Best Wifi enabled thermostat
Discussion
Hi - I'm new to the site. I've been reading through the last few pages with much interest.
I was almost persuaded to buy Nest or Hive in the recent Black Friday deals but having done some research, I realised that this wasn't for me. As others on here have said, I don't really see the point of Nest or Hive if you cannot control the temperature in different parts of the house (other than manually changing TRVs). A true smart heating "system" surely has to control everything so I turned to looking at other options and have read up about Evohome and Tado.
From what I've read on here, Evohome seems to be a strong contender. However, I came across a recent (late Nov 16) review of the best smart heating systems (PC advisor) and Heat Genius appeared to be top of the pile. From what I understand of them they are a relatively small start-up business (think been around 3-4 years) based in Birmingham. Has anyone considered their system? Has anyone had it installed? If so, what is it like? Any comparison vs other systems?
It appears to be a worthwhile system to consider?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts/guidance
I was almost persuaded to buy Nest or Hive in the recent Black Friday deals but having done some research, I realised that this wasn't for me. As others on here have said, I don't really see the point of Nest or Hive if you cannot control the temperature in different parts of the house (other than manually changing TRVs). A true smart heating "system" surely has to control everything so I turned to looking at other options and have read up about Evohome and Tado.
From what I've read on here, Evohome seems to be a strong contender. However, I came across a recent (late Nov 16) review of the best smart heating systems (PC advisor) and Heat Genius appeared to be top of the pile. From what I understand of them they are a relatively small start-up business (think been around 3-4 years) based in Birmingham. Has anyone considered their system? Has anyone had it installed? If so, what is it like? Any comparison vs other systems?
It appears to be a worthwhile system to consider?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts/guidance
papercup said:
Me too. Only heat the room she is in. Leave the door shut (I am slowly training her to close doors...) and its great.
In answer to the guy who asked; we've had it a while, this is the 2nd winter. I love it. We have a large open plan downstairs which has 6 radiators in it, which is one 'zone' called Open Plan. Most other rooms have one or two radiators in, and each is a zone. You can program each zone separately, with multiple on and off times, and the hot water as well.
So the kids room only comes on for one hour a day, just before they go to bed, to get some warmth into the room before bedtime. The other 23 hours its off. We only heat the rooms we are in, during the times we are in them. There's a quick button to turn everything off which we do when we are out for the day, and you can turn it all back on from your phone when you are 30 mins from home (for instance).
The only thing it is missing for me is the ability to know we are both out (from our phones) and do that 'complete switch off' automatically.
Despite the relatively short period, do you have a feel for the %age savings yet? Is it just more comfortable? Thanks In answer to the guy who asked; we've had it a while, this is the 2nd winter. I love it. We have a large open plan downstairs which has 6 radiators in it, which is one 'zone' called Open Plan. Most other rooms have one or two radiators in, and each is a zone. You can program each zone separately, with multiple on and off times, and the hot water as well.
So the kids room only comes on for one hour a day, just before they go to bed, to get some warmth into the room before bedtime. The other 23 hours its off. We only heat the rooms we are in, during the times we are in them. There's a quick button to turn everything off which we do when we are out for the day, and you can turn it all back on from your phone when you are 30 mins from home (for instance).
The only thing it is missing for me is the ability to know we are both out (from our phones) and do that 'complete switch off' automatically.
dvs_dave said:
I don't think Nest are well suited to the typical "heating season" only hot water radiant systems most common in the U.K.
They are a product designed in the US where the vast majority of homes have forced air heating and cooling with integrated whole home humidifiers.
For these types of systems they work very well and are useful all year round as you have both heating and cooling seasons. So you do see quite chunky energy savings with them, especially if you tie them into your utility provider as they can shut down at peak times which you get credits for. Cleverly they anticipate this and cool/heat the house a few degrees more than normal in advance to ensure you stay comfortable for the hour or so during shutdown. You can of course override it if you want.
