It is important that your central heating is safe and running efficiently. 

​

Your central heating boiler receives an annual safety check and certification, as required by law. The boiler itself requires very little attention from yourself, other than keeping an eye on the pressure dial and ensuring the boiler is running at approximately 1.7bar. There is a top up valve, which i am more than happy to demonstrate to you.

​

The timer control for the boiler is either built in to the fascia or is on a separate thermostatic control. You also have control over the temperature in individual rooms via the thermostatic controls (TRVs) on each radiator. Normally a setting of 4-5 should be sufficient. Central heating only has one temperature, so a TRV allows you to control temperature room by room, whereas the timer control allows you to have the boiler on or off for periods of your choosing. During colder months, it is worth concidering having the boiler permanently on, but with the TRVs on a lower setting than normal. This way, your house doesn't continually heat up and cool down throughout the day. There is a school of thought that says it actually works out cheaper in the long run...and you get a permanently warm house. 

​

In the words of MoneySavingExpert :

What's the difference between controlling the heating using the thermostat or the radiator values?

"Thermostats control your boiler, whilst radiator valves control the water flow through each individual radiator. Your thermostat controls your home's temperature, so once it hits the temperature you set on the thermostat, the boiler will go off, until the room temperature drops again. Radiator valves are an extra control which you can use to set the temperature of each individual room (other than where your main thermostat is). This means you can set some rooms to be cooler than others if you don’t use them very often (saving energy and money).

When the temperature in that room rises above what’s set on the radiator valve, it will stop water flowing through that particular radiator - the boiler will still be on to heat other rooms, but it will use less energy."

​

To save you having to rifle thru cupboards and drawers, below are links to downloadable PDFs of all central heating boiler manuals and timers.

​

Ideal Esprit Combi

​

Main Eco Combi

​

Potterton Promax Combi HE Plus

​

Worcester Bosch CI Combi

​

Ideal Esprit 24

​

Ideal Esprit Eco

​

Drayton Digistat

Ideal RM Programmable Room Stat

​

Please remember that if you have a wireless/remote thermostat, the batteries will need replacing from time to time. Neither thermostat nor boiler will work if the batteries are dead. It's worth keeping a few spare batteries handy.

Ooh La La / Faces