Best Wifi enabled thermostat

[moles]

I have a Hive as well down in the shed but the amount of extra control from the evohome is night and day. If you just want to turn it on/off when in or out any stat will do but for different zones at different temps at different times of the day it is perfect. On an evening we only use the Kitchen, lounge and bathroom so these are all turned on at 22. The bedrooms come on 1hr before bed and 1hr before waking. The rest of the day they are off. Normal trv's and a room stat will do the same job but who can be bothered to go around and adjust them all the time?.

[bogie]

I guess its like most of these household things, lifestyle dependent and how you cut the numbers. I spent £130 last time I needed a new stat and saved about £30 a month by not heating the whole house when we are not home 30-40% of the time. With 22 rads its going to cost me £1k or more to change to a smart TRV system to try to save some more money by not heating 3 rooms some of the time when we are home

So I think I will make do for now with the old manual TRVs

[Harry Flashman]

To answer a question, my cost for the Lightwave system will probably be around GBP400 - 5 eTRVs and the boiler switch, hub and thermostat. I have not put the eTRVs in all rooms, only ones that we use a lot. The spare bedrooms and etc will be normal TRVs that I will simply turn on when we have guests over. Our bedroom, dining room, TV room, main study etc will be on Lightwave eTRVs, so that if you remotely turn the heating on you can switch off or turn up the rooms you intend to use.

Update - I installed the first Lightwave eTRV in the main bedroom, and have been testing it. While my reservations about a system that will not call heat to a single room remain, I have to say that unlike the app and Link, this was simplicity itself to stick on and set up. I am not sure how accurate the temperature readings it gives are (will test against a thermometer), but it is quite a nice thing (if a bit ugly compared to the nice, chrome Drayton TRV head it replaced!). I'm in the study on this computer, just turned the heating on and rather than wander over to the bedroom and turn down the TRV there, simply dialled in a 10 centigrade target to turn that radiator off. An hour before I go to bed, I shall stick it to 20 degrees (or in fact set a timer now so that is does it automatically - although this being a Friday night, and with me heading out, I don't know what time that may be - hence the beauty of a remote system, I suppose ).

Will this cost less than my original heating that didn't even have TRVs until a few months ago? Of course. Will it save on a system where there are normal TRVs that I just wander around and turn off/on as required? I doubt it. But being able to switch my heating on remotely and dial down rooms individually is quite nice, as will be setting the system to have hallway and bedroom warm for when I come home, without heating the rest of the house too. Rather more a gadget/convenience thing I think than real efficiency...

Edited by Harry Flashman on Friday 20th February 18:17

[Leithen]

Terra1 said:

Good to hear you're still getting on well with this system. Your posts have encouraged me to take the plunge with evohome later this year for similar reasons. Our house isn't massive but we have 3 young children so we're in and out of the house with the youngest needing a heated room for his morning/afternoon naps whilst the rest of the bedrooms need no/little heat in the day. Can't remember if you have the underfloor heating module as well?

I'm hoping that it will pay for itself over a few years but that may be optimistic!

We don't have either the underfloor heating or hot water control.

I have to say that the satisfaction of having a much easier and finer control of room temperatures and timings is worth a hell of a lot to us too.

[moles]

Leithen said:

I have to say that the satisfaction of having a much easier and finer control of room temperatures and timings is worth a hell of a lot to us too.

Same here just have to remember to keep the doors shut now as the temperature difference between rooms is massive.

[Harry Flashman]

Update. Lightwave eTRVs are too noisy for bedroom use. Took the damned thing off in the middle of the night!

[Terra1]

Leithen said:

We don't have either the underfloor heating or hot water control.

I have to say that the satisfaction of having a much easier and finer control of room temperatures and timings is worth a hell of a lot to us too.

Cheers. We're getting some underfloor heating installed and was wondering whether it was worth getting the module, I guess it would make sense from a convenience point of view. Finding it hard to see the value of the hot water module as our water usage is fairly static i.e baths at night and showers in morning.

[Up_North]

A question for Evohome users. Do you find any problems with the fact that the temperature sensor is so close to the radiator itself and thus might be influenced from the heat of the radiator rather than based more on the temperature of the room. Itself.?

I know a similar product by Heat Genius seems to have separate room sensors that you can mount on the wall but are bound to the radiator valves so therefore temperature.is actually measured at wherever the room sensor is placed.

Thanks.

Ian

[Leithen]

Up_North said:

A question for Evohome users. Do you find any problems with the fact that the temperature sensor is so close to the radiator itself and thus might be influenced from the heat of the radiator rather than based more on the temperature of the room. Itself.?

I know a similar product by Heat Genius seems to have separate room sensors that you can mount on the wall but are bound to the radiator valves so therefore temperature.is actually measured at wherever the room sensor is placed.