The humidifier control is also useful as it can call for humidity outside of the usual function of it on only during a heat cycle. Winter time Rh levels in the US can be brutally low so it's a necessity to have a good control over it.
From what I've seen in the U.K. versions, they are the same core unit but bodged to work with hot water radiant systems. So a large part of their true functionality is just not exploited, or even useful.
Interesting and certainly accords with my experience of it last weekend where it just didn't seem to 'work' in my pretty standard UK house and lifestyle. This helps to explain why. I thought I was missing something fundemental. They are a product designed in the US where the vast majority of homes have forced air heating and cooling with integrated whole home humidifiers.
For these types of systems they work very well and are useful all year round as you have both heating and cooling seasons. So you do see quite chunky energy savings with them, especially if you tie them into your utility provider as they can shut down at peak times which you get credits for. Cleverly they anticipate this and cool/heat the house a few degrees more than normal in advance to ensure you stay comfortable for the hour or so during shutdown. You can of course override it if you want.
The humidifier control is also useful as it can call for humidity outside of the usual function of it on only during a heat cycle. Winter time Rh levels in the US can be brutally low so it's a necessity to have a good control over it.
From what I've seen in the U.K. versions, they are the same core unit but bodged to work with hot water radiant systems. So a large part of their true functionality is just not exploited, or even useful.
Piersman2 said:
Interesting and certainly accords with my experience of it last weekend where it just didn't seem to 'work' in my pretty standard UK house and lifestyle. This helps to explain why. I thought I was missing something fundemental.
I have 3 of them in my house and they all integrate together and overall work very well. But then my house and it's HVAC system are precisely what it was designed for.rdjohn said:
papercup said:
Me too. Only heat the room she is in. Leave the door shut (I am slowly training her to close doors...) and its great.
In answer to the guy who asked; we've had it a while, this is the 2nd winter. I love it. We have a large open plan downstairs which has 6 radiators in it, which is one 'zone' called Open Plan. Most other rooms have one or two radiators in, and each is a zone. You can program each zone separately, with multiple on and off times, and the hot water as well.
So the kids room only comes on for one hour a day, just before they go to bed, to get some warmth into the room before bedtime. The other 23 hours its off. We only heat the rooms we are in, during the times we are in them. There's a quick button to turn everything off which we do when we are out for the day, and you can turn it all back on from your phone when you are 30 mins from home (for instance).
The only thing it is missing for me is the ability to know we are both out (from our phones) and do that 'complete switch off' automatically.
Despite the relatively short period, do you have a feel for the %age savings yet? Is it just more comfortable? Thanks In answer to the guy who asked; we've had it a while, this is the 2nd winter. I love it. We have a large open plan downstairs which has 6 radiators in it, which is one 'zone' called Open Plan. Most other rooms have one or two radiators in, and each is a zone. You can program each zone separately, with multiple on and off times, and the hot water as well.
So the kids room only comes on for one hour a day, just before they go to bed, to get some warmth into the room before bedtime. The other 23 hours its off. We only heat the rooms we are in, during the times we are in them. There's a quick button to turn everything off which we do when we are out for the day, and you can turn it all back on from your phone when you are 30 mins from home (for instance).
The only thing it is missing for me is the ability to know we are both out (from our phones) and do that 'complete switch off' automatically.
Oakey said:
Nice try shill 
Sorry if my message on page 71 suggested I'm affiliated or something with Heat Genius. Having read it again, I can see how you may have got this impression.Anyway, and whether you believe me or not (how do I prove it?!), I have nothing to do with Heat Genius nor do I have much of an idea of smart heating systems. I came across this thread, saw there appeared to be a fair amount of experience & discussion, and thought I'd see if people have any views of this product and if so, how it compares to Evohome and Tado.
I have a couple of rooms of hot water underfloor heating & then usual gas central heating system with radiators (with TRVs) etc and just wanted some views if at all possible. Thanks
OK, having read the last 20 pages I'm now even more confused.
