wiring up a 2 zone heating system

[profet]

My first post - so go easy on me! I've looked everywhere for the answers to these questions, so maybe one of you will be able to help.

I've just had a completely new heating system put into my house - we have two zones - one for sleeping areas and one for the rest of the house.

We have a Worcester combi boiler that provides the hot water and central heating. There are two 2-way valves - one for each CH zone. There are also two thermostats. All the cables run back to the boiler but aren't connected yet (we manually open and close the valves by hand as needed).

My question is this - do we need to connect the two room thermostats to a dual zone heating controller (just a 2 zone timeswitch as far as I can tell), or can we just use two programmable thermostats instead? I'd rather go with the two programmable stats because that would allow us to actually change the temperature over time. I assume the stats would work by operating a valve each, but how do they work together to turn the boiler on and off - or do they not have to do that at all?

I guess what I'm asking is can I get away without a central timeswitch, and just use the ones built into the programmable thermostats. Any chance of a wiring diagram to help or it is really a job for an electrician?

Oh, we had an automatic bypass valve put into the system so that the valves could both be in the off position without preventing the boiler from dissipating heat after heating hot water.

I hope I am making at least some sense - thanks again for any help you guys can offer!

[workaholic]

You do not need a central timeswitch if you are using two programmable thermostats. Assuming you have a couple of standard two port valves each should have 4 wires: Brown, Blue, Orange and Grey. Both the blue wires are connected to neutral and both the grey wires are connected to live. When you apply live to the brown wire on either valve that valve will open, so each of the brown wires will go to the outputs of your two programmable stats. The orange wires go live when the valve is open so you connect these orange wires together and feed them to the boiler terminal that is marked "room stat" or similar. Now when either of your programmable stats demand heat they will apply live to a brown wire and the appropriate valve will open and when the valve opens it will take the orange wire live and demand that the boiler starts. Hope this helps.

P.S. My first post also - so go easy on me as well!

[Otto-Mate]

Welcome guys!

M.