Best Wifi enabled thermostat

[Jobbo]

I had all my TRVs replaced with Danfoss ones when I moved into this house last July - possibly a bit silly when I intended to fit Evohome at some point, but it did mean they are all brand new and adaptors for the Evohome HR92s were included in the boxes. They haven't been noisy at all, if that's any help.

[shady lee]

mjb1 said:

Those are the ones I was looking at, seem to have quite a few negative reviews though - leaking is common, noisy when used on the return instead of the flow (even though they claim to be bi directional), and some people saying they don't shut off fully, even when turned right down (sounds like the valve rather than the head). Also has lots of positive reviews though, just not sure I want to take the chance just to save a few pounds over the Drayton ones.

With regards to the leaking, it's the chrome plated tails that are hard to get a bite, I used some PTFE on the olive then retightened and they have been fine ever since, also some PTFE on the part that goes into the radiator is handy.

Simple stuff really, loctite do a thread sealer, can't think of the name of the top of my head but it's magic stuff, comes in a tube, cuts of like dental floss lol.

As far as the valves not closing, all mine closed fine with the manual trv bodies and also fine with the evohome actuators on.

The collar of the manual trv does need a very slight nip with a rag and some plumbers grips or whatever your choice is, that's probably where others are going wrong, just hand tightening and walking away.

I have 1 rad that's trv body on the return side, space issues for the pipe run meant I had to, but can't say I've had any noise's from it?.

Up to you really, you pay your money etc.

After having wiser I won't be buying anything else made by Drayton, I know that much lol.

[shady lee]

Siar said:

Shady Lee, what system do you have now? Did you remove the back plate as well?
I am afraid my wife will kill me if we end up without a boiler even for a day.

I have a whole house evohome setup on every rad, (auto bypass in boiler).

I ripped the wiser stuff out at 4am on a Saturday morning after the whole thing failed to fire the boiler properly for the 3rd time due to connection issues, that's with the boiler relay 5 meters away from my daughter's trv and a range extender placed in between both trv and relay (boiler control).

8 month old daughter's room was around 12c when wiser should have been keeping it at 17c.

Evohome installed that day, and without fail my kids room overnight is a constant stable 17c.

Evohome is rather clever too, you can set it so it's up to temp at the time you want, it can start turning off rooms before the end time to save money if it thinks the temp won't drop too much.

The trv heads constantly change openings to keep a solid set temp for every room.

Tpi and all the bells and whistles, most of all.....it's extremely reliable.

I like it, plus Honeywell helpline actually understand their product.

[mjb1]

Now erring towards some Plumb Centre 'Bulldog' branded ones (made by Pegler apparently), and only one pound more expensive than those screwfix TRVs.

[shady lee]

mjb1 said:

Now erring towards some Plumb Centre 'Bulldog' branded ones (made by Pegler apparently), and only one pound more expensive than those screwfix TRVs.

Urghh, rattly prices of st. Changed 2 on my mum's house within 1 year, got a refund in the end and fitted her the peggler 10mm ones at screwfix. She has 10mm pipes too.

Edit to add, the trv head failed on one,and the valve pin stuck on another.

No issues with peggler range from screwwy

Edited by shady lee on Thursday 8th February 13:30

[hkp57]

Siar said:

I cannot install them by myself, so I need a plumber and replace roughly 7 of those. My problem is that my valve bodies are non-standard I presume.

Interested if you could post a picture of the non-standard bodies!

[K50 DEL]

I'm now ready to buy an evohome system, I'm sure that there was an offer publicised where you bought the controller and 8 HR92s and got 4 HR92s free....
Given I need 12 HR92s I'd be keen to use that offer but I can't find it - does anyone know what I'm talking about !!

[kambites]

That offer was, I think, January only on here:

https://theevohomeshop.co.uk/20-honeywell-evohome-...

It'll probably reappear at some point though.

[Jobbo]

It was buy controller and 4 HR92s and you get 4 HR92s free - I bought mine in that offer and needed 12 TRVs too so ended up buying four extra from eBay. The upside down EU format ones (which suit a few of my rads, fortunately) to get them as cheaply as possible.

I'm not sure the offer is a massive saving over buying the controller pack and all your HR92s from the cheapest source; eBay seems to be a good place to buy.

[sjj84]

shady lee said:

I have a whole house evohome setup on every rad, (auto bypass in boiler).

I ripped the wiser stuff out at 4am on a Saturday morning after the whole thing failed to fire the boiler properly for the 3rd time due to connection issues, that's with the boiler relay 5 meters away from my daughter's trv and a range extender placed in between both trv and relay (boiler control).

8 month old daughter's room was around 12c when wiser should have been keeping it at 17c.

Evohome installed that day, and without fail my kids room overnight is a constant stable 17c.

Evohome is rather clever too, you can set it so it's up to temp at the time you want, it can start turning off rooms before the end time to save money if it thinks the temp won't drop too much.

The trv heads constantly change openings to keep a solid set temp for every room.

Tpi and all the bells and whistles, most of all.....it's extremely reliable.

