Controlling Heat and Hot Water with the Wired Starter Kit

double101

Hi All

I've recently moved house and we are noticing that bedrooms are cold due to the existing thermostat being in a warm central area downstairs.

My system has a standard gas boiler, connected to a typical controller (daily programable schedule), and a wired thermostat in the hallway. The hallway is central in the building, has no external windows and is probably the hottest part of the house, hence the heating goes off once the thermostat hits the desired temp but the bedrooms are still very cold. Hence Tado was purchased.

My view was to change the thermostat for the Tado and put Smart Radiator Thermostats on the bedroom rads so they can continue to call for more heat.

As there is a controller to consider, I would have put the central heating on 24x7 at the controller, then let the Tado Smart Thermostat V3+ decide when to enable/disable the CH. I would have left the existing controller to switch on the hot water system when required.

However, the old controller doesn't have separate options for HW or CH. It's just one / off / timer / advance.

I asked the previous owners how they managed Hot Water / Central Heating and they said "we left it on 24x7 at the controller and just used the thermostat in the hallway to turn the CH on or off, up or down. We always had loads of HW ".

Any ideas on how I should deal with this? I don't mind the CH bein on all day as Tado will decide when to turn it on or off, but I'm concerned the hot water will either be on a LOT or worse, not at all if Tado has tuned the CH (say in warmer weather) and the HW will not kick in.

Thanks in advance! :)

GrilledCheese2

First of all you need to find out if your system is fully pumped or gravity fed HW. The former allows CH and HW to be controlled independently because both circuits are pumped. The latter has pumped CH only and relies on gravity circulation for the HW circuit. This setup means you cannot have CH only, and used to be the most common in the UK. But is now quite rare because plumbers will normally go to fully pumped when installing a new boiler.

Or, it may be that the previous owner purchased/installed a single channel programmer by mistake.

double101

Hey GrilledCheese2

Thanks so much for responding. The current system was installed in 1999 when the house was built.

Looking in the cupboard where the hot water cylinder is, I can see 2 pumps and they look newish, both are Grundfos alpha 2. One is labeled 'Primary Return to Heat Generator' and running at 45. The other is labeled 'Heating Flow' and didn't appear to be running when I checked.

I believe from reading through the previous owners' welcome pack (from 1999) that it's a fully pumped system. There is also a leaflet regarding the Landis & Staefa RWB7 Timeswitch, which does appear to be a single channel programmer - I wonder if this was added later. The instructions note that there are dipswitch settings on the plate that allows a Daily, 5 & 2, or 7 Day configuration - but nothing about CH or HW settings.

Does that help at all in deciding next steps?

GrilledCheese2

It’s surprising that you don’t have independent time control of both circuits in a house that is relatively new. I wonder if someone has modified the original system since the house was built. I think you will need a heating engineer to inspect your system and determine how to separate the electrical control for CH and HW circuits.

double101

Thank you again, GrilledCheese2. I think you are 100% on the money there. I'm going to call a local one tomorrow to see what is going on. :)