Hey all. I know nothing about how to operate my heating system efficiently and am hoping to get some advice/comments and/or confirmation of my conclusions.
I have a NG gas boiler (think its an Allied MG-75) supplying hot water to in floor heating (in concrete) to my main floor (slab). Upstairs has baseboard hotwater radiators. I have 4 thermostats up, 4 down. 2 pumps, larger pump for upstairs to baseboards, smaller pump supplies in floor downstairs. Whole system is about 12 years old now. All of my thermostat except one are bimetal/mercury
I've operated 3 different ways.
1. All zones valve locked open and heat controlled by 1 thermostat. Programmed to 22C heat during day (3pm-8pm) and 19C (8pm-3pm). What I found is that it seems the boiler size is not designed to supply
the whole house and would be on for hours to heat from 19-22. In my
opinion this didn't seem very efficient.
2. All zone valves locked open and controlled by 1 thermostat Always at 22C. This seemed to operate better than option 1, but still, any time heat was needed the boiler seemed to run for hours just to heat 1 degree.
3. Multi-zone. All zone valves controlled by their own thermostats. So i set all the thermostats to 20C and 22 in the main living area. Boiler seems very effecient at heating 1 zone at a time when it called for heat (on for a short period of time to heat one zone), but with multi zones calling for heat it seemed the boiler was constantly on/off.
4th option in the future is to run multizone with all digital programmable thermostats.
Lastly, Option 3 seems to lower my electricity usage. I noticed my electricity consumption was reduced approximately 29% over a 12 month period. I didn't notice an major changes in gas consumption.
So my question is to anyone with experience with a multizone hydronic system, what is the most efficient way to operate? Multizone or 1 zone?
My personal conclusion is that due to my boiler size I'm likely better off running multizones as the single zone set up seems too much for the boiler to handle.
Thanks in advance for advice/comments.
Here is my gas usage for last 2 years. 2011-2012 was option 2. 2012-2013 was option 3.
| Bill From Date |
Bill To Date |
# Days in Bill Period |
Billed GJ |
Average Temperature |
| Sep 22, 2011 |
Oct 20, 2011 |
29 |
4.9 |
13 |
| Oct 21, 2011 |
Nov 22, 2011 |
33 |
17.4 |
6 |
| Nov 23, 2011 |
Dec 19, 2011 |
27 |
16.4 |
3 |
| Dec 20, 2011 |
Jan 20, 2012 |
32 |
22.8 |
3 |
| Jan 21, 2012 |
Feb 17, 2012 |
28 |
16.4 |
5 |
| Feb 18, 2012 |
Mar 20, 2012 |
32 |
15.5 |
5 |
| Mar 21, 2012 |
Apr 19, 2012 |
30 |
11 |
9 |
| Apr 20, 2012 |
May 17, 2012 |
28 |
2.3 |
12 |
| May 18, 2012 |
Jun 18, 2012 |
32 |
5.7 |
14 |
| Jun 19, 2012 |
Jul 19, 2012 |
31 |
0.4 |
17 |
| Jul 20, 2012 |
Aug 17, 2012 |
29 |
2.7 |
19 |
| Aug 18, 2012 |
Sep 19, 2012 |
33 |
1.7 |
17 |
| Sep 20, 2012 |
Oct 19, 2012 |
30 |
2.6 |
13 |
| Oct 20, 2012 |
Nov 20, 2012 |
32 |
12.9 |
8 |
| Nov 21, 2012 |
Dec 18, 2012 |
28 |
18.1 |
5 |
| Dec 19, 2012 |
Jan 23, 2013 |
36 |
25.4 |
1 |
| Jan 24, 2013 |
Feb 21, 2013 |
29 |
14.4 |
5 |
| Feb 22, 2013 |
Mar 20, 2013 |
27 |
13.3 |
6 |
| Mar 21, 2013 |
Apr 19, 2013 |
30 |
10.3 |
9 |
| Apr 20, 2013 |
May 21, 2013 |
32 |
5.1 |
13 |
| May 22, 2013 |
Jun 18, 2013 |
28 |
4.1 |
14 |
| Jun 19, 2013 |
Jul 19, 2013 |
31 |
2.6 |
18 |
| Jul 20, 2013 |
Aug 19, 2013 |
31 |
2.4 |
19 |
| Aug 20, 2013 |
Sep 17, 2013 |
29 |
2.1 |
19 |
Hydro Usage. July and Sept 2007 was a meter reading error. I believe Jan and Mar 2012 are also bad readings.
