[Closed] Talk to me about... zoning the heating in the house

I solved this problem by having a boiler upstairs and another boiler downstairs.

I have two completely separate heating systems .

I'd not considered that TBH. Seems a little overkill?

I wouldn't recommend it as a strategy.

The house was built as one, split into two flats which I bought separately and recombined into one big house again. It was more bother than it was worth to combine the heating systems and it actually works quite well.

Assuming it is a town house with living area on the middle floor and beds on the top floor then I would be inclined to separate out those floors also.

I have a "dumb" two zone system that simply has thermostat on upper and lower hallways (two floor). It does not really achieve any benefit as it all comes on and goes off at the same time (driven by the single timer at the boiler) and there is too much crossover between the air that was heated by the downstairs radiators going upstairs and affecting the upstairs thermostat.

The benefit for hive & co is that you can have several time/temperature points during the day and so you can heat the downstairs in the early evening and then only heat upstairs before bed etc.

You might be able to get a timed wall thermostat that does that, but I suspect by the time you have two or three of them you have spent the same as hive where you get to do the timings on a nice app and not trying to program each thermostat by pressing "Prog" 16 times until screen show tmr then happy

Depends how it's piped.

If the GF is under the ground floor floor then you should be able to add 2 port valves with wireless programmable room stats in to control GF and upper floors.

Look up Honeywell S Plan for the basic idea.
Prog room stats are better than multizone controllers IMO.

Depends on hot water if you need/have another zone to a cylinder.

my house is quite cold downstairs, quite pleasant in balmy summer periods, but generally not great to walk downstairs into a freezing kitchen. It's an expensive outlay, but I have installed Evohome to try and equalise the house more. Effectively every rad becomes a zone ie can demand heat independently, 12 zones are available, rads can be grouped together to create bigger zones ie 2 rads in the same room, all the rads on one floor etc etc. I've got a base comfort temp scheduled day to day and then can control rads and/or zones from a main controller (mine's in the lounge), smartphone or at each rad. Everything is pretty instant, even smartphone commands. Also use IFTTT to turn it all on and off

You might be able to get a timed wall thermostat that does that, but I suspect by the time you have two or three of them you have spent the same as hive where you get to do the timings on a nice app and not trying to program each thermostat by pressing "Prog" 16 times until screen show tmr then happy

Most basic wall thermostats have daily programs etc and they cost about £15-20. eg http://www.screwfix.com/p/iqe-7-day-programmable-room-thermostat-with-li-ion-battery-back-up/53575

Thanks all.

Looking at really just zoning floors rather than individual rads, and not too bothered with smart phone controls.

Looking at Drayton MiTime RF at the mo, but trying to work out whether that will actually work for what I want.

Assuming it is a town house with living area on the middle floor and beds on the top floor then I would be inclined to separate out those floors also.

Yeap, that's it. We're only separating into two zones: the ground floor (gets cold in winter) and top two floors, mainly because of the costs that would result in re-plumbing the top two floors.

Looking at really just zoning floors rather than individual rads,

You haven't fully explained what you want, but I'd assume by 'zoning floors' you mean you want to control what time of day the rads come on, on certain floors??. The obvious one being to heat your lounge/kitchen/dining rooms on an evening, heat bedrooms early morning and maybe for an hour at 10pm?.
I'm not a heating engineer but the only way I think you could do this is to either, have the upstairs and downstairs rads on two separate circuits of pipework with motorised valves at the boiler end, controlled by 2 thermostats OR have automated control of each rad TRV and bind them into zones (Evohome).

Drayton mitime just looks like a more fancy thermostat and timer. Assuming you currently have a standard rad setup ie all the rads on a single circuit of pipework. Then it doesn't matter how fancy the thermostat is, how many you have, where they are located and what they're individually programmed to do. The whole central heating will always come on when the boiler fires up.

Maybe speak to your heating engineer about piping your rads into 2 separate circuits or otherwise it's Evohome I think (there might be others now, Tado?)

I'm not a heating engineer but the only way I think you could do this is to either, have the upstairs and downstairs rads on two separate circuits of pipework with motorised valves at the boiler end, controlled by 2 thermostats OR have automated control of each rad TRV and bind them into zones (Evohome).

Either two loops or have one a loop of the other loop and two motorised valves.

Very simple to wire up.

Honeywell Evohome won't involve any pipework as you'll just be changing the TRV heads and doing a bit of wiring.

Zoning will be cheaper in materials but will involve pipework mods and much more wiring.

They'll probably cost around the same to be honest. You can get cheaper programmable TRV heads but they tend to be standalone ones rather than talking to a central hub as they do with Evohome.

Drayton MiTime stuff is ace. We have the RF stat at home and it's unbelievably simple to use as everything is actual text rather than having to try and interpret what symbols or shortened words mean.

Not read the whole thread and might be way off the requirement but what about thermostats on each radiator so some come on and some don't? I guess if you wanted to make the ground floor the same temperature you could experiment with the individual radiator thermostats until both come on at the same time?

Doh1Nut - Member
The benefit for hive & co is that you can have several time/temperature points during the day and so you can heat the downstairs in the early evening and then only heat upstairs before bed etc.

Just to make this clear, only Evohome (maybe Tado) can 'heat the downstairs in the early evening and then only heat upstairs before bed etc.' all the other 'Hive & Co' are simply thermostat/timer that you can control from a smartphone, some claim to learn your domestic routines and do other fancy stuff, but basically can only turn the boiler on and off for the whole house (assuming you have a standard CH system).
NB this is my interp, I may stand corrected.

Evohome +1, can also use undefloor and rads in the same system.

Insulate the outside shell well and you'll have very little difference in temperature between rooms wherever the heating is. If the kitchen with the woodburner (only heat source) is 22, the living room is about 20 and the bedrooms about 17.

