Worcester Winter Settings

S

spear

New Member
Hi,

Looking in the user manual of my Worcester CDi29 combi boiler there is a section ‘Holiday Mode’ which I was going to use while away for a few weeks during the winter. However, it states that ‘activating it will turn off the central heating system. Frost protection and heating of domestic hot water will stay active’. I’m not sure what this means given that it says that the heating is off and heating and hot water stay active.

Would it not be a better option to leave the heating on Manual and setting the temperature to about 12 degrees? I was thinking too of turning the domestic hot water temperature to a low setting on the boiler.

The boiler is situated in the loft where the temperature is very low compared to being installed somewhere like the kitchen.

I would appreciate your advice on this.

Thanks
 
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.
 
Mike83 said:
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.
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Neither of those scenarios are particularly good. But turning the mains water off without draining down is a bad idea.
 
rogerk101 said:
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?
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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.
 
joinerjohn1 said:
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.
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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.
 
Hi,

Thanks for all your quick replies.

I do intend turning the water off at the mains.

Since my initial post I’ve come across another setting which is 'Frost protection (for the boiler)'. It states that if the temperature within the boiler drops to 5 degrees it will fire to avoid the possibility of freezing. This seems like a good option in my case given that having the heating on would only monitor the temperature of insulated rooms and not the boiler which is located in a cold area that has no insulation and in isolation of the thermostat.

Thanks
 
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.
 
spear said:
Hi,

Looking in the user manual of my Worcester CDi29 combi boiler there is a section ‘Holiday Mode’ which I was going to use while away for a few weeks during the winter. However, it states that ‘activating it will turn off the central heating system. Frost protection and heating of domestic hot water will stay active’. I’m not sure what this means given that it says that the heating is off and heating and hot water stay active.

Would it not be a better option to leave the heating on Manual and setting the temperature to about 12 degrees? I was thinking too of turning the domestic hot water temperature to a low setting on the boiler.

The boiler is situated in the loft where the temperature is very low compared to being installed somewhere like the kitchen.

I would appreciate your advice on this.

Thanks
Click to expand...
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!
 
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