Our situation;
5 Bed detached (built 18yrs ago), 2 kids, boiler + water tank, controller that can't differentiate days, thermostat's on radiators plus std wired thermostat in the hall.
I'm not too bad with DIY and am interested which one would be best, if any?
Thanks
Our situation;
5 Bed detached (built 18yrs ago), 2 kids, boiler + water tank, controller that can't differentiate days, thermostat's on radiators plus std wired thermostat in the hall.
I'm not too bad with DIY and am interested which one would be best, if any?
Thanks
WestyCarl said:
OK, having read the last 20 pages I'm now even more confused.
Our situation;
5 Bed detached (built 18yrs ago), 2 kids, boiler + water tank, controller that can't differentiate days, thermostat's on radiators plus std wired thermostat in the hall.
I'm not too bad with DIY and am interested which one would be best, if any?
Thanks
Depends what your priorities are really.Our situation;
5 Bed detached (built 18yrs ago), 2 kids, boiler + water tank, controller that can't differentiate days, thermostat's on radiators plus std wired thermostat in the hall.
I'm not too bad with DIY and am interested which one would be best, if any?
Thanks
I'd say a larger property would suit Evohome because you can zone areas and selectively heat them, so you can leave kids rooms unheated during the day but heat the study if you're at home, that sort of thing. That should reduce gas consumption (although bear in mind that 12 TRV controllers, hot water, Evohome controller and a couple of room sensors is probably £1k, more if you have UFH too).
Evohome doesn't do presence detection, so you are relying on a schedule or manual control via an app.
Tado does - so that might suit better if you are in/out the house a lot and prefer to control the whole house heating.
They are all DIYable (although you're not supposed to fiddle with unvented cylinder controls - and take advice if you have a Megaflo cylinder)
essayer said:
Depends what your priorities are really.
I'd say a larger property would suit Evohome because you can zone areas and selectively heat them, so you can leave kids rooms unheated during the day but heat the study if you're at home, that sort of thing. That should reduce gas consumption (although bear in mind that 12 TRV controllers, hot water, Evohome controller and a couple of room sensors is probably £1k, more if you have UFH too).
Evohome doesn't do presence detection, so you are relying on a schedule or manual control via an app.
Tado does - so that might suit better if you are in/out the house a lot and prefer to control the whole house heating.
They are all DIYable (although you're not supposed to fiddle with unvented cylinder controls - and take advice if you have a Megaflo cylinder)
Didn't know about that, thanks. I don't want to spend huge money (not a forever house) but we do waste alot of heat. Just looking for something a bit more sophisticated that I've got.I'd say a larger property would suit Evohome because you can zone areas and selectively heat them, so you can leave kids rooms unheated during the day but heat the study if you're at home, that sort of thing. That should reduce gas consumption (although bear in mind that 12 TRV controllers, hot water, Evohome controller and a couple of room sensors is probably £1k, more if you have UFH too).
Evohome doesn't do presence detection, so you are relying on a schedule or manual control via an app.
Tado does - so that might suit better if you are in/out the house a lot and prefer to control the whole house heating.
They are all DIYable (although you're not supposed to fiddle with unvented cylinder controls - and take advice if you have a Megaflo cylinder)
Fore Left said:
You know, I never noticed that the Heat Link had a USB port when I installed mine. Might have to go and check
Nest doesn't live up to the hype in my experience. Water heating is tacked on the side using a fixed schedule when, if it was really eco friendly, it would be linked to the central heating ('oh, I'm heating the rads I'll just see if the water needs heating too') to save energy. Water heating reported in energy usage either which makes overall usage misleading. The minimum on time for the central heating is 1 hour (I'm often up and out in half that so that wastes more energy). So again, energy wasting rather than energy saving.
Oh, and Auto Away is broken big time since the update that changed Away mode to Eco. It starts heating on the next schedule change rather than detecting you're away. You're going to be pretty pissed if you come back from a fortnight in Spain to find its been heating the house twice a day for the duration.
It looks nice but its a really expensive dumb time clock right now. I'll be pricing up a Honeywell Evohome this weekend.
