Best Wifi enabled thermostat

[dickymint]

ATV said:

Hi guys,

I'm looking to replacing an old boiler (but not the radiators). First quote has come in at £2,600 for a Vaillent Eco Tec Pro 28KW

The above price includes labour/installation charges and VAT but doesn't include replacing the old HoneyWell thermostat.

The house is a 3 bed terrace, 1 bath, 1 shower, 7 radiators. Yorkshire.

Could anyone tell me if the quote seems reasonable to you? It's the first quote I've had and it seemed a tad excessive especially as the plumber said he couldn't replace the thermostat for that price.

I wanted a WiFi enabled one so he's recommended either a Huawei or a NEST product (but not advised which model). If anyone has any advice on what's a decent thermostat to go for, let me know.

Thank you

Assuming it’s a straightforward old combo out and new fitted that sounds quite steep! Boiler is about £1200 (inc VAT so they’re charging £1400 Labour plus bits and pieces. Job should only take a day.

[Torquey]

J4CKO said:

Hi, was going to start a thread but saw this one.

Could do with modernising our heating, am not averse to a new boiler, its an ancient traditional Valiant, we have been here 20 plus years and it was by no means new then but it works and has given good service, British Gas give us dire warnings about spares availability but it plods on. separate hot water cylinder.

The house is a fair sized 1930s 4 bed detached, well insulated and double glazed.

We are spending quite a bit on gas, my wife has traditionally controlled the heating but she seems to just adjust it on the thermostat which is a very old Danfoss one in the hall and there is a Potterton controller thingy in a cupboard int he kitchen, its on from seven until bedtime. We have had thermostatic rad valves put on a few radiators.

Its chewing through gas at like £5 a day, at the moment none of the kids are home so we are heating bedrooms that dont need heating, its on during the day when we arent there, I do work from home some days.

So wondering what to do, dotn want to change the boiler just yet but the smart aspect appeals and being able to control it from a phone rather than rooting round in a cupboard, being able to do it by room would be good.

So what do I need ? Dont want to spend a fortune, are the rad thermostats for these controlled by the app ?

- I'm not much help here but do you really need smart TRV's? Surely normal ones would do and be more efficient than none, especially if they don't need adjusting often (while the kids are away).

- I'm not sure if a smart thermostat would be an easy fit on an old boiler but its worth pursuing. It sounds like you have your heating on way more than need be.

-Then there's the boiler trade off. Expensive to replace but likely to save you some money.

[Fore Left]

Piersman2 said:

S6PNJ said:

ADogg said:

I do wonder out of morbid curiosity if wiser is still ste or not?!

In what way do you think Wiser might still be ste? I have it as a system and save for one or two teething problems (some of my own doing) I'm happy with it.

1. MeToo.

I had the pre-cursor to the Wiser system which worked Ok but was a little clunky and the hardware lasted about 3 years before it went FUBAR.

I phoned Drayton and they immediately offered to upgrade my old system to the new Wiser kit free of charge.

Fitted in an hour, works perfectly , effectively a wifi enabled version of a traditional 24/7 timer for heating and water. But it can also do a lot more if you want it to.

I did try a Nest before any of the others, and took it back within the afternoon. The fitting instructions were woeful, the instructions clear as mud and then I realised that it just wouldn't work for me. I don't need a system that 'learns' , I just want it to do exactly what I tell it to.

MeToo #2

I had a Nest. It is a victory of form over function, style over substance etc., etc. The lack of integrated TRVs mean it's essentially a glorified dumb programmer. I ended up disabling most of the energy saving & learning functions as they were implemented in ways that made no sense. I replaced it with a Wiser. The TRVs are a bit noisier than others but other than a couple that read ridiculously high - like, this room must be a sauna high - I've had absolutely no issues with it. It can even be controlled locally (i.e. on the same wifi) if the internet connection is down.

[AKT]

dmsims said:

Why the obsession with Homekit? (it's going to die)

We have apple everything and it works better than others with that setup

[dmsims]

AKT said:

dmsims said:

Why the obsession with Homekit? (it's going to die)

We have apple everything and it works better than others with that setup

Nope - you'll have to explain

[AKT]

dmsims said:

Nope - you'll have to explain

I don't have to, but I will. If I say 'Hey Alex/Google, etc," nothing happens. If I say 'Hey Siri" then my watch, phone HomePod etc hear it and execute the command. Almost everything that has HomeKit also has Alexa/Google so even if you're right and it's dead, I can move to another platform then, but for now I want to stick with HomeKit, which works really well, just there are fewer devices to pick from. I could buy a load of amazon dots but it's not a practical solution as Amazon and Google don't really cover where I live in the same way they do in the UK/US so I'd have to 'hack' them and they won't work as well as they do as a result. I could go on, but it's heading way off topic, suffice to say I'd like some HomeKit suggestions please.

