Best Wifi enabled thermostat

[Sheepshanks]

bigweb said:

I need to get one of these as we had a new boiler fitted a few months ago without a thermostat.

Hmmm....it's a building regulations requirement that a room thermostat must be fitted to new installations.

What make and model boiler is it?

[bigweb]

Sheepshanks said:

Hmmm....it's a building regulations requirement that a room thermostat must be fitted to new installations.

What make and model boiler is it?

I asked them not to fit one as I would get a Wifi enabled one soon after but havent got around to it until now. (6 Months)

The boiler is an Ideal independent + C35

[Otispunkmeyer]

boxst said:

Tado isn't behaving properly with me. It does quite a good job of keeping the heating going / night mode etc..

The issue is around returning home, it happily switches to away mode but doesn't switch to home mode until we actually get home. I thought it was supposed to roughly work out when you are close and switch on the heating?

I've been experimenting with IFTTT (if this then that) which has geolocation triggers... i.e. when you leave a place, log it or do something. In my experience this just doesn't work. Probably has something to do with us having very poor to nonexistant 3G service here, often we're just down to 2G. Additionally the GPS is polled intermittently, its not on all the time or else the phone would last about an hour.

That experience, for me, has warded me off something like the TaDo which uses geolocation. For me its not going to know where I am until I reconnect to my WiFi at home!

[SMar]

Otispunkmeyer said:

I've been experimenting with IFTTT (if this then that) which has geolocation triggers... i.e. when you leave a place, log it or do something. In my experience this just doesn't work. Probably has something to do with us having very poor to nonexistant 3G service here, often we're just down to 2G. Additionally the GPS is polled intermittently, its not on all the time or else the phone would last about an hour.

That experience, for me, has warded me off something like the TaDo which uses geolocation. For me its not going to know where I am until I reconnect to my WiFi at home!

Unless you have no signal for miles around, that shouldn't be a problem. My house has virtually no 3g as well, but it doesn't stop my tado from working as it should, as it will be tracking you all the way home, and warming your house.

Edited by SMar on Tuesday 17th February 11:27

[5678]

I see Tado are rolling out multiple time/temperatures soon...

[HenryJM]

5678 said:

I see Tado are rolling out multiple time/temperatures soon...

Kind of like British Gas have been doing for ages? This must be at least 18 months since it was installed:


It was never presented as anything wildly exciting, just something that came with the new boiler. I control it from the iPhone app.

Maybe I'm missing something.

[5678]

Maybe?

Currently, Tado allows you to set the target temperature for the house, but this is one temperature for all times of day. The enhancement allows you to set different target temperatures for different parts of the day, e.g. 20 from 0700-0900, 18 from 0900-1600 then 22 from 1600-2000.

[jon-]

5678 said:

Maybe?

Currently, Tado allows you to set the target temperature for the house, but this is one temperature for all times of day. The enhancement allows you to set different target temperatures for different parts of the day, e.g. 20 from 0700-0900, 18 from 0900-1600 then 22 from 1600-2000.

That will be really useful. I'm home most of the day but I don't want the heating on, but I do want it coming on in the morning to warm up the house for when I get up.

At the moment I have to use a day schedule to warm up the house, then manually remember to turn it off. This way I can just drop the temperature monday - friday, 9-5. Bonus

On a side note, my TADO has started resetting itself if I try to change the mode on the actual thermostat. I've emailed support.

[HenryJM]

5678 said:

Maybe?

Currently, Tado allows you to set the target temperature for the house, but this is one temperature for all times of day. The enhancement allows you to set different target temperatures for different parts of the day, e.g. 20 from 0700-0900, 18 from 0900-1600 then 22 from 1600-2000.

Yes, it does that, I currently set morning, daytime, evening and night. They can be different on different days or Monday-Friday can be set together with Saturday and Sunday together or whatever. I can control it from my phone so I can overwrite it from wherever I am. It has a minimum temp so it will never go below 5 degrees, or whatever, even when switched off, I can then switch it back on when I'm flying back home so it's warm when I get there. And so on.

It's just a standard British Gas thing, as far as I know, I didn't order anything special it just came with the new boiler.