I've said exactly this before. The unit is nice and shiny. But it's not very good at heating a Victorian terrace. The Nest will be replaced with an Honeywell system during the extension.Nest doesn't live up to the hype in my experience. Water heating is tacked on the side using a fixed schedule when, if it was really eco friendly, it would be linked to the central heating ('oh, I'm heating the rads I'll just see if the water needs heating too') to save energy. Water heating reported in energy usage either which makes overall usage misleading. The minimum on time for the central heating is 1 hour (I'm often up and out in half that so that wastes more energy). So again, energy wasting rather than energy saving.
Oh, and Auto Away is broken big time since the update that changed Away mode to Eco. It starts heating on the next schedule change rather than detecting you're away. You're going to be pretty pissed if you come back from a fortnight in Spain to find its been heating the house twice a day for the duration.
It looks nice but its a really expensive dumb time clock right now. I'll be pricing up a Honeywell Evohome this weekend.
Nest is not a great product. When we do our extension, it's being binned for an Evohome setup.
OK folk, so one week of living with Evohome:
Pros:
- The fine control on the system is great, with individual rooms getting heat when you want them.
- The motorised TRVs are really quiet when they adjust.
- Temp readings seem pretty good so far (although see below regarding bathrooms with electric underfloor heating)).
- The fine control on the setup screen is good, allowing you to do things like control the hot water temp in the Megaflo. We have been having a smelly hot water issue in our house (was derelict for 3 years, and we used the Megaflo that came with it, so it may have been a bit skanky). Have dealt with it (so far) by turning the boiler up and also setting the hot water temp to 70 degrees (instead of the usual 60) to heat the hot water very high. Now set back to 60. All done from the base controller.
- The kit is nicely engineered.
Cons
- Very expensive. At £1300 + £350 fitting/setup for my system in a 5 bed, 4 bath house with UFH and 12 heat zones, it will likely take years to pay back compared to something like a Nest with TRVs.
- If you have a Megaflo, fitting it is a sod. This is because these cylinders don’t have a dry sensor pocket and have non-intuitive controls. You do not want to accidentally disconnect the overall safety shutdown on them while fitting the Evohome. Get a Honeywell engineer to do it – my usual plumber was scratching his head over the whole setup.
- Same for the underfloor heating controller. Not at all intuitive.
- Honeywell’s installation instructions are balls. Useless to an informed amateur like me, and next to useless to a plumber/heating engineer who has never fitted one before. I suspect that this is so that you have to use a Honeywell engineer, at that cost
- Honeywell’s phone helpline is hopeless as you can never get through. And they take days to respond to e-mails, or sometimes don’t bother at all.
- The base controller looks a bit cheap and plasticky compared with a Nest/Tado etc.
- The Total Connect 2 App was initially a bit rubbish and down for planned maintenance. Has been fine for the last week, though.
- The fine control needs careful programming, and you need to learn the system. It is nothing like as intuitive as, say, Nest, and there does not seem to be a single button option to just turn the whole house on from the app to the same temperature. You can turn it all off with one button, but not turn it all on with one button.
- Heat control in bathrooms can get confused easily by electric underfloor heating that is not part of the Honeywell app. I walked into the loft wetroom yesterday morning and it was like a sauna as both electric UFH and Evohome controlled rad were blasting heat. I turned down the UFH for this morning and all seemed fine.
- It won’t currently control electric UFH, so all of the bathrooms are run on a separate control system for the UFH, and Evohome on the rads. Clunky.
I would agree with the post above that Nest is inadequate for a house. I have it in my flat, with some manual TRVs, and it works just fine. Evohome obviously suits a complex and large heating system better than Nest. But it is expensive, complex and hard to set up as a DIYer. And time will tell what my heating bills look like.
Also, if Anyone wants a good Honeywell engineer in London, Lee of LJB Heating in Richmond. Young (which frankly is a boon with this stuff – half the older engineers I have met/spoken to scratch their heads and mumble “witchcraft” when faced with this stuff), personable, knowledgeable and fair pricing. He also picked up on a few Gas Safe things that my plumber (who has been a nightmare throughout this renovation project) had failed to get right(!)
