Heating controls have come a long way over the past 40 years and are now an integral part of any well designed heating system. The correct set of controls will heat the different rooms in your home to a comfortable level and maintain it while minimising any wasted fuel or heat. By only heating your home to the required level and using the controls to avoid heating unnecessarily, you will not only save money on your bills but reduce your CO2 emissions as well.
The energy saving trust (EST) recommends that if you have an existing set of heating controls and they were installed before 2000 then it is worth replacing them. Room thermostats especially, are now more accurate and will maintain a more comfortable room temperature with less wasted fuel and heat.
It is possible to upgrade your heating controls without replacing your boiler, so if your boiler is fine but you have outdated, or even no, heating controls then now is the time to upgrade. The savings you will make from installing the heating controls will pay back the cost of installing them and they will be transferrable then you upgrade your boiler in the future.
The ideal heating controls
The optimal heating control setup will allow you to heat the different rooms in your home to different temperatures depending on use or requirement with room thermostats and thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs). It would have at least two different zones, so that you are not unnecessarily heating areas of the home that are not in use, e.g. upstairs bedrooms during the day.
The optimal setup will have a boiler thermostat, and if you have one a cylinder thermostat, to ensure you are never heating the water above the required level. There will also be a controller which can be programmed to turn the heating on and off at set times for the different zones. The latest controllers are now weather compensating, so depending on the outside temperatures they will adjust the boiler output to maintain a comfortable level in the home.
Zoned heating controls
It is possible to increase the efficiency of your heating system by installing zoned heating controls. Zoned heating controls allow you to only heat part of the building, thus reducing the water heated by the boiler and in turn energy used. In this way, zoned heating controls you can save up to £10 month on your gas bills.
Part L1a regulations for new heating installations require separate zoning controls for the central heating, i.e. upstairs and downstairs with separate room thermostats for both.
There are different methods of implementing zoned heating controls using a combination of controllers, thermostats and TRVs. Speak to one of our advisers to day to find out which would be the best fit for you.