About the only extra thing I see is this thing that they can be sensitive as to where you are in regards to the house, get close and it switches on, but I can see all sorts of problems with that. Pretty hopeless if you live close to where you work but mainly it relies on your system being able to heat your house up in no time.

Now my house is almost 200 year old, but that really just means the walls are thick, but it's not a cat in hell's chance of it being any use in winter if it only knew I was going to be there 10 minutes (or whatever) before I got there.

[HenryJM]

jon- said:

That will be really useful. I'm home most of the day but I don't want the heating on, but I do want it coming on in the morning to warm up the house for when I get up.

At the moment I have to use a day schedule to warm up the house, then manually remember to turn it off. This way I can just drop the temperature monday - friday, 9-5. Bonus

On a side note, my TADO has started resetting itself if I try to change the mode on the actual thermostat. I've emailed support.

Hmm, a standard British Gas system will do that for you, I think.

[jon-]

HenryJM said:

jon- said:

That will be really useful. I'm home most of the day but I don't want the heating on, but I do want it coming on in the morning to warm up the house for when I get up.

At the moment I have to use a day schedule to warm up the house, then manually remember to turn it off. This way I can just drop the temperature monday - friday, 9-5. Bonus

On a side note, my TADO has started resetting itself if I try to change the mode on the actual thermostat. I've emailed support.

Hmm, a standard British Gas system will do that for you, I think.

A dual time timer would do that, but then you lose the "smart" element of it turning the heating off when you're not in the house, during "on" times.

I can be out all evening and not spend a penny on heating. I couldn't do that with a standard timer.

[paulrockliffe]

5678 said:

I see Tado are rolling out multiple time/temperatures soon...

Great news!

I let the boiler heat the house to 18-19 degrees in the evening, but if I don't turn the temp down it can turn itself on again at 5am or so to get the house up to the set temperature in time for getting up. But during the week I'm up and out, so while it's nice to have the house warm, I'd rather not have the heating come on so early and 'endure' the cold for the 20 minutes it takes me to leave.

Ideally there'd be the option to tell it to not come on before a set time, but this should achieve a similar result.

[SMar]

HenryJM said:

jon- said:

That will be really useful. I'm home most of the day but I don't want the heating on, but I do want it coming on in the morning to warm up the house for when I get up.

At the moment I have to use a day schedule to warm up the house, then manually remember to turn it off. This way I can just drop the temperature monday - friday, 9-5. Bonus

On a side note, my TADO has started resetting itself if I try to change the mode on the actual thermostat. I've emailed support.

Hmm, a standard British Gas system will do that for you, I think.

Theres more to the "Smart" element then just the geo location features. The system also knows the outside temperature, knows the characteristice of heating your home, and will turn the heating on at different times to heat to the target temperature. So for example if the target is 20C @ 7:30am. If its -2C outside it may switch on at 5:30am or if its 6C it may turn on at 6:45am. All this automatically, since I set mine up I barely touch it now.

The British Gas Hive does none of this.

[5678]

SMar said:

Theres more to the "Smart" element then just the geo location features. The system also knows the outside temperature, knows the characteristice of heating your home, and will turn the heating on at different times to heat to the target temperature. So for example if the target is 20C @ 7:30am. If its -2C outside it may switch on at 5:30am or if its 6C it may turn on at 6:45am. All this automatically, since I set mine up I barely touch it now.

The British Gas Hive does none of this.

Yes, I looked into Hive a lot and went for Tado as offering a better feature set for me.

The main thing I disliked on hive was that it didnt turn on/off automatically.

[eatontrifles]

5678 said:

I see Tado are rolling out multiple time/temperatures soon...

About time! For me, this will mean that when I or the OH is at home during the week and we want the temperature to be a bit lower, instead of using the app to change to manual mode (set at 2 degrees lower than auto) I'll have set the new schedule temperature already.

[Otispunkmeyer]

How easy is it to self install a Nest with a boiler that has a wireless thermostat?

I have had a look at my boiler and think it should be pretty straight forward. If anyone can look over what I am about to describe and comment that would be great.

