Best way to zone 4 Bed Bungalow?

Raiser

Just planning our heating system at the minute and wondering whats the best way to go about it.

- Current plan is to zone 3 ways, Living areas (Kitchen, Front Room and Living Room) - Bedrooms with 3rd zone then just to heat hot water.

Would love to hear any practical advice or suggestions from anyone who has done this.

- Also if ye could recommend any good heating controls/Timers etc. it would be great.

Mike2006

It would depend...

If your living areas are in different areas of the house i.e. north facing/south facing and west facing and you put the stat to control that zone in the coldest room (north facing), the other 2 rooms will be too warm once the stat goes out and if you put the stat in the south facing room the other rooms will not be warm enough.

I would base the zones on location rather than function if you are limiting the zones to 3.
Ideally, if you had a stat in each room you could set it individually.
Otherwise, I would put a stat in the north facing, south facing and in the hallway as well.
At least then all the rooms facing the same direction will be at the same temp at more or less the same time.

Again, it would depend on what sort of heating (rads/ufh) and heat source (oil/gas/heat pump) you are going for...

Basically, you should sit down and decide on the overall system you need/want and base your controls on that. Are ye in the house all day or just for a few hours? What level of insulation are you using etc...

Mike.

Raiser

Apologies - My post should have included the fact that we are using TRVs throughout.

- Zoning will be concerned with heating areas of the House only as needed for certain times of the day etc.

Thanks for the reply much appreciated!

Pete67

I find a combination of TRVs and room thermostats works best. I would pick the room with the greatest heat loss (north facing etc etc) for each zone, and put a programmable room thermostat in that room, and no TRV on the rad(s). All the other rooms on that zone would then have TRVs and no room stats.

So as the house cools down, the thermostat in the coldest room senses this, and open the zone valve, which should be interlocked to the boiler - when the zone valve opens the boiler fires. The zone heating is then enabled until the coldest room heats up. The TRVs in the the other rooms on that zone regulate the temp in those rooms and prevents them overheating.

For the hot water zone I use a timer in series with a cylinder thermostat to open the HW zone valve, which is also interlocked to the boiler.

So for a fairly standard 4 bed house, I would have a programmable room stat usually in the living room, TRVs on the other downstairs rooms / hall, and another programmable room stat in the coldest bedroom, and trvs in the other bedrooms / bathroom etc.

By designing the system in this way, the boiler will only fire when there is a demand for heat, which is more efficient.

As with all heating systems, proper commissioning is essential if the system is to work properly, economically and dependably for many years. As a minimum, this includes flushing of the system, addition of corrosion inhibitor, system balancing, testing of controls and demonstration to the user.

Raiser

Thanks for that!

- Need to re-read and pick up on the specifics now!!!