There are many 'smart'
thermostats e.g. learning thermostats that learn at what times of the
day you like the temperature this is ineffective as weather in
Britain notoriously changes between extremes irregularly The best
answer so far is a Weather compensating central heating system. They
aren't new but, the chances are you don’t have one, even though
it’d save you money and make your home considerably more
comfortable with a regulated temperature.
Whats wrong with my current Thermostat?
In
order to provide accurate indoor temperatures, the heat supplied to
the building must equal the heat loss from the building. The greatest
factor affecting how much heat a building requires is the outdoor
temperature. Even in a well-insulated building, heat loss increases
as the outdoor temperature falls.
A
boiler heating system is typically designed to always operate at the
highest temperature possible to match a building’s heat loss on the
coldest day of the year. Most United Kingdom locations have less than
10 days in a year that actually require this high temperature.
Virtually all domestic
heating systems are controlled by a simple thermostat feedback
system. The heating system turns on by default for the whole house
until the temperature at the thermostat reaches a pre-set level and
then the heating is turned off until the temperature drops enough to
re-start the process.
It works, the
feedback-loop principle does its job to a fashion and that’s why we
mostly accept what it gives us. But it has problems.
So what's the problem?
The main problem comes
in the shape of the humans that live in the property. We don't
generally leave the feedback loop to do its primitive task
unmolested. The weather turns chilly so we turn up the thermostat -
so far so good, the radiators come on and things get toasty. So we
turn the thermostat back down and maybe open a window or two to let
in a little fresh air - spilling our precious heat energy out into
the atmosphere. To make matters even worse several different
occupants of the house may have different ideas about what the
thermostat setting should be. All that effort heating your home with
your hard earned money wasted in a matter of hours.
There’s also a
problem with conventional thermostats that turn on and off at
different temperatures - causing the room temperature to overshoot
the desired temperature which all adds to the human-intervention
problem.
The
current best solution is Weather compensation
With a weather
compensating heating system an additional temperature sensor, or two,
outside the house (usually on the north-side) detects the changes to
outside temperature that will, over the coming hours, affect the heat
demand inside of the house and save you up to 15% on your fuel bill
per year!
Rather than wait for
the occupants of the house to start feeing the cold and start the
process of heating and replacing the lost heat in the building and
its occupants’s chilly nose-ends, the system predicts the
temperature drop and slowly starts to adjust upwards the temperature
of the boiler and its flow rates through the radiators. If the system
gets it right, you should hardly notice the change but the results
can be startling.
As you can see from the
two demonstration graphs above, the result is a heating system with
far fewer spikes and troughs in the system and room temperatures.
Also, fewer arguments over the thermostat setting and a happier
boiler working at a higher efficiency because of the reduced ‘thermal
shock’ that wildly fluctuating temperatures can bring.
Key benefits:
- Easy installation and wiring
- Operate the boiler at the lowest possible temperature to improve efficiency
- Minimise ticking expansion noises in radiators by preventing large temperature swings
- Improve the comfort of occupants by better matching the heat requirements based on outdoor temperature
- Expand boiler life cycle with the automatic differential feature to minimise boiler short cycling
In
summary, weather compensation controls enable the boiler to respond
to outside temperature changes and adjust the radiator output, to
maintain a constant temperature indoors saving
you a considerable amount of money.
What else can I do to make my boiler more efficient?
If your current boiler
and heating system is several years old the chances are a new boiler
or heating system would probably be a wise investment. Modern
condensing boilers have efficiencies into the 90%’s while a 15 year
old boiler with a pilot light may be only 65% efficient. That’s a
big difference even without the added efficiency of a weather
compensating system.
Get some quotes for a
new heating system today at www.heatingquoter.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment