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Central heating controls serve the purpose of optimising your heating system as per your household requirements and weather conditions. This helps you save money on energy bills and reduces your carbon footprint. These control systems ensure you maintain a comfortable home temperature and your system produces only required heating and hot water.
In this guide, we are going to describe how you can use these heating controls to optimize your household’s energy consumption and temperature. So, without any delay, let’s dive in.
What Are Central Heating Controls?
All the elements of the heating system that help you manage the temperature and when the system should be on or off come under heating controls. Electric timers, thermostats, TRVs, and all the plumbing and electronic components help control the heating for the central heating system.
With the enhancement of modern technologies, the use of smart controls is booming and redefining heating controls. These internet-controlled systems can learn your habits and start to automatically adjust their temperatures as per requirements. However, there still exist traditional mechanical controls to manage them manually.
What are the Types of Heating Control Systems?
Heating control systems optimize the performance of your central heating system. These controls ensure your home is energy efficient and produces only the required heating, saving you energy, money, and the environment.
Here are a few of the types of heating control systems commonly used in UK households.
- Manual Heating Controls
- Room Thermostat Controls
- Programmable Heating Controls
- Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs)
- Smart Heating Controls
- Weather Compensation Devices
- Load Compensation Devices
All these systems help your home stay comfortable and save you on heating costs.
Which Central Heating Controls My System Should Have?
Let’s be clear, this decision solely depends on your house size and heating requirements. It also depends on your lifestyle as keeping it traditional or going smart is a lifestyle choice. However, here are the essential controls your system needs for better performance.
1. Room Thermostats
This helps measure the room temperature and manage it as per the requirements. This makes sure you are only getting the required amount of heating and no energy is getting wasted.
2. Hot water cylinder thermostats
It measures the control water temperature for domestic use. 60° is considered an ideal temperature for the water. However, it totally depends on your requirements and likeliness.
3. Thermostatic Radiator Valves
These valves control the flow of hot water from the radiators to manage the heating in the space. It controls the temperature output and optimizes the energy consumption.
4. Weather and load compensation
These two techniques are used to control the heating system output based on outside weather in indoor heating requirements. Weather compensation monitors the outside weather and increases or decreases the output accordingly.
Whether the load compensation monitors the indoor heating needs and the building’s current heat loss. It might consider the factors like insulation and window sizes.
5. Smart Heating Controls
Smart heating controls optimize the heating output and energy consumption for your household automatically. After some days, it starts to understand your habits and turns on and off the heating as per the requirements.
For example, you turn off your heating system half an hour before going to sleep and turn it on half an hour before actually leaving the bed. The smart system will automatically start doing that for you. This is especially true for persons who forget things to do.
6. Boiler Thermostat
The boiler thermostat regulates the water going through the central heating system to maintain the required room temperature (ideally 18° to 21°). This optimizes your heating system as per your requirements perfectly.
7. Zone Control Systems
Zonal control systems include separate thermostats for each room, motorized dampers in the ductwork, and a control panel. This ensures the temperature all zones of your home is monitored and controlled adequately.
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How to Use Central Heating Controls to Save Energy?
You need to use your heating systems strategically to save energy and heating costs. The most common misconception is that if you keep the temperature higher, your home will be heated fast. No, it will not, it’ll just increase your heating bills, nothing else.
So, you are recommended to keep your temperature between 18° to 21°. However, if you have some older, health vulnerabilities, or children in the house, you can set it to a bit higher temperature like 23° or so.
Make sure you have the radiator thermostats installed so you can control the temperature of all the rooms separately. This will save you a lot of energy and money along with a responsible citizen tag.
Conclusion
Central heating controls are the magical advancements to ensure you are paying for the energy you have used instead of wasted energy. The future is getting more and more advanced with smart control systems as they are a requirement of the time.
However, this guide ensures you have all the information required to optimize your heating consumption. You should act adequately and make sure your bills are in your control instead of the free flow of the unbearable costs.
FAQs
Absolutely, you can replace your central heating controls if you are experiencing any faults. And no, you are not required to replace your boiler system along with them. However, replacing them yourself is not a great idea, call those professionals.
If you are upgrading your boiler system, you are not required to install new or upgrade your radiators. Instead, the existing radiators can work well with your new boilers, unless it’s not faulty or broken.
It is considered better to keep your thermostat on automatic as it can optimize your heating as per the requirements. Keeping it on automatic mode reduces energy consumption and energy costs.
As per the Energy Saving Trust, the most economical temperature for your heating system is 18° to 21°. It may vary depending on your unique requirements like health conditions and children in the home.
