When innovation isn't a good thing

Since my first experience with central heating back when my folks had it installed in the 1970s, there's been an easy way to do two things.

1. Move the heating to the next time period. If it's the afternoon and you're feeling a bit chilly, you can click it over to the next programmed period (i.e. "evening") and the heating will stay on until the time it usually goes off at night. This is usually called "Advance"
2. Cause the heating to stay on longer than usual at the end of a programmed period. If it's a Friday night and you're staying up late, a couple of clicks on the programmer and the heating will stay on for an extra hour, or two. This is usually called "Extend"
   

When we had our boiler replaced before Christmas with a state-of-the-art wall-mounted condensing combi boiler by Worcester I never dreamed that we would end up with less control over the heating than before. The Worcester has a number of neat innovations (like a radio connection between the combination room stat & timer control and the main boiler, so there's no need for wires) but it has a rather strange new approach to timer events.

No longer two-on; two-off settings (and the ability to come on at the first on and go off at the second off). No. Now it's just four programmable "zones" each with a minimum temperature. So for example in the morning zone, we've set the temperature to 17°C and the house will (try to) warm up to that point. The second - midday - zone we set to something like 12°C so the heating will go off at the start time of this zone (when we've gone to work) but if it's a *really* cold day and the interior temperature drops below 12° the heating will still kick in.

The third - evening - zone, which is the equivalent of the old fangled "second on" event we set to a comfortable temperature similar to the first zone, or slightly higher because we're not moving around as much, and finally the last zone - night time - we have set quite low (like 7°) so the heating will generally stay off unless the weather is *really really* cold in which case it'll come on to avoid the pipes freezing up or something.

But. There's no way to either extend a zone for an hour or two, OR force the timer into the next zone. That is, there's no Advance or Extend. The only control you have over the timer settings is to be using them, or to be always on, or always off.

The upshot of this is that if we want the heating on when it's normally off, we switch it over to always on. And we'll end up lying in bed in the dark wondering why the radiators are ticking and we're too hot. And *one* of us (I'll leave it to you to guess which one) will have to get up and plod downstairs to switch it back to "timer."

This is a distinct retrograde step, but having played with the timer I'm convinced there's no way to advance between zones. Maybe it's time to get the manual out.