In the coldest months, does your home stay chilly, even when the boiler is slogging its guts out? There’s an obvious solution to that: buy a bigger boiler. But there’s a smarter alternative: use a ‘zoned’ heating control system to switch off radiators in empty rooms.

It’s an underappreciated benefit of zoned heating control systems: they help you stay comfortable, even when your boiler is too small to heat your whole home. By directing your boiler’s heat energy to just the rooms that need it, Heat Genius lets you get comfortable without making an expensive investment in a larger boiler, and paying for all the extra fuel to feed it with.

So don’t jump into buying a bigger boiler without first considering zoned heating controls. The key question is how many of your rooms are in use simultaneously. For example, many people don’t use bedrooms during the day, or the study at night. If you’ve got a big family in a small home then perhaps the beefier boiler is your only option. But if, say, half of your rooms are empty at any moment, then zoning your heating is like doubling the size of your boiler!