Adding a new/separate heating 'zone' to an existing system?

Howdy do folks.


A friend of mine has a gas boiler, and two thermostats. One is upstairs, one is downstairs. It's actually very handy.


I have a combi gas boiler, but however, only have one thermostat (which means i pretty much just leave the upstairs radiators powered off via their TRVs rather than have upstairs meltingly hot).


This means I end up, each evening, going around manually turning on all the TRVs.


I'm wondering, is there much effort involved in adding an extra zone? Or is it a case of only really being practical to do it when you're actually installing the radiators in the first place? (mine have been in place a while, and I wouldn't like to go digging the whole house up getting at pipes etc).




Anyone any idea? I've googled around but mostly seem to only find US forums where they're talking about entire new systems being installed, and my boiler is relatively new (less than 2 years) so i don't want to change it.


Cheers to anyone with any advice or insight.

GreeBo

It depends on how it was originally plumbed really.

You have flow and return pipes from the boiler branching off to each rad.
Unless there is a natural divide then it will be hard to zone them.

Why not just set the trv to whatever temp you want the bedrooms to be and just leave them?
That's what they are designed to do

GreeBo

GreeBo wrote: »

It depends on how it was originally plumbed really.

You have flow and return pipes from the boiler branching off to each rad.
Unless there is a natural divide then it will be hard to zone them.

Why not just set the trv to whatever temp you want the bedrooms to be and just leave them?
That's what they are designed to do

I dunno, i find them to be inconsistent. For example, in one room, radiator valve set to no. 0 and the rad is cold. No. 1 and the rad is cold. No. 2 and it's bubbling hot. :rolleyes:


So it gets frustrating at times. Plus i thought it'd be nice to be able to have them on downstairs and upstairs independent of each other.


Judging from what you're saying, I don't think it'd be too easy to install it as is, though.

xl500

You could put Smart TRVs on upstairs rads would give you ability to control from Phone etc then each rad would be a zone meaning each room could be controlled seperatly

GreeBo

Deleted User wrote: »

I dunno, i find them to be inconsistent. For example, in one room, radiator valve set to no. 0 and the rad is cold. No. 1 and the rad is cold. No. 2 and it's bubbling hot. :rolleyes:


So it gets frustrating at times. Plus i thought it'd be nice to be able to have them on downstairs and upstairs independent of each other.


Judging from what you're saying, I don't think it'd be too easy to install it as is, though.

Sounds like either your system needs to be balanced or your TRVs are sticking, which they can do.

Unscrew the top and confirm that the pin can move up and down freely.

It might be that its staying shut until it gets to 2...though it sounds more like the lock shield valve is too open, the rad gets hot because of the speed of water passing through it, so you need to balance the flow and return otherwise you get some very hot rads and others not so much. (The still hot water is reaching the return via the badly balanced rad and so none of the other rads will ever see it)