Pros:
- The fine control on the system is great, with individual rooms getting heat when you want them.
- The motorised TRVs are really quiet when they adjust.
- Temp readings seem pretty good so far (although see below regarding bathrooms with electric underfloor heating)).
- The fine control on the setup screen is good, allowing you to do things like control the hot water temp in the Megaflo. We have been having a smelly hot water issue in our house (was derelict for 3 years, and we used the Megaflo that came with it, so it may have been a bit skanky). Have dealt with it (so far) by turning the boiler up and also setting the hot water temp to 70 degrees (instead of the usual 60) to heat the hot water very high. Now set back to 60. All done from the base controller.
- The kit is nicely engineered.
Cons
- Very expensive. At £1300 + £350 fitting/setup for my system in a 5 bed, 4 bath house with UFH and 12 heat zones, it will likely take years to pay back compared to something like a Nest with TRVs.
- If you have a Megaflo, fitting it is a sod. This is because these cylinders don’t have a dry sensor pocket and have non-intuitive controls. You do not want to accidentally disconnect the overall safety shutdown on them while fitting the Evohome. Get a Honeywell engineer to do it – my usual plumber was scratching his head over the whole setup.
- Same for the underfloor heating controller. Not at all intuitive.
- Honeywell’s installation instructions are balls. Useless to an informed amateur like me, and next to useless to a plumber/heating engineer who has never fitted one before. I suspect that this is so that you have to use a Honeywell engineer, at that cost
- Honeywell’s phone helpline is hopeless as you can never get through. And they take days to respond to e-mails, or sometimes don’t bother at all.
- The base controller looks a bit cheap and plasticky compared with a Nest/Tado etc.
- The Total Connect 2 App was initially a bit rubbish and down for planned maintenance. Has been fine for the last week, though.
- The fine control needs careful programming, and you need to learn the system. It is nothing like as intuitive as, say, Nest, and there does not seem to be a single button option to just turn the whole house on from the app to the same temperature. You can turn it all off with one button, but not turn it all on with one button.
- Heat control in bathrooms can get confused easily by electric underfloor heating that is not part of the Honeywell app. I walked into the loft wetroom yesterday morning and it was like a sauna as both electric UFH and Evohome controlled rad were blasting heat. I turned down the UFH for this morning and all seemed fine.
- It won’t currently control electric UFH, so all of the bathrooms are run on a separate control system for the UFH, and Evohome on the rads. Clunky.
I would agree with the post above that Nest is inadequate for a house. I have it in my flat, with some manual TRVs, and it works just fine. Evohome obviously suits a complex and large heating system better than Nest. But it is expensive, complex and hard to set up as a DIYer. And time will tell what my heating bills look like.
Also, if Anyone wants a good Honeywell engineer in London, Lee of LJB Heating in Richmond. Young (which frankly is a boon with this stuff – half the older engineers I have met/spoken to scratch their heads and mumble “witchcraft” when faced with this stuff), personable, knowledgeable and fair pricing. He also picked up on a few Gas Safe things that my plumber (who has been a nightmare throughout this renovation project) had failed to get right(!)
I would agree with most of that. Our house isn't large and complex by any means but we find it much better than a central thermostat and TRVs.
I only have the Evohome wireless actuators on 7 rads and the other areas have standard TRVs, but it still means we have the benefit of the main rooms we use daily being heated very efficiently.
I've used two different Honeywell installers. The first one didn't have a clue (they can get away with just a single one-day training course before being let loose to install these systems). The second one was like some sort of central heating guru who knows more than Honeywell themselves!
Out of interest, why do you have electric UFH and a radiator in the bathroom?
I only have the Evohome wireless actuators on 7 rads and the other areas have standard TRVs, but it still means we have the benefit of the main rooms we use daily being heated very efficiently.
