Worcester Winter Settings

Last time I was on holiday in winter and there was a possibility of frost/ freezing weather, I set the heating to come on for 1hr in the early morning, 1hr in the evening and 1hr at night time. Never had any problems.

 

The boilers frost protection will prevent the insides of the boiler from freezing.

As the boilers in the loft keeping the heating on at a low temperature may be a good idea if there’s lots of heating pipework up there.

If the heating pipework freezes and bursts then it’s not the worst.
If the hot or cold at the boiler freezes and bursts that’s a different thing completely.

Maybe turn the water main off.

 

Neither of those scenarios are particularly good. But turning the mains water off without draining down is a bad idea.

 

If we do get a big freeze that bursts a pipe, followed by a thaw, why would you want to come back to a flooded house?

 

I think you'd be surprised at just how much water is in your system when the mains water is turned off at the stopcock.

 

Let me rephrase that then ... why would you want to come back to a house in which water has been flowing unhindered at main pressure for the last 2 weeks?

 

I thought no problem I can check the temperature while away and if it gets too low, call my son to turn it up. However went to Forest of Dean caravan site, and phone reception so bad could not monitor temperature.

However in the main it takes a long time for house to cool, and if set at 12 deg C then it would not use much power. However how do you turn it down?

I have 10 TRV's of which 4 have WiFi heads, so I can turn down temperature in 4 rooms easy, I can also turn down the hall thermostat which in turn will make boiler run less frequent. But really not a clue as to what temperature rooms will drop to.

I would assume the 6 standard TRV's will open fully, so those rooms will be OK, but also there are places where no TRV for example bathroom, and in this room we have all the pipes which could freeze.

Only item to freeze in old house was outside tap, and in this house that has never froze. So in real terms where I live it is unlikely that anything would freeze even with heating completely off. However it depends on house, where it is and how well insulated, when this house was unoccupied for 6 months then TRV's onto * frost setting and thermostat set to 12 deg, but for two weeks is it really worth it?

When you return you will spend weeks trimming the TRV's back to where you want them.

 

If concerned have the heating come on for a short period once or twice a day.

Most people go to bed at night with the heating turned off. Pipes could easily freeze at this time.

The pipes in your loft that go to the boiler are the ones most at risk. Or the ones under a suspended ground floor.

Most combis or system boilers have built in frost protection to protect only the boiler.

 

Holiday mode will prevent the programmer and roomstat turning on the boiler.
Don’t enable it if you want the heating to come on for a short period each day.

Holiday mode will have the same effect as turning the programmer to OFF.

 

Just leave heating on manual & set temp to maybe 10degrees for example. I have done this with unoccupied property over winter for a number of years now! Never had a problem. Water freezes @ zero!