If you’ve read this blog before you will know I’m a big believer in Weather Compensation. The new Boiler Plus regulations require fitters to offer one of 4 energy saving add-ons to boilers. Weather Compensation (WC), Load Compensation, Smart Controls (such as Nest) and Flue Gas heat recovery.

We have always favoured Weather Compensation because it offers the biggest efficiency gain and is the most simplistic technology to integrate.

What is Weather Compensation

Weather compensation is a system where the boiler calculates the heat required to keep the house warm and comfortable at any given outside temperature. Once set up the boiler will automatically adjust the flow temperature of hot water to the radiators in line with the outside temperature.

In the diagram opposite the graph shows the Flow Temperature produced by the boiler in relation to the outside temperature in England and Europe. You will see that for this house, an outside temperature of 10ͦ°c relates to a flow temperature of approx. 45ͦ°c in England and 35ͦ°C in Europe. There is a difference in the countries because the European homes are better insulated than English homes.

The beauty of this system is that it needs no management. The boiler does all the sensing and calculating of the required temperatures; all the customer sees is a very comfortable home.

We fitted a new Viessmann 100W combi boiler to a customer’s property in North Shields last week. The customer had been having regular problems with the existing system which was a Gledhill open vented heat store and an Ideal heat only boiler. This was a poor and over complicated system installed 15 years ago. The old cylinder and boiler were taken out and the new combi fitted (see opposite).

On our follow up visit a few days later we asked the customer how the boiler was doing. She replied that she had noticed it coming on because it hadn’t been very cold. 

In fact the temperature outside had dropped to 3°c in the past week but the customer had not noticed any stress on the system because the Weather Compensation had been gradually increasing (and decreasing) the circulating water to keep the home comfortable.

With the new boiler working much better than the last old unit, a peace of mind 10 year parts and labour warranty from Viessmann and a “Which” awarded highly efficient boiler the customer wrote, “The service provided by Boiler Bee is excellent. I’ll definitely use this company again”. We look forward to being of service for many years to come.