A pilot plant, which is simplified the hot water heating control system of a large scale residential building, is used to investigate the effects of control methods and operating conditions on the system performance and to compare control characteristics. Digital variable structure controller(DVSC) and digital PI controller are implemented to control the speed of the circulating pump for the pilot plant using PC. For the DVSC, a control algorithm is suggested, which using a nonlinear sliding surface and a PID sliding surface outside and inside of output error boundary layer, respectively. Smith predictor algorithm is used for the compensation of long dead time. The suggested DVSC yields improved control performance compared with existing DVSC using linear sliding surface only. the system responses with the suggested DVSC shows good responses without overshoot for various operating conditions and robust under external disturbances compared with digital PI controller.