Every room at its own temperature
Bedrooms cooler than living space, bathrooms warm at the right hour, and the cold north-facing room heated for as long as it needs rather than as long as the hallway needs.
Derby · Heating, HVAC and shading control
Heating And Climate ControlIn Derby, Zoned RoomBy Room, Not House-Wide
Stop heating empty rooms to keep one cold one comfortable. Individual room control, underfloor zoning, HVAC and automated shading on a single system that reacts to occupancy, weather and the temperature where you actually are.
16+ years of control and commissioning experience · Free initial consultation · 6-year NAPIT-backed workmanship guarantee on qualifying installations
16+ years
Domestic, commercial and industrial experience
Full Scope
NAPIT registered for all aspects of electrical work
6-year
NAPIT-backed workmanship guarantee on qualifying installs
£10m
Public and employers' liability cover
Free
Initial consultation, no obligation
The service
The hallway thermostat is the reason half your house is wrong
Climate control means giving every room its own target temperature and its own schedule, then letting a controller decide which zones need heat, which need cooling or shading, and when to start so the room is right at the time you asked for rather than an hour later. It covers wet underfloor heating manifolds, radiator actuators, air conditioning and heat pump control, mechanical ventilation and motorised blinds and awnings.
A conventional house runs on a single thermostat in a corridor nobody occupies, so the bedrooms overheat, the north-facing room stays cold and the boiler runs to satisfy a sensor in the worst possible position. Adding zones fixes the comfort problem and cuts the running hours at the same time, because rooms that are empty stop being heated to the same setpoint as rooms that are full.
We handle the control side — sensors, actuators, wiring centres, zone valves, thermostats, blind motors and the programming that ties them together — and coordinate with your heating engineer or M&E contractor on the mechanical side. Because we are a Full Scope NAPIT contractor, the electrical work and the control strategy are designed together instead of being bolted on afterwards.
Who this is for
- Homes with rooms that are permanently too hot or too cold on the same thermostat
- New builds and renovations installing wet underfloor heating with multiple manifold zones
- Properties adding a heat pump, where control strategy strongly affects running cost
- South-facing rooms and glazed extensions that overheat every summer afternoon
- Offices and commercial spaces needing zoned HVAC with schedules and out-of-hours setback
- Holiday lets and second homes needing remote heating control and frost protection
What it costs to leave it
Every winter on a single-zone system is money burned in rooms nobody is in
The cost of poor heating control does not arrive as one bill you can point at. It arrives as a small daily overpayment: bedrooms heated all evening while everyone is downstairs, a boiler cycling to satisfy a hallway sensor near a draughty front door, and rooms overshooting their setpoint because the system has no idea how long that room actually takes to warm.
Comfort suffers in parallel. Occupants compensate by opening windows in heated rooms, running plug-in heaters in the cold one, or nudging the thermostat up by two degrees for the whole house to fix a single room. That last habit alone raises consumption across every radiator in the property to solve a problem in one.
Heat pumps make control quality far more consequential. They deliver heat at lower flow temperatures over longer periods, so a system that hammers between on and off, or that fights closed zone valves, runs at poor efficiency and costs noticeably more to operate. Overheating is the mirror image of the same problem: unshaded south-facing glazing puts heat in all afternoon, then air conditioning removes it all evening.
Mistakes we get called out to fix
- One thermostat in a hallway deciding the temperature of an entire house
- Underfloor manifolds installed with zone valves but no individual room sensors
- Smart thermostats fitted with no zoning, giving app control over the same single zone
- Blinds and shading treated as decoration rather than as part of the thermal strategy
- Heat pump controls left on installer defaults with no weather compensation or setback
- No frost protection or remote visibility in a property left empty over winter
How the job runs
A fixed sequence, so nothing
gets decided on the fly
01
Free consultation
We look at the property, the heat source, the existing zoning and where the cold and hot spots actually are, and tell you which changes will make a measurable difference.
02
Design (chargeable)
Zone plan, sensor and actuator schedule, wiring centre layout, interface with the heat source, and the control strategy including setbacks and schedules per room.
03
Installation
Sensors, actuators, wiring centres, valve and manifold wiring, blind motors and HVAC interfaces installed and terminated, coordinated with the heating engineer on site.
04
Commissioning
Every zone proved to open and close the right valve, schedules and setbacks loaded, weather compensation and shading rules configured, and the system watched under real load.
05
Handover and guarantee
Electrical certification, a walkthrough of the schedules and overrides, and the option of remote maintenance so seasonal adjustments happen without a site visit.
What you actually get
Measurable outcomes, not adjectives
Lower running hours, not lower comfort
Unoccupied rooms drop back automatically instead of being heated at full setpoint, which reduces demand without anyone having to remember to turn anything down.
Heat pumps run in their efficient band
Weather compensation, longer steady run periods and proper zone sequencing keep a heat pump working the way it was designed to, rather than short-cycling against closed valves.
Summer overheating handled before it starts
Automated blinds and awnings close ahead of the afternoon sun on south-facing glazing, so rooms stay usable and cooling has far less work to do.
