Some of you may have heard the name boiler plus being thrown about, but what is boiler plus? Boiler plus is a building regulation that came into effect on the 6th April 2018 as an addition to Energy Efficiency Part L. It sets out a list of requirements for controlling and timing your heating system when fitting new boilers, it particularly focuses on combi boilers. The aim of it is to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency. When fitting a new combi boiler, one of the four out of this list has to be fitted:
1- Flue Gas Heat Recovery Unit: this is basically an additional heat exchanger that uses the hot flue gases to pre heat the hot water, thus utilising some of the otherwise wasted energy from the heat that would have gone out of the flue.
2- Load Compensator: this monitors the gap between the current room temperature and the set desired room temperature and then adjusts the boiler flow temperature accordingly. For example, if the current room temperature is 14 degrees, and you set the room stat to 21 degrees, there is quite a large gap between the current and desired temperature so the load compensator will tell the boiler to ramp up to maximum rate and aim to send out a flow temperature of say 70 degrees. It will keep a constant eye on the gap between the current and set room temperature, then as the room gets closer to 21 degrees it will tell the boiler to come off maximum rate and modulate down to a lower temperature so as you are using less energy and won’t risk using unnecessary energy over shooting the set temperature.
3- Weather Compensator: this may sound obvious, but the colder it is outside, the harder it is to heat your house and the quicker your house will cool down again once it has been heated. A Weather compensator is a sensor that is placed outside on a north facing wall to monitor the temperature outside. The sensor then feeds this information back to the boiler which will adjust your flow temperature into your radiators to compensate for any drop or rise in temperature outside. For example, on a milder day, it might tell the boiler to have a flow temperature of 50 degrees, on a freezing cold day it might tell the boiler to have a flow temperature of 70 degrees.
4- Smart Controls- these are a combination of load compensation and weather compensation, and learning how long it takes your house to heat up. They use your WiFi signal to find out the temperature in your local area and adjust your heating accordingly. For example on a colder day, if your heating is due to come on at 8am, it might bring your heating on at 7:20am knowing it takes 40 mins for your house to heat up so it’s at your desired temperature by 8am.
Out of the 4 options MD Plumbing and Heating always advise having a smart control and fit NEST as we personally think it offers the best value for money. It has the technology to save you the most and is also open therm compatible. Please contact MD Plumbing and Heating if you would like a new condensing boiler installed in your home.