Controlling Heating on three floors

stiophan

I want to control my heating-hot water usage in a smarter way. Currently I have a gas boiler and water tank in the basement. I have two thermometers on the top floors (top floor in bedrooms/bathrooms/ ground floor is sitting room and unused adjoining 2nd room) and basement is Kitchen (and adjoining hot press where boiler and tank reside). My gas boiler has a manual timer where you use microlevers to set when the gas boiler can come on/off much like a manual timer switch. The upstairs thermometers are for the radiatiors and are also simple manual dials for setting the desired temp (of that room). No radiator thermostats anywhere.

I set the heating by having the gas boiler "turn on" via the timer and then having to go upstairs and turn on the thermostat. The house is a BER B3 rating so OK but it does lose heat. I don't use alot of domestic hot water and we use gas for hob cooking. We have a set thermostat on the water cylinder thats just left at about 60 deg (whaterver the recommended hot water temp in a home should be). The domestic hot water can only be heated when the boiler turns on. There is a digital option for the gas boiler but its very old tech and expensive

I want to control the heating much better ie turn on the room thermometer and have the boiler turn on. Be able to set the heating to change on separate days e.g. later on a weekend.

If I had left the boiler on and just let the room thermostats control the room heating that might work fine but we notice that the boiler comes on frequently to maintain the hot water temp even if the air temp of the rooms has not fallen. I would like to be able to let the domestic water temp fall as far as I care and still allow the room air temp to be maintained. At present I can in theory control each floors air temp but I cannot avoid heating the water cylinder when the boiler is also heating the radiatiors.

I also only have one cold basement which I would like to control separately from the floors above - at present the ground floor thermostat also controls the basement radiator.

I could install individual radiator thermostats but that means setting some manually every day depending on whether I want a cold kitchen or warm kitchen and cooler ground floor. I know there are digital versions but can they be controlled wirelessly?



Also at present if I want to turn the heating in the bedrooms I must turn on the top floor thermostat and then turn on the heating switches on the boiler . I would also note that once the heating does come on, the room termperatures rise very fast and there seems no way of slowing down the radiator/room heat as it gets closer to the desired air temp. So often the rooms heated get too hot. We leave the rooms we don't use with the radiators "permanently" cut off but I'm not sure if that means they are getting so cold as to pull lots of heat from the other heated parts of the home. Is it better to have a set temp maintained all the time and then heated to the desired air temp or heat it up to the desired temp from "cold" when you want the rooms warm.

kramer1

Wireless thermostatic radiator valves do exist, would give you individual control of each radiator, I've never used them.