostats are set too high and are never switching off. Try setting them to "3"... and turn up if that setting is too cold.

Secondly the temp at the central thermostat is never reaching 20 degrees (usually because it is a hallway or something) you could try turning this down a smiggen.

However, personally I would ignore the central thermostat and let the individual valves on the radiators control the heat.

[Mookie]

Feck, wish we had radiators that worked! our central heating packed up last Winter, best we get is hot water for washing... guess it will be back to sprinting like fuck into the shower and back out again... I forgot about all that... fun times ahead, now where did I put my woolly hat and gloves!!

[dainese]

The doom mongers at the met are predicting the worst winter in 50 years.....but i'm sure they said the same last year!

[phlix]

The worst winter in 50 years .... oh my god .... you mean its gonna be worse than the last winter that was the worst in 50 years.

Why do they always do this ... hottest summer in 50 years, which it never is. followed by the worst winter in 50 years, again which it never is.

[pinktamba]

Thanks for all your replies. That actually helps me out. With my new atomic heating system I would be surprised if I notice winter at all.

[Q-Buster]

One point, the thermostat should not be in a room with a thermostatic valve on the rad or they will 'fight' for control of the system, ie if the valve is set to a lower temp than the room stat, the heating will never switch off to the rest of the system as the room stat will never be satisfied. The only way round this is to turn the rad stat up to its highest in this room, then the only controller of heat in that room is the room stat. The other rads should be adjusted by their thermostatic valves to give a comfortable temperature in those rooms.

Q-Buster