Thanks.

Ian

You can adjust the TRV in it's settings +/- to compensate if the temp reading is off from the actual room temp. If the radiator and TRV location means that it may not give a reliable reading of room temp, you can use a wireless room stat instead. The TRVs are then slaved to the room stat which you can put anywhere.

We have three rooms/zones with two radiators in each and we use wireless stats for best temp control. If you create a zone with more than one radiator, you create a "master" TRV that the others slave to its temp sensor if you aren't using separate stats.

[Up_North]

Thanks for that Leithen. That sounds what I was hoping but in all the Honeywell documents I haven't seen anything which shows that scenario.

[DaiBakes]

ShortShift811 said:

We had a Nest installed on Weds in our three bed semi, alongside a combi boiler replacing the old water tank and standard Ideal unit.

I'm sticking to the 'learning' rules for now; turning it up when we need warmth and down when we don't. Impressed that after just 36 hours it does seem to be getting our schedule and we're definitely using less energy, although some of that will be down to the boiler upgrade too.

Only niggle so far is that 'auto away' doesn't seem to switch on when we are in bed or out of the house for most of the day. Should I be switching the Away feature on when I know neither of us will be in, or just turning the temperature down?

Will be interesting to check my stats over the next 2-4 weeks and report back.

You can either turn it down or turn it to away manually for now. The Nest will take around 7 days to 'learn' when you are away. After that time it will start going in to Auto-Away when you leave (and progressively get better as time goes on) Auto-Away can also be made more accurate by installing a Nest Protect, as it covers a wider area for the sensors.

If you open the Nest app on your phone, go to the Thermostat page then the menu button in the top right and select 'Thermostat Settings', there will be an option for 'Nest Sense'. Here you can see how the learning process is doing, Auto-Away will likely say 'On - Learning'. Once it's confident that it can detect when you are away it will change to 'On - Ready' - It is this that usually takes a week from installation.

[bad company]

My Hive lost it's connection yesterday. This meant that I could control it from the thermostat or my home pc but not from my IPhone or pad.

The helpline was good and rectified the problem quickly BUT I had to re boot the thermostat which I could not have done if I had been away from home. I pointed this out to the helpline as connectivity from abroad was the big attraction for me. They are sending me a signal booster which should apparently prevent this from happening again.

[gaz1234]

Just caught up from page 27.
To summarise:
Nest is the bg one?
Salus 500 pretty good, doesn't do hw?
Tado is crap.
Evo home pricey but best?

Which will work on a potterton system to hw and ch?
Ta

[Mattt]

Not sure where you got the Tado is crap bit from - I'm pretty happy with mine overall and customer service is great.

[Pheo]

gaz1234 said:

Just caught up from page 27.
To summarise:
Nest is the bg one?
Salus 500 pretty good, doesn't do hw?
Tado is crap.
Evo home pricey but best?

Which will work on a potterton system to hw and ch?
Ta

Nest is google
Tado is good, provided it meets your needs
Not convinced on the value of Evohome for most homes unless you gave a specific need
Hive is the BG one, bit basic and not as tech advanced as Nest, Tado.

[M7RT V]

I've had Tado installed for a few weeks and it's working well, seems like a powerful platform that has plenty of potential to build on.

[boxst]

gaz1234 said:

Just caught up from page 27.
To summarise:
Nest is the bg one?
Salus 500 pretty good, doesn't do hw?
Tado is crap.
Evo home pricey but best?

Which will work on a potterton system to hw and ch?
Ta

Tado is okay. In my case it still isn't doing the location thing very well, so we come back to a cold house and then it switches the heating on. But everything else is good: I can change temperature and switch the heating on and off whilst away.

[M7RT V]

I think the trouble with Tado's presence detection is that it's never actually going to know when you're on your way home. I often find the moment I walk in the house it turns on the heating too.

[Leithen]

It would appear that the ecobee3 is the one getting all the plaudits across the pond these days.

[bogie]

Pheo said:

gaz1234 said:

Just caught up from page 27.
To summarise:
Nest is the bg one?
Salus 500 pretty good, doesn't do hw?
Tado is crap.
Evo home pricey but best?

Which will work on a potterton system to hw and ch?
Ta

Nest is google
Tado is good, provided it meets your needs
Not convinced on the value of Evohome for most homes unless you gave a specific need
Hive is the BG one, bit basic and not as tech advanced as Nest, Tado.

salus does do HW and up to 2 zones CH ...works fine, if a little simple compared to the others. key difference is you have to tell it when you are home or not on your phone app. It does not auto-detect prescence ....other than that you have remote control of both CH/HW

very pleased with it for £130...does what I want