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some form of heat loss survey
We had these guys in
https://cheeseproject.co.uk/Was very cheap and quite interesting. They seal up your house with plastic, you heat it nice and hot on a cold day outside, they use big fans to increase the pressure inside, then they use a temperature gun thing and you get a nice video of all the heat escaping.
I haven't actually got round to addressing much of it but it was quite illuminating. For example I never would have suspected about half our light fittings have much bigger holes than necessary and tonnes of heat escapes through them. You couldn't see it until the light fittings were removed.
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Have you had cavity wall insulation fitted? Thats usually a great bang for buck in terms of heat loss and not a massive expense.
In terms of the house being cold with gas than oil well it shouldn't. The pumps dont just shut off when the boiler goes off as they modulate.
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depending on the boiler the pump will run after it finishes burning for a period of time. But even if it wasn't and both oil/gas had stopped burning the time it takes the radiators to cool down with/without being pumped i can't imagine being much different.
I'm guessing your thermostat is just saying on or off to the boiler? I guess you could check a) if the boiler is still on when it's under the target temp or b) if the temp reading is actually accurate.
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Why is this happening?
Something to do with the set-up isn't right. Could be a lot of different reasons - individual radiator set up, radiator sizes, badly calibrated thermostat, timer settings or the system as a whole could be underpowered.
Good place to start would be setting the thermostat to something unrealistic, i.e. 30 degrees, setting the boiler to 'always on' if it has a timer, then see if the place becomes uncomfortably hot. If it does, this will tell you the issue is with either your thermostat on your boiler, or your timer - both have to be in agreement to call for heat for the boiler to fire. This is what you want, sorting a thermostat or a timer is easy.
If the place remains disappointingly tepid it means there is some issue with the system. Check the the control valves on the radiators and open them fully if they are not fully open. If all the radiators are really hot and continue to be really hot but the place is still uncomfortably cold it's possible that the system is underpowered - the radiators are not big enough.
If the radiators are not really hot - i.e. you wouldn't mind hugging them for a bit - then it's the boiler - either not powerful enough or simply not on a high enough power setting. Or it's fucked. Check for error codes.
if some of the radiators are really hot but some are cooler, the control valves might be buggered or they need balancing, i.e. the flow rate needs to be changed to stop other radiators from pinching all the hot water before it gets to them.
If bits of the radiators are cold and other bits hot there's a load of air in them and it needs bleeding and refilling.
The likelihood of the system being underpowered is fairly low I reckon - it's probably a combination of weird timer and thermostat settings and some air that has found its way in.
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lemonade
konastab01
terlg
Howard
@TGR
Heating query. We changed from oil heating to gas about a year ago. We had two new rads installed as part of the change. The issue is that our house now feels cold. More so upstairs than down. The gas works on a mobile thermostat and we have tried putting it in the coldest room but that doesn’t seem to matter much.
Questions -
Any input very welcome.