I've used two different Honeywell installers. The first one didn't have a clue (they can get away with just a single one-day training course before being let loose to install these systems). The second one was like some sort of central heating guru who knows more than Honeywell themselves!
Out of interest, why do you have electric UFH and a radiator in the bathroom?
Edited by FurtiveFreddy on Wednesday 7th December 11:11
The bathroom rads are heated towel rails. And electric UFH was frankly cheaper to fit than wet UFH. Fitting wet UFH in the bathrooms would have been expensive given the suspended wood floors and consequent floor engineering, and serpentine plumbing required, whereas fitting the electric system was cheap, easy and overkill. I only want to toast my feet in the morning, not heat the room - the latter is an expensive thing to do when using electricity rather than gas. It may have been overkill to fit electric UFH and rads, but there you go.
Much about the renovation we've just done is overkill, with overspec insulation, multiple Cat6 in every room, and a custom electrical design rather than a simple re-wire. And that's just the infrastructure, not the fittings and furnishings! But I thought best to do as much as possible, well, while the house was stripped and such jobs are relatively cheap, than regret not doing it. But the cost of wet UFH in 4 x bathrooms was a step too far...
Much about the renovation we've just done is overkill, with overspec insulation, multiple Cat6 in every room, and a custom electrical design rather than a simple re-wire. And that's just the infrastructure, not the fittings and furnishings! But I thought best to do as much as possible, well, while the house was stripped and such jobs are relatively cheap, than regret not doing it. But the cost of wet UFH in 4 x bathrooms was a step too far...
Edited by Harry Flashman on Wednesday 7th December 10:34
Harry Flashman said:
The bathroom rads are heated towel rails. And frankly cheaper to run than electric UFH, which I only want to toast my feet in the morning, not heat the room. Fitting wet UFH in the bathrooms would have been expensive given the suspended wood floors and serpentine plumbing required, whereas fitting the electric system was cheap, easy and overkill.
So you have HR92s on the towel rails? I can see why that may be causing a problem if the towel rail is set to switch on at the same time as the UFH and they both have independent sensors. Trouble is, if you want warm towels and warm feet at the same time I think you might find it difficult to balance that with the overall room temperature! FurtiveFreddy said:
So you have HR92s on the towel rails? I can see why that may be causing a problem if the towel rail is set to switch on at the same time as the UFH and they both have independent sensors. Trouble is, if you want warm towels and warm feet at the same time I think you might find it difficult to balance that with the overall room temperature!
Exactly! Although I thought the problem would be the other way round - the rad sensor thinking the room warmer than it is due to being close to the heated floor, and thus not turning on. Instead it went nuts and opened fully, creating a sauna!Easy enough to solve - setting UFH to about 20 takes the chill off the floor, and is not hot enough to confuse the rad sensor. All is now well...
SlimJ said:
We've recently moved in to an old 1750's cottage out in the sticks and have an oil fired boiler (Grant Vortex external - about 5 years old, replaced before we moved in 18 months ago).
We're in the process of modernising our 3 bed cottage and will be replacing all the old existing radiators with modern ones (2 already changed during bathroom and office conversion - both kick out substantially more heat than the previous ones!). I'd also like to go down the route of adding a smart thermostat, either Nest or Hive.
Has anyone added a smart thermostat to an oil fired central heating system? any recommendations other than Nest or Hive?
Cheers muchly.
My 20 yr old oil-fired Worcester boiler is happily heating my house with a Heatmiser Neo system. I definitely recommend the Neos as you can zone the house which I don't think you can do with Nest or Hive - I have full control over each room independently, without any batteries to change in TRVs!We're in the process of modernising our 3 bed cottage and will be replacing all the old existing radiators with modern ones (2 already changed during bathroom and office conversion - both kick out substantially more heat than the previous ones!). I'd also like to go down the route of adding a smart thermostat, either Nest or Hive.
Has anyone added a smart thermostat to an oil fired central heating system? any recommendations other than Nest or Hive?
Cheers muchly.
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