How To Use Your Heating Controls |
Your home is supplied with heating and hot water, in one of three different ways:
- Being connected to a communal heating systems;
- By having separate gas/electric fires and water heaters;
- With your own central heating system.
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Communal Heating Systems.
Our communal heating systems provide heating continuously. You are able to control the heating by turning the room thermostat or the radiator valves up (anti-clockwise) or down, or off.
Separate Gas/Electric Fires and Water Heaters.
A small number of our homes have separate fires and water heaters as their only sources of heating and hot water. You turn these on and off as you want.
Central Heating Systems.
The vast majority of our homes have a central heating system. Your system will either have a normal boiler or a combination boiler that supplies heat to your radiators.
A normal boiler system will consist of a boiler, a pump, a hot water cylinder, a programmer and a room thermostat. You can control the heating and hot water separately by using the programmer according to your lifestyle.
A combination boiler system will only consist of a boiler, a programmer and a thermostat. As the hot water will always be available whenever you turn on the hot water taps, you only need to control the heating.
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How to control your system
There are two types of programmer – an electronic one and a clock-type one (see examples below). |
| You use the programmer to select the mode (i.e. turn the heating on continuously, or once daily, or twice daily, or completely off), and to arrange what times the heating will come on. It is up to you to select these times, but most people set it to come on for two periods a day - before they go to work and when they come home from work. |
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A good guide is to set it to turn on half an hour before you need it and turn off about an hour before you go to bed or go out. But remember, the longer you run the heating, the more you pay for gas.
You can also use the programmer to do the same for your hot water (unless you have a combination boiler – see above). |
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The room thermostat (see left) is usually located in the hallway, living room or dining room. You use this to set the temperature of your home. Most people set this thermostat at 21oC (70oF) and then adjust it slightly later, according to how warm or cool they feel. It might take a few slight adjustments before you get it exactly right. |
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You might also have thermostatic radiator valves (see right) fitted to your radiators. These will be located at the bottom of the radiator, on one end. They are usually white and chrome and will have numbers *12345 running around them. These valves automatically turn the radiator on or off, according to the temperature in the room. |
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Most people turn them on to setting 3 and then adjust them slightly later, according to how warm or cool they feel. It might take a few slight adjustments before you get it exactly right. Once you have got it right, you should not need to adjust it again very often. |
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If you have a hot water cylinder, it will be fitted with a cylinder thermostat to control the water temperature. This should be set to a temperature of around 60oC (140°F), but you can adjust it very slightly up or down.
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