The €700 heating controls grant
What it covers, what actually has to be fitted, and the catch that catches people with a combi.
If you are staying on gas, this is the one SEAI grant that improves your heating directly. It is worth €700, it is a flat amount rather than a percentage, and it is the only heating grant that does not require you to rip out your boiler and start again.
It is also the grant people most often get wrong, because "heating controls" sounds like it means a smart thermostat. It does not. There is a specific list of what counts, and a minimum number of items you have to hit.
What heating controls actually means
Most Irish houses of a certain age have one timer and one thermostat for the whole property. When the heating goes on, everything gets hot — upstairs, downstairs, the hot water cylinder, the spare room nobody has slept in since 2009.
Proper controls split that up and stop the boiler firing when nothing needs heat. In practice that means some combination of:
Zones
Upstairs and downstairs heated separately, and hot water separate again, so you are not heating the whole house to run a bath.
Boiler interlock
Wiring that stops the boiler firing at all when no zone is calling for heat. Without it the boiler cycles on and off burning gas for nothing.
Room and cylinder thermostats
One tells the boiler the room is warm enough. The other tells it the cylinder is hot enough. Both stop it running past the point of usefulness.
Thermostatic radiator valves
Per-radiator control, so a bedroom can sit cooler than a sitting room without turning the whole system down.
The six-item rule — this is the bit that catches people
To qualify, at least six separate items from SEAI's list have to be newly installed. Fitting one smart thermostat and nothing else does not qualify, no matter how good the thermostat is.
The list includes: separated pipework for heating and hot water zones, separated pipework for additional heating zones, a boiler interlock, a room thermostat, a cylinder thermostat and its wiring, thermostatic radiator valves, hot water cylinder insulation, an automatic bypass, and compliant earthing and equipotential bonding.
In a typical older house with one timer and no zoning, hitting six is straightforward. In a house that has already been part-upgraded, it can be the thing that sinks the application — because only newly installed items count.
If you have a combi boiler
There is an extra condition here that is easy to miss. A combi has no hot water cylinder, so two of the usual items — the cylinder thermostat and the cylinder insulation — are simply not available to you.
To account for that, an additional space heating zone has to be installed as part of the works. That is a real piece of pipework and wiring, not a box-ticking exercise, and it needs factoring into what the job will cost before you decide the grant is worth chasing.
If you are not sure which type you have, our combi boiler guide explains the difference.
Who qualifies
- The home must have been built and occupied before 31 December 2010
- You need a valid MPRN — the meter point number on your electricity bill
- The work must be done by an SEAI-registered contractor
- A BER assessment is required after the work is complete
- It cannot be claimed alongside the heat pump grant, as a heat pump brings its own controls
The 2010 cut-off is not negotiable and it is where most enquiries end. Newer houses were built under building regulations that already required decent zoning and controls, so the scheme is aimed squarely at older stock.
What it actually saves
Figures of around 10 to 15 per cent off a heating bill get quoted a lot. That is achievable, but it depends almost entirely on how badly controlled the system was to start with.
A house with one timer, no room thermostat and no TRVs has a great deal to gain. A house that already zones upstairs and downstairs and has a working cylinder stat has much less, because most of the saving is already being made. Anyone promising you a fixed percentage without looking at your system first is guessing.
The honest version: better controls stop you heating rooms and water you are not using. How much that is worth depends on how much of that you are currently doing.
The other way to do it
The grant route means a registered contractor, an application, six qualifying items, and a BER assessment once the work is done. For plenty of houses that stacks up. For others — a newer house, a part-upgraded system, or someone who just wants the heating sorted without the paperwork — it does not.
We fit heating controls, zoning and Hive as ordinary paid work. No application, no six-item minimum, no BER assessment afterwards, and no restriction on the age of your house. You can have exactly the controls your house needs rather than the ones a scheme requires.
Worth knowing before you commit
Whoever does grant work for you must be on the SEAI register. If they are not, the grant is refused outright — not reduced, refused — and the standard of the work makes no difference to that. Ask for the registration and check it yourself on seai.ie before any money changes hands.
And if your boiler itself is on the way out, controls are the wrong place to start. There is no grant for a gas boiler replacement, but there is no sense fitting good controls to a boiler with two winters left in it either. We will tell you straight which situation you are in — and our boiler cost page sets out what a replacement actually runs to.
If you are weighing up going off gas altogether, the heat pump or gas boiler comparison covers that decision and the grant attached to it.
Heating controls grant questions
How much is the heating controls grant?
Is a smart thermostat on its own enough to qualify?
My house was built in 2014 — can I claim it?
Can I claim it with a combi boiler?
Do I need a BER before I apply?
What is a boiler interlock?
Can I get this grant and the heat pump grant?
Want better control of your heating?
We fit heating controls, zoning and Hive across Dublin and Meath. Ring for a straight price.