The boiler has an RF reciever which takes commands from a battery powered wireless thermostat. On the main board there is a connector block which is used for wiring in things like frost-stats, wired thermostat, external temp sensors etc. Most of these things can be wired into pins 7 and 8 (zero volt switching apparently). As it stands my boiler has a jumper cable on 7 and 8, which I presume allows it to take commands from the RF module instead.

I also have, next to my boiler easy access to mains for the heat link. I can wire into the switch that turns the boiler on and off, or I am thinking it will be simpler to fit a plug to the power lead on the heat link and simply plug it into one of the free sockets I have there.

So I presume, mechanical installation, should be as simple as mounting the heatlink to the wall, add a standard UK plug to the power lead for power and wire the call for heat wires (common and call for heat) into pins 7 and 8 just like you would a wired thermostat. Oh and probably drill and grommet a small hole for said wires to get into the boiler.


sound about right?


for reference, the boiler manual

http://www.plumbase.co.uk/link/1/h018715_28511_t.p...

pages 21-26

Edited by Otispunkmeyer on Wednesday 18th February 12:41

[HenryJM]

SMar said:

Theres more to the "Smart" element then just the geo location features. The system also knows the outside temperature, knows the characteristice of heating your home, and will turn the heating on at different times to heat to the target temperature. So for example if the target is 20C @ 7:30am. If its -2C outside it may switch on at 5:30am or if its 6C it may turn on at 6:45am. All this automatically, since I set mine up I barely touch it now.

The British Gas Hive does none of this.

Well.... It seems to me that the BG system provides most things, so it allows me to control what temperatures it is across the day, at least four different bits of the day, controlled by my remote device (phone) etc.

There are two things that I can see that other systems can do that this doesn't.

The first is using the outside temp to decide when to come on. I can set mine to come on at, say, 6.00am and try and drive the house up to a level. Some other system let me say that I want it to be a temperature by, say, 7.00am and will switch it on earlier dependent on how cold it is and how long it will take to get there. Nice, yes, but pretty marginal IMHO.

The other is that if I go out it can detect that and switch the system off, as I can come home it detects that and switched it on. Sounds nice but I'm not so convinced and a bit dependent on how quickly it can heat the house up anyway. If it can do it in five or ten minutes then that's great, but if it takes a while it's all a bit pointless. Also if there's a few of you in the house it's a bit pear shaped if you going out switches the heating off on whoever is looking after your kids, or whatever.

So personally I am happy with the BG thing, because it does enough, I wouldn't benefit from the other facilities. But if you would benefit from them then it's OK to go for it.

[5678]

HenryJM said:

Well.... It seems to me that the BG system provides most things, so it allows me to control what temperatures it is across the day, at least four different bits of the day, controlled by my remote device (phone) etc.

There are two things that I can see that other systems can do that this doesn't.

The first is using the outside temp to decide when to come on. I can set mine to come on at, say, 6.00am and try and drive the house up to a level. Some other system let me say that I want it to be a temperature by, say, 7.00am and will switch it on earlier dependent on how cold it is and how long it will take to get there. Nice, yes, but pretty marginal IMHO.

The other is that if I go out it can detect that and switch the system off, as I can come home it detects that and switched it on. Sounds nice but I'm not so convinced and a bit dependent on how quickly it can heat the house up anyway. If it can do it in five or ten minutes then that's great, but if it takes a while it's all a bit pointless. Also if there's a few of you in the house it's a bit pear shaped if you going out switches the heating off on whoever is looking after your kids, or whatever.

So personally I am happy with the BG thing, because it does enough, I wouldn't benefit from the other facilities. But if you would benefit from them then it's OK to go for it.

Just to answer those,

Point 1, for Tado, you are able to set the time period for "night time" you can then specify if you want the house to be at the preset temperature for morning, or if you want it to turn on at that time and start heating then. It's a savings vs comfort decision. It also factors in outside temperature and how quickly your house heats up. E.g. Cold day and poorly insulated/inefficient house, it will turn on sooner, or, warmer day, efficient house, it will turn on later.

