Springhill: Thermostats and controls

The right heating controls will let you keep your home at a comfortable temperature without wasting fuel or heat – so you’ll reduce your carbon dioxide emissions and spend less on heating bills.

If you have an electric storage heating and hot water system, with storage heaters use the off-peak electricity to ‘charge up’ overnight and then release heat during the day, you’ll need a different set of controls. Find out more about electric heating and hot water controls.

If your home is heated by a system of water-filled pipes and radiators running from a boiler, you have a ‘wet’ central heating system, whether it is gas, LPG or oil-fired. Your full set of controls should ideally include a boiler thermostat, a timer or programmer, a room thermostat and thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs).

How much can you save?

Temperature controls

Timing controls

What we recommend

How much can you save?
Whatever the age of your boiler, the right controls will let you set your heating and hot water to come on and off when you need them, heat just the areas of your home you want, and decide how warm you want each area to be. Here are the average savings you could make in a typical three-bedroom semi-detached home, heated by gas:

Install a room thermostat if you didn’t have one before: £70 and 280kg carbon dioxide a year
Fit a hot water tank thermostat: £30 and 130kg carbon dioxide a year
Fit a hot water tank insulation jacket: £40 and 170kg carbon dioxide a year.
You can also make savings by using your controls more effectively:

Turn down your room thermostat by one degree: save around £55 and 230kg carbon dioxide a year.
You can upgrade or install heating controls without replacing your boiler, and it’s a particularly good idea to think about this if your controls are over 12 years old. Room thermostats, for example, are much more accurate than they used to be.

Temperature controls
Room thermostats
These prevent your home getting warmer than it needs to be: they will turn the heating on until the room reaches the temperature you have set, and then off until the temperature drops.

Room thermostats need a free flow of air to sense the temperature, so they must not be blocked by curtains or furniture, or put near heat sources. » Springhill: Thermostats and controls