Wifi thermostats and smart TRVs
Discussion
Please bare with me, as someone who works in tech, but hasn't embraced smart tech in the home so much. We had Hive in our last house which was hooked up to our combi boiler. The house was over 2 floors.
Our new house is over 3 floors and has a thermostat in the hallway on the ground floor, and another in the main bedroom on the first floor. There is no thermostat on the top floor. I believe they are zoned.
The top floor is starting to get cooler than the rest of the house for obvious reasons, so I'd like to look at our options around smart heating systems. We have a boiler in the utility room (looks to be the one that was installed when the house was built in 2012) and hot water tank on the landing. It looks like the main controls for the boiler are also in the utility room.
Should I be looking at using zones still, or would I be best using smart TRVs? We don't need to heat all of the rooms at the same time. I assume I would need a smart thermostat for this as well? I'd need to retain the hot water tank functionality as well.
Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations please? I don't need it to be fancy, I just need it to work and have an app so I can boost if ever required, like I could with the Hive system.
Thank you.
Our new house is over 3 floors and has a thermostat in the hallway on the ground floor, and another in the main bedroom on the first floor. There is no thermostat on the top floor. I believe they are zoned.
The top floor is starting to get cooler than the rest of the house for obvious reasons, so I'd like to look at our options around smart heating systems. We have a boiler in the utility room (looks to be the one that was installed when the house was built in 2012) and hot water tank on the landing. It looks like the main controls for the boiler are also in the utility room.
Should I be looking at using zones still, or would I be best using smart TRVs? We don't need to heat all of the rooms at the same time. I assume I would need a smart thermostat for this as well? I'd need to retain the hot water tank functionality as well.
Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations please? I don't need it to be fancy, I just need it to work and have an app so I can boost if ever required, like I could with the Hive system.
Thank you.
I have experience of...
Honeywell Evo Home
Tado
Honeywell Evo Home with Smart TRV's on all radiators. It is a very good system but one frustration is that it is very slow to react and so you never know if it is actually working. The hot water is controlled by a Smart Tank Thermostat and a relay but this was really more complex than it needed to be. My Honeywell Evo Home annoyingly short cycled the boiler. Honeywell Evo Home does not need a continuous Internet connection.
Tado with UFH zones controlled by Smart Relays and Smart TRV's on all radiators. The hot water is controlled more simply by just using a relay and relies on the existing tank thermostat. Tado needs a continuous Internet connection or it only has limited almost manual functionality.
Smart heating systems tend to be slow to react to preserve battery power and also because central heating systems are not suited to coping with rapid changes. Features like early start anticipation means that the heating system does odd things and unexpected times.
All zones are controlled by smart relays although there is the possibility of forcing all zone valves to open and then using the Smart TRVs for control.
With regard to hot water you set the thank temperature with Honeywell Evo Home which controls the tank temperature and turns the boiler on and off. Tado just turns the boiler on and the existing tank thermostat turns off the boiler when the tank gets up to temperature just like the timer does on a basic heating system.
In my experience you only appreciate the good and bad features and major drawbacks of a system when you have actually owned it.
Honeywell Evo Home
Tado
Honeywell Evo Home with Smart TRV's on all radiators. It is a very good system but one frustration is that it is very slow to react and so you never know if it is actually working. The hot water is controlled by a Smart Tank Thermostat and a relay but this was really more complex than it needed to be. My Honeywell Evo Home annoyingly short cycled the boiler. Honeywell Evo Home does not need a continuous Internet connection.
Tado with UFH zones controlled by Smart Relays and Smart TRV's on all radiators. The hot water is controlled more simply by just using a relay and relies on the existing tank thermostat. Tado needs a continuous Internet connection or it only has limited almost manual functionality.
Smart heating systems tend to be slow to react to preserve battery power and also because central heating systems are not suited to coping with rapid changes. Features like early start anticipation means that the heating system does odd things and unexpected times.
All zones are controlled by smart relays although there is the possibility of forcing all zone valves to open and then using the Smart TRVs for control.
With regard to hot water you set the thank temperature with Honeywell Evo Home which controls the tank temperature and turns the boiler on and off. Tado just turns the boiler on and the existing tank thermostat turns off the boiler when the tank gets up to temperature just like the timer does on a basic heating system.
In my experience you only appreciate the good and bad features and major drawbacks of a system when you have actually owned it.
I have honeywell evo-home, it's great. Fairly large house, 27 radiators on 12 zones (maximum number of zones on evo-home). At the time I got it (10 years ago) there wasn't much else available, also I wanted the ability to see what temp the rad was set for by looking at the TRV, not going to the app.
I would recommend it, it would be easy to convert your existing system, especially if you already have TRV's on the radiators. The evo-home TRV's have the thermostat built in, so no need for a separate one in the room.
If it were me I would connect the zone valves to work together and then let evo-home sort the zone-ing based on the schedules programmed for each room. You have an app as well as a wall mounted display and can easily boost the whole lot or individual rooms from either. As mentioned, it doesn't need the internet or wifi because it has a central hub / screen, but obviously you won't be able to use the app if you don't have wifi / internet.
You can integrate the hot water cylinder or leave it as it is on its own timer if its a simple one or two periods per day.
Previous poster mentioned slow to react, I haven't found this to be an issue, it polls all the wireless stuff every three minutes if I recall so if you have just missed this then occasionally you may have to wait for three mins before the thermostat changes or the boiler comes on following a demand for heat.
