Splitting Central heating

[Vegas]

We refurbished our house 3 years ago, replumbing everything and adding an extension. We are currently in the process of doing a loft conversion.

When the house was refurbished, our central heating was set up so that we had one controller for the extension which has underfloor heating and one controller for the rest of the house.

Wed like to change the central heating so that we now have one (or two) controllers for the downstairs and importantly a separate controller for the rest of the house, however the plumber working on the loft has said this is a very difficult and ***bersome job and requires floors to be lifted and so on? We clearly don't want to be ripping up floor boards and so on.

Is there a work around? If not is there a way to have room specific thermostats to have the heating running differently, but that works a bit smarter than the valves on the radiators as I have found that this just doesn't work brilliantly.

Thanks

 

[ShaunCorbs]

have a look at honeywell evo home

 

[EvilDrPorkChop]

Yes Honeywell EvoHome is very good and will do what you require. Costly to install and purchase but worth it in the long run for comfort and energy savings.

 

[Vegas]

Thanks for the replies folks. I'll have a look at Honeywell.

 

[Last Plumber]

The Evohome will possibly achieve what you want to but in your Plumbers defense, he was probably thinking of separating the heating system into zones properly and that is not the same thing at all.

To separate a system into zones which are independent of each other (from a plumbing point of view) can be a fairly big job and would entail alterations to pipework, wiring and controls.

I would discuss this with him first, as he knows your system better than we do. Especially as you say
the valves on the radiators don't work brilliantly.

 

[mgw]

There are many programmable TRV heads, likely EvoHome or Tado is best, but the heads start at £10 each, with bluetooth (only to one phone) £15 each so you can set a program independent for each room, the cheap £15 units I am using can be linked together to form zones, called eQ-3 as yet not run a winter with them.

Clearly no TRV can heat a room if the boiler is not running, however in the main less heat is required to upper floors, so I use the expensive £40 each Energenie TRV heads on entrance floor linked to Nest, and cheap eQ-3 on upper floors.

Things more on, last year I would have said Hive was useless, but Hive have not produced there own range of TRV heads that uses a "heat on demand" function, so unlike Nest where the wall thermostat tells the TRV what to do, with Hive the TRV tells the wall thermostat to switch on for half hour slots, and will send demands until that room is warm enough, on paper Hive seems now to be rather a good method with off/on boiler control, however EvoHome, Nest and Tado all have the ability to connect to the ebus using OpenTherm.

I have tried to compare the different TRV heads, I can say the duel sensors in the Energenie heads where the water temperature compensates the air temperature reading for the heat from the radiator being so local works, not sure if others have the same, however also like the idea of the open window function of the eQ-3 where if it detects a rapid temperature drop it assumes window or door opened and switches off for 1/2 hour.

Energenie can have window micro-switches fitted, but never tried using it.