Boiler & Heating Control Upgrades

Boiler & Heating Control Upgrades

Service Overview

Boiler Upgrade

Typically, the “as new” efficiency of an oil or gas boiler over 15 years old would have been less than 80%. It’s present efficiency today, due to wear and tear is unlikely to be greater than 70%.

The current range of boilers available today will have efficiencies greater than 90%. This represents an operational improvement in efficiency of up to 20 percentage points

Increasing the operational efficiency of your boiler by this amount represents an actual fuel saving of more than 25%. In other words, by replacing an older, low efficiency boiler with a new, high efficiency boiler, you can cut your fuel bills by a quarter.

So, replacing old boilers makes good sense for three reasons:

  1. Significant fuel cost savings which can only increase as energy prices escalate.
  2. Improved reliability and safety.

To discover how efficient or not your current boiler is, click here to access the Home-heating Appliance Register of Performance (HARP) database for home-heating appliances that are used in Ireland.

Gas Boilers

Hometherm are approved installers of the Worcester Bosch range of Gas fired condensing boilers.

Heating Controls

Typicaly you can reduce you homes energy usage by up to 20% by installing and using heating controls in an efficient manner. Heating controls now make even more sense with an SEAI grant of €700 available towards this work. Hometherm are registered contractors under the SEAI’s Better Energy Homes scheme. Click here for grant details.

Heating controls can help you to accurately match your space heating and hot water schedules to the working and living patterns of your home i.e. when heat and hot water are required, it is there; when it is not, it is turned off.

As a minimum, your heating systems should be split into two independently controlled “zones”. They are your ‘Space Heating Zone’ and your ‘Domestic Hot Water Zone’.  This allows you to heat your domestic hot wate with your boiler, without being forced to turn on your space heating. Additional zones can also be put in place in large homes to split upstairs and downstairs or living areas and bedrooms.

Based on figures from SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland) the average cost of a single KWh of energy derived from Gas is 6.18 cent, from Oilis 8.39 cent and from electricity it’s more than double the price at 20.86 cent. (Figures accurate July 2012).

Do I need Heating controls?
You can do a quick check on your heating control requirements by answering the simple questions below. If you answer NO to all or the majority of the questions below, it would be highly beneficial for you to install some heating controls:

  • Can you heat your domestic hot water without switching on your radiators or an electric immersion heater?
  • Can you turn on your heating without heating your domestic hot water?
  • Can you easily adjust the heat output from radiators in the rooms you use most often?
  • Have you temperature control on your boiler?
  • Have you time control on your boiler that you can set for different days of the week?
  • Have you a separate temperature control for your hot water cylinder?
  • Have you a separate time control on your hot water cylinder?7