how many zones?

rodred

Hi,

need to make a decision on the heating system now,
i was looking at manifold system, that would have each
rad piped separately, thermostat in each room etc.
12 rads in all.

the plumber has suggested that using a zone for each
floor would be a more economical way of doing it and to
use TRV's on each rad.

that would give me 4 zones, ground, 1st, attic and hotwater.
i can then turn the trv's down in the rooms that are not needed.

it is crunch time now, so if anyone could give me some info or advice
that would be much appreciated..
cheers
Rob

reilig

I have 3 zones in my new house - ground floor, first floor and hot water. Electrician installed a 3 way time clock which is also linked through the alarm system and can be turned on with a text message. Every radiator has trvs. System working great so far.

rodred wrote: »

Hi,

need to make a decision on the heating system now,
i was looking at manifold system, that would have each
rad piped separately, thermostat in each room etc.
12 rads in all.

the plumber has suggested that using a zone for each
floor would be a more economical way of doing it and to
use TRV's on each rad.

that would give me 4 zones, ground, 1st, attic and hotwater.
i can then turn the trv's down in the rooms that are not needed.

it is crunch time now, so if anyone could give me some info or advice
that would be much appreciated..
cheers
Rob

Manuel

Sounds ok. Why the attic, is it converted? Make sure you have a separate zone for hot water anyway.

In my house I have 3 zones - main, living and sleeping. Unfortunately the minimum I can have on is main. In other words, if I only want hot water (in summer) I use main, which also heats the rads in the main zone (hall, landing, bathroom upstairs and downstairs, unless I go and turn off all those rads). Likewise in the winter I can control the heat in the living and sleeping zones with the zone stats, but unfortunately I can only control the main zone heat with the boiler stat itself. Stoopid ......

rodred

thanks for the feed back,
yeah the attic will be converted but not habitalbel;)

i think 4 zones should be a good compormise between control
and costs..

davidoco

I have six zones in a 2000 sq ft house all on programmable stats with optimum start

1 Bedrooms (stat in coldest room with TRV in other 2 bedrooms)
2 Living
3 Kitchen
4 Playroom

5 When any of the above zones call for heat the relay also opens the common area zone (hallway and bathrooms)

6 Hot water

While I use a different product the above can be done using a ChannelPlus XL Horstmann 4 channel (? €125 in UK) with a seperate time clock for playroom (€50 down the road), 6 zone valves €200. A wiring centre €20. Total about €400. You'll need TRVs on the rads.

If your heating costs are €1000 per year and you save 10% by having proper controls that's a payback of 5 years.