Under-Floor Halloween

I'm learning stuff all the time.

Ever since we built the house I've had problems getting heat from the under-floor system to the boy's bedroom, which is furthest from the reservoir tank and manifold. I've tried reducing the flow to the rest of the house - called balancing - but nothing seems to work and the thermostat in the ground-floor bedroom temperature is always showing a degree or so below the thermostat setting.

The problem is caused by the bedroom being split into two, with an en-suite. The bedroom itself extends into the eaves, whereas the en-suite has a normal-height ceiling. However, the upper area of the bedroom extends over the en-suite. Both the bedroom and the en-suite, while having individual under-floor heating loops, share the same thermostat, which is in the bedroom. The consequence is that the bedroom under-floor heating has a proportionally larger volume of air to heat, while the en-suite under-floor has a proportionally smaller volume to heat - so the bedroom is much cooler than the en-suite, which can get stifling at times. 

Turning up the temperature of the reservoir water helps, but the temperature needed is far above that which is recommended for the system as a whole, which means energy is wasted, and additional heat is pumped into the en-suite, where it's not required and hence wasted. Basically it's bad design of the heating system - the en-suite should have its own thermostat. The problem is that the thermostats are hardwired in and, while you can get wireless thermostats, the distance from the control centre is too far for one to work.

It took me ages to twig that the control panel in the engine-room, which has lights indicating which loop is on or off, is wired in reverse to the corresponding control valve, so the valve on the right equates to the panel light on the left. Stupid or what? Anyway, I sussed that out a couple of years ago, so it's not a big issue; however. I still haven't identified which of the two loops controlled by the bedroom thermostat is which - bedroom or en-suite. Simply turning one off should work in theory, if it weren't for the fact that everything associated with an under-floor system takes a day or more to to have a noticeable effect when you change a setting.

Anyway, the upshot is that I've switched fully off the loop I believe to be the en-suite, but now the outside temperature has risen to a level where the bedroom thermostat actually works, as not much heat is required to get it to the desired 21.5 degrees (it's not only the boy's bedroom, but his living room too). It doesn't help while conducting a test that the boy comes home from school unexpectedly, raising the temperature of the room by a couple of degrees with his body heat and his array of electronics.

To help me resolve the problem I've ordered one of those infra-red thermometers where you point a laser beam at an object and it gives you an accurate temperature reading to within a 10th of a degree. Hopefully, when it arrives later today, it will help me gauge floor and manifold temperature changes faster and more accurately than by just touch.

It didn't help when I accidentally unscrewed the actuators, thinking they were just ordinary exit valves. Should have realised the wires going to them were for a purpose. Just hope I haven't damaged anything screwing them back on.

God, I detest Halloween. Bloody American import! Never had all this malarkey when I was a kid. It only seems to have taken off in the American way since the 90s. There again, I suppose all traditions have to have a start, but I just wish we didn't have to import them. Christmas wasn't what it is before Prince Albert imported it from Germany and, of course, whatever the monarch does is slavishly followed by the rest of society. Then we only go and make it worse by adding other accretions from America - a Santa wearing a nightcap rather than a Bishop's mitre.