What a total numpty I am.

Back in the summer, I had a new central heating system installed, which consisted of a new combi boiler, new radiators with thermostatic radiator valves, and a new digital wall thermostat.

On Thursday of last week, I had been finding it cold and hard to warm up. I kept turning up the wall thermostat and couldn't understand why my radiators were lukewarm, as opposed to roasting hot. Now, before anyone rushes to ask me if I had bled my radiators, I had already gone around the house doing that. The radiator valves were fully open too, and the water pressure on my boiler had also been checked.

Aware that the temperatures were set to plummet on Friday evening, I phoned my council repairs team on Friday morning to explain my bafflingly bizarre central heating issue. I was informed I would be contacted the same day by the company they use for gas and plumbing issues. After a couple of hours, I am informed that an engineer will visit on 6th December. Panic sets in as I try to remember if I still have my two emergency fan heaters to tide me over, and obsess about what might be wrong with my central heating system.

For the benefit of anyone who understands central heating systems and boilers better than me, you might well pi$$ yourselves laughing at the following. On my boiler, I have a dial for the hot water and another for the central heating. The one for the central heating had been set at around 40°C. I had increased it to 50°C, which I thought was far too high. This made no difference, as my radiators still felt lukewarm. Well, I then increased the temperature (on the boiler) to 72°C, and what a difference it made. My house suddenly went from feeling Baltic to feeling decidedly tropical.

I still don't quite *get* the controls on my boiler, but in my ignorance, I had believed that because my wall thermostat *only* goes up to 35°C, increasing the temperature on my boiler to one that would probably kill most people was unnecessary. 

Anyway, since Friday, I have been experimenting with the temperature on my boiler, in an attempt to strike the right balance and achieve an ideal room temperature.