Our heating system consists of “normal” radiators each with it’s own valve, with no central wall-mounted thermostat, i.e. we adjust the valves on each to achieve the desired warmth in each room. There’s also 3 towel rails within the system. It’s all on a central timer.

The wife says we should keep one of the towel rails fully open – something to do with that being best for the system.

I say that’s a load of balls and a waste of energy (super-heating one room).

Please tell me I’m not wrong? Please?!

She’s right, according to the man who did ours.

bend over and touch your toes, a11y.

She’s right. If all rads shut off and the stat (or timer) demands heat, all you do is create an explosive boiler overheat situation and work the pump to death as there’s no flow.

my set up has one radiatior that doesnt have a valve on it, so it must be open all the time. Mrs A11y will be happy 🙂

Ah bugger.

Does it need to be FULLY open, or will part-open do the job?

She only married you out of pity, I reckon….

Does it need to be FULLY open, or will part-open do the job?

Depends how part/fully is part/fully I guess, but I think part open enough is going to be close enough to fully open not to think about it. But the point is a towel rad dissipates sod all power anyway so your boiler should throttle itself back and not be running full tilt anyway. Surely the easiest method is to add a room stat so it turns off when it’s hot enough – they’re like £5, a bit more if you want wireless.

a11y, you could fit a trv to the towel rail but would then need to fit an auto by-pass valve upstream from the pump (£12 or so for the auto by-pass plus fitting). as a plumbing & heating engineer this is my preferred method, i dont really see the point in wall stats with radiators tbh.

Thanks folks. Humble pie will be served later 🙁

It’s not a major problem having a towel rail open fully – it just makes whatever bathroom/ensuite we choose exceptionally warm. I might as well make use of the heat and leave the door open so that the heat dissipates into the house.

could you just put a smaller towel radiator in?

Wasting energy is having no particular control over the heat you pump around the house and over-working your boiler for no good reason.

Your valves are thermostatic ones aren’t they?

Valves on all the radiators are thermostatic but the towel rails (2 ensuites and main bathroom) are just flow restriction valves, I think – basically you turn knobs to control the flow in/out of them, I’m 99% sure they’re not thermostatic.

I’m just being exceptionally Scottish here and determined not to waste any heat if possible! We already heat only the rooms we use regularly and I begrude having a towel rail on flat out if it doesn’t have to be.

i dont really see the point in wall stats with radiators tbh.

?? So you don’t see the point in turning the boiler off when the house is up to temp? You’d rather it was on a timer and just ran away to itself through the bypass valve all evening? This is a curious point of view, but I’m willing to learn…?

wot CK said. ^

Zone stats and TRVs make perfect sense to me and my thermal store system.

I’m just being exceptionally Scottish here and determined not to waste any heat if possible! We already heat only the rooms we use regularly and I begrude having a towel rail on flat out if it doesn’t have to be.

Admirable, but just fitting a simple stat in the room with the open rad will give you the max temp for the house (roughly) and turn the boiler off as soon as that is reached, so no more wasted heat. Stat will cost you less than running an open rad pointlessly.

I’ll need to have another look into room thermostats then. We looked previously (even went as far as buying one but returned it) but couldn’t figure out how it’d work when combined with our current timer system. It’s a combined hot water / heating timer system with the hot water being “on” 30mins morning and 30mins evening, with the heating being on just in the evenings.

I guess I could configure a room thermostat into the system such that it doesn’t affect the boiler operation for the hot water?

a11y – Member

I’m just being exceptionally Scottish here and determined not to waste any heat if possible! We already heat only the rooms we use regularly and I begrude having a towel rail on flat out if it doesn’t have to be.

If the rest of the house is up the temperature, the towel radiator won’t be going flat out, will it, as the heating will turn off?
It will only be ‘flat out’ when the rest of the house requires heating.

supremebean – Member

i dont really see the point in wall stats with radiators tbh.

Can you explain the logic behind this? My parents house doesn’t have a thermostat, just TRVs and it has taken about 15 years for me to persuade them that they really should think about getting a controller with a wireless thermostat (they have no existing wiring for a thermostat).
When there heating is ‘on’, it runs 100% of the time. The house is toasty warm within about 30mins, but it will run flat out from say 6pm to 10pm – the house gets boiling hot.

I am waiting to have a honeywell heating/water controller installed with a wireless thermostat and if that works well, I think my parents are going to get the same thing.

i’ve got a digital wall thermostat like this

http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=11478230&fh_location=//catalog01/en_GB/categories%3C%7B9372015%7D/categories%3C%7B9372046%7D/categories%3C%7B9372180%7D/specificationsProductType=central_heating_pumps___controls/specificationsSpecificProductType=thermostats&tmcampid=4&tmad=c&ecamp=cse_go&CAWELAID=840532995

its really good, you can set it up so

monday heating is 7 deg till 8, then 15 deg, then down to 10 deg during the day, then up to 15 deg at 6, then 18 deg at 8, then back to 7 deg at midnight

Then on tues you can have a seperate pattern

and so on. I run the boiler as ‘on’ 24/7 and this turns it on or off

I run it on a weekday/weekend plan at the moment, but it really is excellent. you could have it in the room with a wide open valve, then just use the other valves to balance the system

a11y – Member
I’ll need to have another look into room thermostats then. We looked previously (even went as far as buying one but returned it) but couldn’t figure out how it’d work when combined with our current timer system. It’s a combined hot water / heating timer system with the hot water being “on” 30mins morning and 30mins evening, with the heating being on just in the evenings.

I guess I could configure a room thermostat into the system such that it doesn’t affect the boiler operation for the hot water?

What system do you have? I have been doing quite a lot of looking at this type of gubbins in the past month or so, after originally ordering the wrong controller for our system.

If you have an S-plan heating sytem (2 motorised valves in the airing cupboard) then you can have something like a wireless room thermostat controller (like the Honeywell CMT927) and then a second single channel controller with a simple timer for the hot water.

With a Y-plan system (one motorised valve, but 3-way) you can’t do the above.
But you can get a Honeywell 7 day controller for heating and hot water that comes with a wireless thermostat. It’s called a Sundial RF2 pack 2.

stumpy01 – Member

a11y – Member
I’ll need to have another look into room thermostats then. We looked previously (even went as far as buying one but returned it) but couldn’t figure out how it’d work when combined with our current timer system. It’s a combined hot water / heating timer system with the hot water being “on” 30mins morning and 30mins evening, with the heating being on just in the evenings.

I guess I could configure a room thermostat into the system such that it doesn’t affect the boiler operation for the hot water?

What system do you have? I have been doing quite a lot of looking at this type of gubbins in the past month or so, after originally ordering the wrong controller for our system.

If you have an S-plan heating sytem (2 motorised valves in the airing cupboard) then you can have something like a wireless room thermostat controller (like the Honeywell CMT927) and then a second single channel controller with a simple timer for the hot water.

With a Y-plan system (one motorised valve, but 3-way) you can’t do the above.
But you can get a Honeywell 7 day controller for heating and hot water that comes with a wireless thermostat. It’s called a Sundial RF2 pack 2.

I’ll need to check later when I’m home – can’t recall the make/model but it’s a 7-day electronic timer system with separate timers for the HW and CH. Our hot water tank’s above the garage and not that easily accessible so no idea on valves. Just not an area I’m that knowledgeable on at all.

I was previously keen to add a simple wireless room thermostat to the system but couldn’t work out how it’d connect to the existing controller without cocking up the HW timer.