Interesting place for a room stat

[Doomed]

In a cupboard in the corner of a bedroom I find this

 

[davesparks]

Surely that has got to be a frost stat, nobody would be so stupid as to fit a room stat there would they?

 

[snowhead]

nobody would be so stupid as to fit a room stat there would they?

You under estimate (or should that be over estimate) peoples intelligence.
If it can be done, whether it should be or not, then people will do it.

 

[telectrix]

it's got a technical name... the science of stupid.

 

[Doomed]

Surely that has got to be a frost stat, nobody would be so stupid as to fit a room stat there would they?

Definately a room stat, my only thought is that it makes it compliant by having one fitted.

 

[Paul L]

It says it all about the cutting corners because i cant be bothered world that some people live in these days. Absolutely crazy and it got me thinking as to what the best position actually is for room stats as there seems to be a few trains of thought.
My mum lives in a housing association bungalow and a few years ago when the heating was upgraded they put the room stat literally by the front door where it opens because there happened to be a handy piece of trunking there. Every time the door is opened, particularly in winter surely there will be a big effect on that stat? but the maintenance company the housing association use say its exactly the right place for it.
Doesn't seem right to me at all but maybe there is some theory or thinking behind it that makes sense or not?

 

[davesparks]

The room stat should be in the room which has the control radiator in it, the one which does not have a TRV. The temperature of this room is controlled by the room stat.

All other rooms are then balanced relative to this room using the TRV's

 

[Paul L]

Thanks davesparks, that's just how i have always done it. The Engineer was insistent that by the front door was the right place for it but it just seems wrong to me when that area is subject to quite big fluctuations in temperature.
Probably another example of someone just doing what is easiest rather than what is right, my mum being a pensioner it seems its ok to fob her off.

 

[EricMark]

There are a number of reasons to have a wall mounted thermostat.
1) To stop system freezing.
2) To auto switch off boiler in summer months.
3) To allow remote control.
4) To comply with silly laws.
5) To control temperature of the room.
I can't see from picture type of boiler, but I can see the thermostat is rather basic, so could be froststat, but not a modulating thermostat just simple off/on, and today most gas boilers modulate, (turn up/down) so the control needs to be a modulating control, most common is a thermostatic radiator valve (TRV) however the TRV has a problem, it can't tell a boiler when to run, in theory you could design the boiler so once it hits lowest output and the return water is over temperature it switches off, but what you can't do is once switches off, know when to switch on again.

So you want a thermostat which will turn off the boiler in summer, and turn it back on in winter, the difference between off and on can be large, so missing out the neutral works well.

So the scenario, the TRV controls bedroom heat say 18 degs C, the thermostat is set to 20 degs C off, 17 degs C on, so all winter it does nothing, when we get a warm day in spring it turns off heating and when we get a cool day in autumn it turns back on again.

I have a similar system, OK because the thermostat is so high it may need to be a little higher temperature, but once set what every room it will never need touching again.

OK a Nest Gen 3 thermostat is clearly designed to connect to the boiler ebus using OpenTherm protocol and regulate the boiler output from some central room, but that thermostat is a very simple cheap one. Of course you can take it a little further, a programmable wall thermostat and programmable TRV head can be set to work together and allow for it getting cooler over night, but today Nest Gen 3 is rather the odd one out, most of the higher range thermostats talk to the TRV head.

We need to remember it is the TRV which controls room temperature in most cases, not the wall thermostat, there may be the odd open plan house where a single thermostat on the wall will work, but in most cases today we need multi thermostats one or two for each room, even if only the cheap eQ-3 with bluetooth so a pair can talk to each other when controlling the same room, or without bluetooth if only one radiator in the room, it is the TRV head that does the controlling in most cases today.

Wall thermostat only turns off system in summer.

 

[Zerax]

Well... Ideally... in every room, you want a thermostat and some sort of on/off control with a centralised 'intelligent' programmer. This allows each room to individually 'call for heat' as and when required. If no heating is being 'called' then the boiler shuts down.

The 'conventional' arrangements that we mostly see of TRVs and a room stat is merely a very primitive early version.

One of my bug-bears is how backwards this country is in proper control and regulation of our heating... how out-of-date and lowly the building regulations are. Even with the high controllability of electric heating, the existing regulations make it very difficult to do properly.