With regards to the boiler cycling, this is annoying but I got round this by placing a thermostat in the porch (unheated) on it's own zone. This then gets the profile of the longest other zone, for example the kitchen (easy to do in practice, just copy the schedule over). This then is constantly demanding heat from the boiler but of course it never gets warm enough to switch off, then all the other TRV's modulate down. It works for me.
I would recommend it, it would be easy to convert your existing system, especially if you already have TRV's on the radiators. The evo-home TRV's have the thermostat built in, so no need for a separate one in the room.
If it were me I would connect the zone valves to work together and then let evo-home sort the zone-ing based on the schedules programmed for each room. You have an app as well as a wall mounted display and can easily boost the whole lot or individual rooms from either. As mentioned, it doesn't need the internet or wifi because it has a central hub / screen, but obviously you won't be able to use the app if you don't have wifi / internet.
You can integrate the hot water cylinder or leave it as it is on its own timer if its a simple one or two periods per day.
Previous poster mentioned slow to react, I haven't found this to be an issue, it polls all the wireless stuff every three minutes if I recall so if you have just missed this then occasionally you may have to wait for three mins before the thermostat changes or the boiler comes on following a demand for heat.
With regards to the boiler cycling, this is annoying but I got round this by placing a thermostat in the porch (unheated) on it's own zone. This then gets the profile of the longest other zone, for example the kitchen (easy to do in practice, just copy the schedule over). This then is constantly demanding heat from the boiler but of course it never gets warm enough to switch off, then all the other TRV's modulate down. It works for me.
You need to be clear what you want and expect from it, what's essential and what's a vague wish.
You could possibly put everything on dumb TRVs with a decent stat/programmer in the lounge and be 95% there, with the only manual intervention needed being the occasional tweak of the control in the lounge.
Next step is to make the lounge stat/programmer controllable from afar.
From there it's a slippery slope to as much complication as you want, which eventually turns into either a fun pastime or a PITA.
You could possibly put everything on dumb TRVs with a decent stat/programmer in the lounge and be 95% there, with the only manual intervention needed being the occasional tweak of the control in the lounge.
Next step is to make the lounge stat/programmer controllable from afar.
From there it's a slippery slope to as much complication as you want, which eventually turns into either a fun pastime or a PITA.
Finally getting round to installing smart thermostats in our home. We’ve 2 regular boilers (one for downstairs, other for upstairs and hot water system) operating pressurized systems over 3 floors. Our main aim is to have remote control and maybe a bit of learning, but no intention of having a home-automation set-up. We also have a strong preference for a system without ongoing subscriptions.
Suspect we will need a separate controller for each boiler (?)
We had a Nest in a previous single-boiler house that seemed adequate for our needs. Should we be bothered by the discontinuation of support for the Series 1&2?
Then there’s Hive, for which BG (!) have quoted £512 (Hive hub £56; 3 x mini thermostats £189.60 (one for each floor?); Hive plus (free for year but not needed going forward); install £267. Now I didn’t obtain that quote, so not sure whether that’s going to meet our needs or what's on offer - although the price of the hub seems low compared to that on Amazon for a nano Hub 3. (Local electrical felt he would not be best placed to do the install and suggested BG).
I've seen another thread elsewhere that suggests it's a choice between Tado and Hive. Before we explore further, grateful for any advice or recommendations for systems/cost/who's best placed to install (not me), etc..
Thanks
Suspect we will need a separate controller for each boiler (?)
We had a Nest in a previous single-boiler house that seemed adequate for our needs. Should we be bothered by the discontinuation of support for the Series 1&2?
Then there’s Hive, for which BG (!) have quoted £512 (Hive hub £56; 3 x mini thermostats £189.60 (one for each floor?); Hive plus (free for year but not needed going forward); install £267. Now I didn’t obtain that quote, so not sure whether that’s going to meet our needs or what's on offer - although the price of the hub seems low compared to that on Amazon for a nano Hub 3. (Local electrical felt he would not be best placed to do the install and suggested BG).
I've seen another thread elsewhere that suggests it's a choice between Tado and Hive. Before we explore further, grateful for any advice or recommendations for systems/cost/who's best placed to install (not me), etc..
Thanks
We have the Honeywell evo home for five years and it’s been quite good, one issue fairly early on was the range was from the controller to the upstairs TRV’s where they kept loosing communication.This was resolved by having a second controller upstairs. With regards to the boiler cycling there is a setting for this which I found eliminated this to an acceptable level.
We have evo home for the rads and I just put the hot water tank on a timer.
Evo home is mostly wireless. The controller just plugs into the mains. The TRVs just screw onto the rad valves.
There is a wireless controlled relay that will need to be wired in to your central heating electrics. This is used to tell the boiler when to switch on and to open the valve to send water to the rads.
Finally, if you don't already have one, you'll need a bypass valve added to the boiler circuit.
It's a pretty quick install to get to this point. Frankly you should probably do the setup of the controller, pair all the TRVs with the controller and program the schedule yourself. Doing so will familiarise you with the system, and you'll learn exactly what tweaks can be made and how to make them
Evo home is mostly wireless. The controller just plugs into the mains. The TRVs just screw onto the rad valves.
There is a wireless controlled relay that will need to be wired in to your central heating electrics. This is used to tell the boiler when to switch on and to open the valve to send water to the rads.
Finally, if you don't already have one, you'll need a bypass valve added to the boiler circuit.
It's a pretty quick install to get to this point. Frankly you should probably do the setup of the controller, pair all the TRVs with the controller and program the schedule yourself. Doing so will familiarise you with the system, and you'll learn exactly what tweaks can be made and how to make them
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