We have an oil-fired combination type boiler. The central heating is controlled by a thermostat/programmer and works very well.
Speaking to the plumber regarding fitting a (UK style) programmer to control hot water and heating, he was very surprised that we wanted to control the hot water heating periods. In fact, our boiler has no facility to do this.
We are now looking at various options and wondered if anyone was aware of a French boiler that can be programmed for heating radiators and water.
We've just had a wood pellet boiler installed which is brilliant. It comes with a separate hot-water tank which is linked to the solar heating panels and the boiler which kicks in when it's not sunny enough for the panels to heat the water to the temperature we want. I can programme it to do just about everything though so far I haven't found the singing and dancing sub-program. As well as programming the central heating I can tell it when to heat the water, to what temperature and at what temperature it should kick in. I.E. if I want to keep the hot water temperature at a minimum of 55 degrees I can. It's not French, but Austrian -- Ökofen. If you're interested contact Nicolas Rey at a company called 19.7 in Montpellier -- www.dixneufsept.com -- which is the Ökofen representative in Languedoc Roussillon and maybe elsewhere. He'll know in any case who you should contact if he doesn't cover your area and he's very helpful.
Why did we switch from oil-fired? Well oil prices are always going up and probably always will. Wood pellets are cheaper and as more and more people start producing them in France the price may even drop due to competition. Oil smells, wood pellets don't. Oil is dirty, wood pellets aren't. This boiler is hugely efficient and requires almost no maintenance. It burns the pellets so efficiently there is almost no ash.
We have recently installed a modern boiler / Central heating combi (the "condensation"-type) The thermostat that came with it offers only the possibility to shut down the boiler completely. It can't be programmed like the central heating. In France it is highly recommended to have the temp of the boiler-water around 55ºC due to risks of legionella etc. If you shut the boiler down for too long the temp will drop below the recommended level.
The only thing that I ever saw in that respect was one of those huge electrical boilers that had a specific power switch with which it was connected into the main electricity panel by the EDF. The boiler was only switched on during the night hours where electricity came at an cheaper price
our boiler isn't that old but is either on or off! we had a gas boiler in our last place and everything was controlled via the thermostate with time controls/different programmes and come to think of it where we were living before that had a very advanced oil fired boiler but again it was the fancy thermostate (more a mini computer) that controlled everything, nothing on the boiler itself. When I say everything I mean the heating to rads - the hot water is always just simply "on" or "off".