I like it, plus Honeywell helpline actually understand their product.

Have you checked the temp in the room by another method or just relied on the trv? I found i had to up the temp by a couple of degrees to get the actual room temp to be as i wanted it. I assume the proximity of the trv sensor to th heat source and other things lie furniture being close by make it warmer there than further into the room. You can set an offset within the trv, i didn't bother just set it slightly higher.

[shady lee]

sjj84 said:

Have you checked the temp in the room by another method or just relied on the trv? I found i had to up the temp by a couple of degrees to get the actual room temp to be as i wanted it. I assume the proximity of the trv sensor to th heat source and other things lie furniture being close by make it warmer there than further into the room. You can set an offset within the trv, i didn't bother just set it slightly higher.

On evohome? Yeah in our bedroom it's a 1c spread from rad side to the other.

There's no way you can expect to trv to record a actual temp from only one side of the room. It gets close once the convection process has been going for a while though.

If it's a room that needs close control you can add wall sensors and link them to the zone somewhere in the middle of the room, in our living room we have 2 double convectors at either side of the room and the evotouch controller on a sideboard in the middle acting as the temp sensor.

Ultimately though, the evohome trvs are streets ahead of manual wax or liquid trvs that take nearly 30 mins to fully close of the flow, evohome ping a handshake message to the controller every 4 mins.

I work for a air conditioning company so I use calibrated air sensors to check the offset btw.

[sjj84]

Fair play, I used a spare evohome trv and placed it in various places around the room until i knew what the air temp was settling at. Works a treat. Although one of my trvs seems to be having a tantrum, says the room is at 29 degrees and it most definately isn't!

[Siar]

hkp57 said:

Interested if you could post a picture of the non-standard bodies!

Two pics below. Thanks!



Attached please see the pics. It is written 15 and direction of the flow i presume there.

Edited by Siar on Monday 12th February 11:33

[Siar]

[shady lee]

shady lee said:

Urghh, rattly prices of st. Changed 2 on my mum's house within 1 year, got a refund in the end and fitted her the peggler 10mm ones at screwfix. She has 10mm pipes too.

Edit to add, the trv head failed on one,and the valve pin stuck on another.

No issues with peggler range from screwwy

Edited by shady lee on Thursday 8th February 13:30

Just to reiterate about bulldog trvs.....

[hkp57]

Siar said:

I see now you are saying they are non-standard in the fitting for the Thermostat but the pipe entries and connection to the radiator is standard, so you best option is to replace the TRV with a known one. Like I said before troll Ebay for a drayton or as other said try the cheap Screwfix valves, either are cheaper than the Wiser adapters.

[Siar]

According to DIYnot, this is a plain TRV 3 from Drayton. Approx 20+ years old. The look and description of the body fits.

https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/trv-3-or-4.4276...

Adaptor costs ~ 10gbp. New 10mm trv Drayton valve (10 gbp) & lockshield (5gbp). The question is: what to choose?
Also, is there a way to buy just radiator body, not the head?

Edited by Siar on Monday 12th February 13:23

[Jabes]

I moved into a new house a few weeks ago. It's a bit larger than our old house and I thought it'd be an ideal time to install a smart heating system.

After having done some research I opted for tado. Now, as a background we have 27 radiators and I identified 18 zones that I wanted to use. Ordered the kit from tado and set it all up.

First of all there were quite a few problems with devices dropping off. I repositioned the internet bridge more centrally (using a powerline ethernet adapter); and support told me that I should wait for the firmware to update on all the devices as it improves range. Next problem was that it was unreliably turning on the heating. I discovered that it actually only supports 10 zones with heating control *sigh*. But some of my zones are "less important" (like ensuite bathrooms etc), and support were able to unbind these from calling for heat so they just work as smart trvs to moderate the temperature.

In the meantime we discovered some problems with the boiler and had to call out british gas a few times - each time I did I swapped back to our old system to save their diagnostic problems.

I think our heating problems are resolved, and tado is working. But I'm sending it back anyway.

Why? Well, I don't like the fact that if the internet goes down then it will not turn on and off. Second, there is no way to see if the heating should be on and override it with a switch (as someone diagnostic boiler problems would need). Third, we were still getting some slight coverage issues.

I'm already missing it though, so thinking about trying something different. Wiser looks interesting with range extenders to solve any issues (and you can press on the programmer to turn heating/hot water on/off for diagnosis; ... and it works with the internet off).

I think I may go for a smaller number of zones and just run standard TRVs in the rooms I don't care much about. My motivation is mainly comfort rather than energy saving.

Any comments? Perhaps I should go evohome but I don't like the look of the trvs and it feels old; and I have too many zones...

[Jabes]

What about the problem of too many zones for evohome? Also seems harder to install than just swap over the programmer (I have to say tado install was a doddle, and wiser looks easy too)

[ADogg]

I’ve taken the plunge and ordered Wiser from Screwfix... I’ll let you know how I get on - I’ve got a 4 storey Victorian B&B so am dubious as to whether it’ll work, but fingers crossed! Each rad will have a TRV and there will be 11 zones...