Point 2, again for Tado, by factoring in how quickly your house heats up and the weather, it knows how soon to turn it on. Some might need it turning on 5 miles away, some might need it turning on 1 mile away etc. You are also able to change the proximity of "home", so if you work close to home, you can reduce the radius it will activate in.
You are also able to configure multiple devices, so for us, SWMBO's phone and mine are configured for proximity. If we are both out and someone else is there, then there is a "Home" button on the wall that can trigger the heating even if no devices are present.

I'm not trying to argue which is best, just shed light on how Tado works. IMO, with the new role out of multiple time slots, I think the scope for savings is higher with Tado.

[SMar]

HenryJM said:

Well.... It seems to me that the BG system provides most things, so it allows me to control what temperatures it is across the day, at least four different bits of the day, controlled by my remote device (phone) etc.

There are two things that I can see that other systems can do that this doesn't.

The first is using the outside temp to decide when to come on. I can set mine to come on at, say, 6.00am and try and drive the house up to a level. Some other system let me say that I want it to be a temperature by, say, 7.00am and will switch it on earlier dependent on how cold it is and how long it will take to get there. Nice, yes, but pretty marginal IMHO.

The other is that if I go out it can detect that and switch the system off, as I can come home it detects that and switched it on. Sounds nice but I'm not so convinced and a bit dependent on how quickly it can heat the house up anyway. If it can do it in five or ten minutes then that's great, but if it takes a while it's all a bit pointless. Also if there's a few of you in the house it's a bit pear shaped if you going out switches the heating off on whoever is looking after your kids, or whatever.

So personally I am happy with the BG thing, because it does enough, I wouldn't benefit from the other facilities. But if you would benefit from them then it's OK to go for it.

Of course it all depends on your needs, but if your going to install a system like these, you might as well benefit from as much of the technology as you can. But the big factor for me is that my monthly DD for dual fuel has gone from £157 to £102 (£660 a year saving = ) with the same supplier, not marginal IMHO

[Harry Flashman]

OK, I have installed the first part of the LightwaveRF system, which comprises of their Wifi Link (hub), boiler switch and main thermostat.

At some point soon, I will be adding wireless TRVs (all controlled by using the app and Link) to build zones: this is really why I bought it as it allows me to only heat bits of the house on occasion – important as OH works from home much of the time, and she can then just set an “event” where only the bits of our house that she needs are heated.

System Pros.
- Pretty reasonable pricing – I got boiler switch, therm and app for about £60 each.

- Physical installation simple – boiler wiring is easy, and the therm is battery powered, so no wiring issues. Means you can also move it around the house to find the best spot for it

- Nicely made – while the kit is a bit ugly, it seems to have decent build quality

- A lot of compatible kit – readily available individual room thermostats, TRVs, sockets, light switches etc.


System Cons
- Thermostat looks really boring compared to a Nest or similar

- Setup. The instructions are rubbish, and you need to mess around on help forums to work out why your app isn’t controlling the therm properly etc

- App is clunky. No fast override buttons for heating etc. That said, you can set up “events” Which can pretty much do whatever you want to whatever Lightwave controls, so this won’t be a problem. But no standard “heating on/heating off override or boost function. Interestingly, the therm and boiler switch do have these, so when at home it’s easier to go and flick a switch for a couple of hours’ heat than do it on the standard app. Also, you have to upload your new settings to the server, and then download them to the Link in your home. Takes no time, but two useless extra steps which should simply happen when you hit the “save settings” button. And not explained anywhere in setup instructions, so you spend ages wondering why your tablet isn’t actually talking to your home, despite you hitting the “save settings” button.

- Mostly battery powered. While the app does warn you when a device needs new batteries, you will be having to change them, and I think up to annually in the therm and TRVs.

- Support is poor. Helpdesk mailed a week ago, never heard back from them. This will be a big problem for users if not rectified. Support forums are OK, though and obviously improving (it’s how I found out about the upload/download thing)


Conclusion
- cheap way of setting up zoned heating system, which is great...

- ...but the moment someone invents room based TRVs that link with Nest or whatever, that will make a more compelling ownership prospect

- possibly advantage for automating light switches and sockets on same system as the heating

- app could use some work.

Will report back in spring after we’ve used it a bit more.