How to know if home has Zoned heating

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Graftgirl

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Hi, would anyone know how to tell if a house has zoned heating. When we bought our house, we were told it had Zoned heating. There is a Socket switch with the up switch marked "Upstairs" and the down marked"Downstairs". Flicked the switch and nothing happens. There are no thermostats on the radiators and someone did suggest to me that a Zoned system had to have thermostats on the radiators.
Any advice or comment is appreciated, thinking about the winter coming and the rising price of oil so only using necessary radiators at certaing times makes alot of sense.
Thanks.
 
Have you room stats?, A dial on the wall with numbers. Generally for ever stat you have a motorised valve which is one zone. so one stat = one zone.

Thermostatic rad valves don't indicate if your heating is zoned.

Have you tried heating on with one switch on? what happens?
 
A lot of installs are like this.

Timer clock somewhere which runs the boiler. Switch as you describe is like lightswitch and usually double switch. Left is downstairs heating on (down) off (up) and right side is on (down) off (up). There would then be a thermostat upstairs and downstairs.

Think of it this way.

with thermostat - Timer fires up boiler which heats the water for the rads. Said (light)switch powers the thermostat which opens a motorised valve to allow the heated water circulate the zone.

without thermostat - Timer fires up boiler which heats the water for the rads. Said (light)switch opens a motorised valve to allow the heated water circulate the zone - in this scenario you may have thermostatic rad valves on each radiator http://www.bathroom-envy.com/centra...0mm-thermostatic-radiator-valve/prod_444.html
 
Thanks for the info. Just checked and just as you say there is double light switches as you have described, left and right, both are along side the timer which is positioned in the utility room which backs onto the garage where the burner is.
There is no thermostat that I know of. Maybe provision was made for Zoned heating otherwise those 2 (light) switches would not be present right?
 
is this

Graftgirl said:
there is double light switches as you have described, left and right, both are along side the timer
Click to expand...

the same switch as this

Graftgirl said:
There is a Socket switch with the up switch marked "Upstairs" and the down marked"Downstairs".
Click to expand...

referred to in earlier post.

Can you see any of these around the pipes in your hot press

http://www.partsguy.com/cgi-bin/PartsGuy/V8044E1011.html
http://www.247-diy.com/productDetails.asp?productID=1554&catID=157
 
Have you tried your heating on with the switchs on and off? These switches you describe are instead of room stats. Basically they operate a valve that opens or closes a circuit.
 
Yes, I have tried alternating the use of the switches with the heating on and it seems to make no difference, both upstairs and downstairs rads come on as normal.
Davidoco: sorry I was not clearer in my original post, Yes both as described are the same thing. I will check those links you posted and get back to you. thanks.
 
Don't you just hate ****ty installers that do things like that for the sake of a few room stats a cylinder stat and a 3 channel time clock so you can independently time each zone and hot water as you need it and not have to flick switches for time clocks and all that rubbish, in my opinion these installers should be taken out back and shot!
 
do you agree davyjones that the valves are either on manual or dont exist at all.
 
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