Central heating problem

Colly

Hi

If anyone can help me it would be greatly appreciated.

I have gas central heating in a 1yr old apt. I have a digital control unit that lets me choose to heat the hot water or the central heating.

But if i choose the hot water it is still heating the radiators, not so good when the weather is nice as it bakes you in bed not to mention losing me money.

I have for now turned the radiators off so when I heat the hot water for a shower that is all it heats i hope anyway(it could still be heating the central heating just not circulating it to the radiators)

Can anyone help me troublshoot this as i know little or nothing about central heating.

I see about 5 valve knobs you know the reb circular twisty things but havent a clue which to turn, I am sure there is a valve open somewhere mixing the water ir maybe it is never suppost to mix if someone can tell me for sure then at least i will know if the plumber messed up with connecting the pipes.

I live in Woodbrook if anyone else has experienced this and has had it resolve please let me know how.

Thanks again
Colly

beldin

Hi
In most systems the central heating and the cylinder are all in one loop.
The only way they can be separated is if there is some kind of electric valve which is controlled by the control unit. i.e. If the valve is open water goes to to the rads and cylinder , then if it is closed the water only goes to the cylinder.
All those valves are mainly used for maintenance purposes and probably shouldn't be used for day to day operation.
Is there anything that looks like a box sitting on the pipes with wires running from it. Do any of the other flats have this problem.
1/ Maybe the control box isn't set up properly
2/ Maybe the valve is faulty or doesn't exist

This time of year all water heating should probably be done with an immersion.

babaduck

I have what I think is a similar system in my house.

Make sure you turn the thermostat right down to "0" otherwise the rads will heat up. That's what we do every summer (after turning off the CH button on the timeclock unit) and it works well

patrido

i'm pretty sure that the building regs (2003??) specify that you must be able to control rads and hot water seperately. if your apt was built in the last year, it *should" conform to this, and this is why you have a 2 channel programmer.

you should be able to have hot water on a timer all through the summer, and no heat going to the rads. you shouldn't have to turn off the rad valves or turn the stat to zero to achieve this.

however, just installing a 2 channel controller won't magically make it work - it has to be plumbed and wired correctly too. it sounds to me like this is not the case.

there should be seperate stats, valves, and pumps for each of the 2 channels, as well as seperate plumbing (2 seperate loops). if you're luckly, it's plumbed correctly, and wired incorrectly, so water is being driven to the rads, at the same time as the dhw. that's just a matter of changing the wires for the pump (and possibly the stat if it too is incorrect) to the correct terminals on the controller. any spark/plumber/competent person can do that in 5 minutes. if you're not lucky, the whole thing is plumbed incorrectly, and you'll need piping changed as well as the wiring. probably a few hours work.

you might have to call in a plumber to confirm this, unless you have a friendly builder or management company. a good indicator might be if other apartments are having the same problem. the same short cut/mistake might have been occurred there too.