House Cold, Rads Hot

[unhandy_andy]

Hello, bit of a story here so apologies first.

This is my first house with GCH and had my Ideal Elan 2 boiler serviced by Scottish Gas on Wednesday and it passed .
I questioned the engineer about the operation of the boiler and he said that it was in perfect working order. (Report said around 72% efficient).
When the room stat demands heat, the boiler fires up and runs for a couple of minutes then cuts off. This process repeats constantly. Again the engineer said that this was normal.
I have the timer set to run from 5.30 am to 9 am and 3.30 pm to 11 pm with the boiler set at '4' and the room stat at 25°C but the house never really heats up.
The house is open plan downstairs with the stairs in the middle of the living room but all the windows are not especially draughty.
We close all the upstairs doors all the time any way so I don't see this as a means of heat escape.
The engineer said that I should just put the timer to constant but wouldn't this just be a waste of energy when we are at work?
Any ideas folks?
Cheers.

 

[kevplumb]

what type of system ?

 

[Bahco]

Your boiler is not very efficient as it should be 78% minimum to comply with part L regs.
Place thermometers in your rooms and record temps when heating is on.
18-21 degrees is adequate for most rooms. You may be confusing convected heat with radiated heat which are quite different.
If your system is not achieving these temps you will have to dig deep in your pockets and replace if all other avenues have been exhausted

 

[kevplumb]

try turning the pump speed up

 

[Nillbymouth]

Sounds like a similar problem to the one I had in a previous house. It was a modern, well insulated, double glazed house with the stairs in the living room. On cold days it could take most of the day to heat up the living room even though the radiators were hot. On very cold days I had to use an electric oil filled radiator.

The builders had saved money and installed a too small radiator - a single convector (I think about 1200mm wide). I got this replaced with a double and the room heated up fine although the upstairs landing was like a sauna because all the heat went up the stairs. This was solved by a thick curtain on the stairs to stop the heat going up.