Heating System Operation#

Many groups use our thermal monitors to discover that the heating in their venue doesn’t match the times that people are in. Part of session 3 is checking this and determining what to do about it. Sometimes the answer is a change in practice, sometimes it takes new heating controls, and sometimes there’s some underlying problem that needs professional diagnosis. Knowing what to do takes knowing how the heating is set.

Exactly what to collect, and how, depends on the system you have. You will definitely want to review these items:

  • who sets the heating timings and how and when they do this - is it weekly? Once a school term? At season boundaries? Do they program system on/off times, or does this system take target temperatures, for instance, “make it 16C by 9 am”, and decide for itself when to turn on? What happens over the summer and during school holidays?

  • how is the temperature controlled in the various rooms, and who does the controlling? That might be with thermostats and thermostatic radiator valves, or it might be a temperature set point on the main controller.

  • any “setback” temperature that the system will enforce as a minimum for the building.

  • if you have a “wet system”, the temperature set on the boiler thermostat. This determines the temperature of the hot water delivered to the pipes.

There may be other settings, too:

  • if you have a weather compensator, the temperatures that determine how much the heating is scaled back in warm weather, sometimes including a target room temperature that may not match your current practice.

  • if you have fan convectors, there may be hidden controls under the cover for fan speed, usually including temperatures at which to slow the fan down so it doesn’t overshoot your target room temperature.

It’s easy for these to get out of sync with how you’re running the rest of the system, or to be set to defaults that are more appropriate to modern offices than to our buildings.

The card game addresses some of these settings and which kind of energy efficiency controls are useful for which applications, but getting the settings for weather compensation right are beyond what this programme can achieve.