Heating water/rads V's rads

Bassboxxx

Right forgive me if this is the basics but my question is does heating the water and rads with my gas burner use much more gas than just heating the rads??

If it does is it much more?

Dempo1

No an expert but i don't think you can just heat rads without heating the water in your immersion, i know on oil central heating systems you can turn off the pump to the radiators and just heat the water, i assume it's the same with gas systems?

Sparkpea

as far as I'm concerned a 2 zone system should be setup to fire the boiler for HW only, then to heat the rads the zone valve would open - but basically you can't have the CH on without the HW - which imo makes sense, heating your HW is only like heating another rad.

Some people have systems wired incorrectly (again in my opinion) which allows you to run CH without HW which makes no sense to me as its a waste of energy.

I had a client who never understood how these things worked and ended up with huge gas bills, she used to run her CH for 2hrs then run the HW for an hour when infact it would have been cheaper for her to run the HW with the CH for those 2 hours.

Bassboxxx

Thanks for your reply..

On my system you can turn on either on their own or both (obviously).

It always seemed a bit of a waste to me that I'd turn on the rads for a hour or so then they'd just cool down and that's it, no hot water!