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Floor heating control

Economical control of any heating system requires zoning of the building into separately-controlled areas and the use of thermostat control.

The action of the room thermostat is to sense the room temperature and control the floor heating to achieve a comfortable condition. Most occupants will feel comfortable at 18 - 20 C. This is a couple of degrees lower than the setting used in circulated air systems, which generally require a higher temperature to compensate for the slight cooling effect of moving air, plus the physiological fact that we feel a general sense of comfort when our feet are warm, even if our upper body is cool.

Effective room air thermostat control requires that the thermostats are exposed to the heated space. Locations in cupboards, behind furnishings or where exposed to heat sources such as sunlight, are to be avoided.

Aside from the digital temperature display, the Heatec thermostat has multiple functions, such as on/off switching or temperature setting according to time of day. Also, it can be used for control based on floor temperature, room temperature or a combination of both.

Separate programmable thermostat controls for each zone provides for the ultimate in energy control.

For economical operation where the heating is not on a controlled tariff, Heatec recommend their programmable thermostats. This allows for the temperature set point to be altered according to daily times. For example the heating may be controlled to turn to the normal operating temperature (eg. 21 C) starting from 5 am (to allow ample warm up time) then drop back to a lower setting (eg. 18C) at 9 am, until resuming a normal setting from 4 pm to 9 pm. Heatec thermostats provide for independent time settings on a day-by-day basis.

Floor sensing thermostat

Where the floor heating is only used to supplement another main heating (eg. ducted system) minor control difficulty may result when using room thermostats, since heat from the main system may cause the floor heating thermostat to hold the floor heating off. This can be overcome by increasing the floor heating temperature set point, time-clocking the floor heating to restrict the input times, or using a floor sensing thermostat.

Some difficulty may be experienced in deciding on the temperature set point when using floor sensing alone. A setting in the low 30’s would be suitable for cold weather, but on the warmer days, this setting will be unnecessarily high, over warming the room. Rather than controlling the heating by floor sensing thermostat alone, a combination of room temperature sensing with floor temperature high limit override would be preferred.

Timber veneer floors normally have an upper temperature limit that must not be exceeded in order to maintain the supplier’s warranty. A thermostat with a floor sensor used as a high limit override should then be used.

Rather than using our programmable thermostats some customers use our non-programmable model and a home automation system such as “C Bus” to take over the timing control of their floor warming.

Download thermostat programming instructions

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