Would also add that the Evohome learns the heat profiles of each room so will ramp up and down calls for heat depending on that profile.

i.e. you set the temperature for each room/zone for what times and it feathers the demand depending on the profile that it has learnt/monitors.

As each rad/TRV is individually controllable it also allows for mix sized rads in a room.

Not read the whole thread and might be way off the requirement but what about thermostats on each radiator so some come on and some don't? I guess if you wanted to make the ground floor the same temperature you could experiment with the individual radiator thermostats until both come on at the same time?

Looked into that yesterday. Over £1k on top of boiler move. It's something I'd consider down the line as it can be retrofitted, just not at this juncture!

You haven't fully explained what you want, but I'd assume by 'zoning floors' you mean you want to control what time of day the rads come on, on certain floors??. The obvious one being to heat your lounge/kitchen/dining rooms on an evening, heat bedrooms early morning and maybe for an hour at 10pm?.

Basically, yes. That and control the heat in one zone during the day.

Maybe speak to your heating engineer about piping your rads into 2 separate circuits or otherwise it's Evohome I think (there might be others now, Tado?)

It's the heating engineer that's suggested zoning during the boiler move, so I can only assume it involves regulating the pipes supplying the different floors. At the time I wasn't aware of Evo and the like.

He's also suggested Hive (he's not British Gas employed I should add!) Hive looks great and I've been chatting to them today; the main issue with them is the better half is concerned about it being online and accessible via wifi, so potentially open to accessing by others. However, it seems there is an option to run without online access and it'd give us the option of reverting to it in future, which makes it a decent option at the moment.

Insulate the outside shell well and you'll have very little difference in temperature between rooms wherever the heating is. If the kitchen with the woodburner (only heat source) is 22, the living room is about 20 and the bedrooms about 17.

Outer shell is OK. At the moment I believe the real issue is the void under the ground floor.

Look up Honeywell S Plan for the basic idea.

Looking up now... 🙂

Our house was set up like this by the previous owners - they put in a new boiler when they did the loft conversion.

There's a zone valve for each floor, each controlled by their own wireless thermostat. Generally works pretty well for us - loft room is really our spare bedroom / home office and stays warmer than the rest of the house so doesn't need much heat unless it's winter and I'm working up there. Middle floor (bedrooms) and downstairs (living/kitchen) can run to different schedules according to need.

Only downside really is if you want the fancy app controlled stuff (Hive, Nest, etc) then it's 2-3x the price as the extra zone kits are really just another thermostat.

Evohome looks good if you think you need/want per-room control - but the cost of their TRVs really adds up if you have a lot of radiators, and they're all battery powered so will need changing every so often.

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Insulate under the floor. 120mm recycled polyester. The hardest part was digging the trench to et access as I didn't fancy ripping up the floor boards. It helped being an ex-caver and masochistic.

I've got the system you are looking at, 2 separate heating zones and one stored water zone.
It's called a "S plus plan" with the three zones, or "S plan" with only two zones, assuming a combi is supplying the hot water demand.
Mine has Honeywell two port zone valves splitting the floors into separate zones.
I added in extra control by integrating Danfoss TP5000Si RF wireless room thermostats, set for 21 degrees average downstairs and 19 degrees average upstairs. The thermostats can act as time clocks as well if needed.
The zones are staged to come on at different times to reduce the loading on the boiler. Water is via an unvented tank system, giving mains pressure hot water.
The system has also got TRV's on all but two radiators, so rooms can be individually set to further balance out the temperatures and reduce gas consumption.
Unfortunately there is no option (plan) for me to go to a more intelligent system. (that's what I tell the GF!)

An alternative to EvoHome is these guys:
https://www.geniushub.co.uk/

I'd like to do something like this as I only use one room during the day and think heating the whole house is daft most of the time. The problem for me is we have the wrong type of radiator valves so I have to change all of them before I can make the switch.

It's the heating engineer that's suggested zoning during the boiler move, so I can only assume it involves regulating the pipes supplying the different floors. At the time I wasn't aware of Evo and the like.

He's also suggested Hive (he's not British Gas employed I should add!) Hive looks great and I've been chatting to them today;

OK, your ref to Drayton MiTime makes more sense now.

Only thing to add then, is to echo what Northernmatt says re them potentially costing the same in the end.
1) Get a quote for just boiler and fitting to existing rads (don't include any thermostat/timer).
2) Get a quote for Boiler, zoning (as suggested by your HE) and controls for operating each zone individually (you might need two Hives or Hive and slave or something).
3) work out the price of Evohome in your house, basically £200 for a controller + £50 per rad TRV (one rad has to be open all the time I believe, so deduct one rad, box room/bathroom). your HE would need to wire in the relay box, but you can do the rest, it's easy.

Deduct 1 from 2 and compare it to 3.
Things to think about when doing the comparison are 1)You can take Evohome with you if you move house, 2) Evohome can potentially be upto 12 zones, other option is always only 2 zones. 3) Are your existing TRV's compatible to Evohome's TRV Controller Head HR92. If not then you have additional cost of new TRV's and fitting.

Insulate under the floor. 120mm recycled polyester. The hardest part was digging the trench to et access as I didn't fancy ripping up the floor boards. It helped being an ex-caver and masochistic.

😆

Yeah... I'll wait until we replace the hall carpet for that then pull up a floor section!

I've got the system you are looking at, 2 separate heating zones and one stored water zone.

That's good info - thanks Crofts.

OK, your ref to Drayton MiTime makes more sense now.

Thanks B.A.Nana (and NorthernMatt). Good plan. I'll check rads and go from there. And then drop a shed load of cash.

*gulp*

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