Remote control and frost protection
Warm the house before you arrive, drop it back when plans change, and get an alert if temperatures fall towards freezing in an empty property.
Guaranteed installation work
Qualifying installation work carries a 6-year NAPIT-backed workmanship guarantee, with a minimum one-year guarantee on other work.
In detail
Zoning, heat sources, shading and how commercial control differs
Climate control performance is decided by sensor placement, valve wiring and the logic connecting them to the heat source. Here is what that involves across the property types we work on in Derby, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
Zoning and sensing
A zone is only useful if something measures it accurately. Sensor position matters as much as sensor quality — near a radiator, in direct sun or beside a draught and the readings will mislead the system all winter.
- Individual room sensors with temperature and, where useful, humidity measurement
- Thermal or motorised actuators on underfloor manifold ports and radiator valves
- Wiring centres and zone valve control wired and labelled per manifold loop
- Presence and window-contact inputs so heating drops back in empty or aired rooms
- Learned warm-up times so a room hits its setpoint at the requested hour, not after it
Heat sources and system types
The control strategy is written around the heat source. A condensing boiler, a heat pump and electric underfloor all want different run patterns, and mixing systems in one property needs the sequencing agreed rather than assumed.
- Wet underfloor heating with multi-zone manifolds across one or more floors
- Radiator systems zoned individually with actuator heads and room sensors
- Air source heat pumps with weather compensation and long steady run periods
- Electric underfloor and towel circuits scheduled to occupancy and tariff
- Hot water cylinder scheduling, immersion control and legionella cycle timing
- Mechanical ventilation and air conditioning interfaced to the same room logic
Shading and ventilation
Shading is the cheapest cooling available and the most commonly ignored. Automating it removes the human step that never happens because everyone is out when the sun comes round.
- Motorised internal blinds and external awnings on facade-by-facade automation
- Solar and wind sensors so awnings retract before weather damages them
- Roof windows and vents automated for night purge cooling in summer
- Shading rules coordinated with heating and cooling so they never fight each other
- Privacy and away schedules integrated with the lighting and security system
Residential versus commercial
Domestic control is about comfort per room. Commercial control is about occupancy hours, energy reporting and giving facilities teams safe control without an engineer attending.
- Residential: room-level setpoints, family schedules, holiday and frost modes
- Commercial: occupancy-hour scheduling with automatic out-of-hours setback
- Trend, KNX, Schneider and Loxone BMS integration for offices and light industrial
- Plant enable, sequencing and fault alarms reported rather than silently failing
- Energy and runtime logging per zone to evidence savings and find problem areas
Before you enquire
Heating & climate control questions,
answered straight
How much does zoned heating control cost?
It depends on the number of zones, whether manifolds and actuators already exist, and how accessible the cable routes are. We do not publish prices for that reason. The initial consultation is free and a written quotation follows before any commitment.
How long does installation take?
Adding room control to an existing underfloor manifold is often one to two days. A whole-property system covering underfloor, radiators, hot water and shading is typically several days, scheduled around the heating engineer where mechanical work is involved.
Will this reduce my energy bills?
It reduces the hours you spend heating rooms nobody is in, which is where most of the waste sits. The saving depends on your building, occupancy and heat source, so we will not quote a percentage — but setback in unused rooms and correct warm-up timing consistently cut demand.
Can you work with my existing boiler or heat pump?
In most cases, yes. We interface with existing heat sources rather than replacing them, and coordinate with your heating engineer where mechanical alterations such as manifold or valve work are needed.
Do I need underfloor heating for zoning to work?
No. Radiator systems zone perfectly well using actuator heads and room sensors, and mixed properties with underfloor downstairs and radiators upstairs are common and straightforward to control together.
What happens if the controller fails?
Systems are designed to fail safe, so heating continues to operate on the underlying controls rather than shutting off. Faults raise an alert, and remote diagnostics usually identify the cause before an engineer travels.
Can I control the heating while I am away?
Yes. Remote control, holiday modes and frost protection are standard parts of the system, along with alerts if a property's temperature drops towards freezing.
How long does the equipment last?
Sensors, controllers and wiring centres are long-lived; actuators and valve heads are the wearing parts and are inexpensive to replace individually. Maintenance packages cover seasonal checks and adjustments.
Is emergency support available?
Emergency and out-of-hours support is available on request for automation and commercial clients. It is not sold as a standard guaranteed service, but ask and we will tell you what we can do.
Which areas do you cover?
Derby and across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and South Yorkshire — including Duffield, Belper, Ripley, Matlock, Ashbourne, Long Eaton, Burton upon Trent, Nottingham, Chesterfield and Sheffield.
Related services
Where we work
Derby · Nottingham · Duffield · Belper · Burton upon Trent · Sheffield · Ilkeston · Long Eaton and the wider East Midlands. See areas covered, read more about the company or return to the homepage.
Heat the rooms you use,
at the times you use them
Book a free consultation and we will walk the property, find where the control is failing and tell you what zoning would actually change.
NAPIT Full Scope · Official Loxone Partner · 6-year workmanship guarantee on qualifying installations · £10m public liability