Whether you heat your home and hot water using gas, oil, LPG or electricity, the right heating controls and knowing how to set them correctly will help you get the best from your system.
An appropriate set of heating controls make it easy to keep your home at a comfortable temperature. They’ll help you to waste less fuel and heat, too – keeping your heating bills and CO2 emissions down.
Firstly, you need to work out what kind of heating system you have.
If your home is heated by a system of water-filled pipes and radiators, then you have a ‘wet’ central heating system. Typically, ‘wet’ central heating systems consist of a boiler – either non-condensing or condensing, and then either combination (‘combi’) or regular – plus radiators (or wet under-floor pipes) and a pump.
If your boiler is NOT a combination boiler, your home will also have a hot water cylinder and a cold water storage tank.
Combination or ‘combi’ boilers heat your hot water just before it comes out of the tap, rather than storing it in a cylinder. So, if your boiler starts up every time your hot taps are turned on, then it is likely to be a ‘combi’.
You can also tell you have a ‘combi’ if:
• your boiler has five pipes coming out of it – two for the heating system, two for hot water and one for gas.
• you don’t have a hot water cylinder, over-tap electric water heaters.
A good way to tell is to look at the flue that sticks out through your outdoor wall from the back of your boiler. If the flue is made of plastic which consists of a pipe within a pipe and lets out a white plume of steam when the boiler is working, you are likely to have a condensing boiler. (some condensing boilers do have metal flues, but most are plastic)
Non-condensing boilers generally have a metal flue because the gases it lets out are much hotter. Because they are so hot, these gases will normally be invisible.
If you have a gas, LPG or oil-fired central heating and hot water system, your full set of controls should ideally include a boiler thermostat, a timer or programmer, a room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs). If your boiler is not a combination boiler, you will also need a hot water cylinder thermostat.
Find out more about each of these controls
There are two types of electric heating systems. One stores heat overnight and the other delivers heat when you need it, much like the wet central heating systems described above.
If you have an electric heating system that does not store heat but instead heats your home directly using radiators then you should follow the advice given in the gas, oil and LPG section. If you have a storage heating system then follow the advice below.
Electric storage heaters are wall mounted heaters which accumulate heat overnight, store it during the day and then release it when it is required. They consist of a core of heavy, heat absorbent bricks surrounded by a layer of insulation which traps the warmth.
Peak rate electricity is typically around three to four times more expensive per kilowatt hour (KWh) than gas, so electric heating and hot water systems are most commonly run using an Economy 7 tariff.
Economy 7 tariffs allow households to use seven hours of off-peak electricity at a cheaper rate during the night. Storage heaters use the off-peak electricity to ‘charge up’ overnight and then release heat during the day.
At the same time, the immersion heater’s main element will be putting it to good use, too – warming up a full cylinder of water ready for the next day. If extra hot water is needed over the course of a day, smaller amounts can be heated up as and when necessary – by switching on a second, smaller electric element at the top of the cylinder.
If you have an electric storage heating and hot water system, you’ll need a different set of controls that take advantage of cheaper, off-peak electricity.
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