Thanks

A

[21TonyK]

J4CKO said:

Could do with modernising our heating...

Same situation here. 35+ year old conventional boiler and hot water cylinder.

I went with HIVE and have been very happy with it so far. Took me an hour to fit and it worked straight out the box.

One significant change i made was making sure that hot water was always heated when the heating was on, not just heating. In the past it was always a case of flicking the immersion on to top it up.

Compared to last year our gas usage for July-Oct was 411, this year 343 (meter reading not £) and our combined gas and electric for the same period is £90 less.

Controlling via the app is okay, more useful using the website to programme.

Add in a few light bulbs and plug tops and Alexa for control to override or increase temps etc makes it more novel.

I reckon we'll recoup the cost in 12 months.

Edited by 21TonyK on Wednesday 20th November 07:35

[paulwf]

ADogg said:

I do wonder out of morbid curiosity if wiser is still ste or not?!

I have it for over a year.

It's been pretty good but has needed to be fiddled with occasionally. 3 TRVs have had to be deleted and readded to recalibrate them so they shut off the radiator. They just stopped fully pushing down on the pin. One of these was after a month on new Drayton TRV body and the other two on older TRVs

I wouldn't want to fit it in someone's house as a professional, you would likely to have to make return visits

[dhutch]

[quote=paulwf]

I have it for over a year. {/quote]
We have it, but only the controller (heating and hw cyl) and it has been fine.

Mini faff doing the wifi sync dance with my phone at the start, room stat seems to display out of date temp for about 1 second each time you turn it on till it re-updates, but otherwise it has been fit-and-forget really and just keeps the house a nice temperature.
During the week it just does its think, at weekends the program is for 'cool' as we are often out of the house all day if not for the whole weekend, and then we boost if we are actually in the house. Works well. We have also used the 'away mode' to save heating is we are away for a few days, only slight downside if you have to turn it back manually a few hours before returning, as there is no way to set it to automatically revert and the house takes a good few hours to respond.

I have enabled both 'comfort' mode which tries to guess when it needs to fire up to get to temperature for the start time, rather than start heating at the start time and that seems to work well although its hard to know how much money you are (or aren't) saving over setting the start time earlier to manually compensate for response time.

I have also enabled 'eco' mode which seems a bit more vague in its objectives and or function but seems to just get on and do its thing.


Daniel

[dhutch]

21TonyK said:

Compared to last year our gas usage for July-Oct was 411, this year 343 (meter reading not £) and our combined gas and electric for the same period is £90 less.

Thats not a bad little 20% gas saving and £90 elec saving. Fair play.


Daniel

[21TonyK]

dhutch said:

Thats not a bad little 20% gas saving and £90 elec saving. Fair play.


Daniel

Suitably impressed with it. And (if anyones not seen it) Hive dimmable bulbs are down to £9.99 on Amazon.

[sma]

Finally had enough of my Nest thermostat, the v2 was great in our smaller 900sqft home, the v3 not so in our new house. Really looking at being able to control individual rooms, is the Honeywell system due an imminent update, or shall I just buy now for a 14 rad system.

[shady lee]

sma said:

is the Honeywell system due an imminent update,

Million Dollar question.....but no release what so ever yet on the grapevine.

[Jambo85]

AKT said:

What is the best (reliable) HomeKit thermostat.

Heatmiser Neo supports HomeKit. I have had it set up for years and I think it's excellent, but I'm in a minority on here. They don't make TRV heads but you can fit UFH actuators hard wired to the thermostat or you can plumb in zone valves.

[Paddymcc]

Does anyone know of a way to actually record boiler useage/time on etc with Hive?

So easy for them to implement their data to show times and dates but they wont.

I was thinking of a smart plug connected to the boilers wall plug which then uploaded the on/off times to an online spreadhsteet via IFTT

[rdjohn]

I was having issues with Evohome hot water so have attempted complete reset. Water now working OK.

HOWEVER, I have an issue with 3 valves - I need to unbind them to clear, but whenever I try to hold the button for 15 secs, it just goes to Language of the settings menu. I have tried removing batteries but just cannot get round this issue.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong? Or how to rectify?

Thanks

[shady lee]

rdjohn said:

I was having issues with Evohome hot water so have attempted complete reset. Water now working OK.

HOWEVER, I have an issue with 3 valves - I need to unbind them to clear, but whenever I try to hold the button for 15 secs, it just goes to Language of the settings menu. I have tried removing batteries but just cannot get round this issue.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong? Or how to rectify?

Thanks

https://ensupport.getconnected.honeywellhome.com/s/article/How-to-clear-the-binding-on-HR92UK-TRV?language=en_US

[rdjohn]

shady lee said:

https://ensupport.getconnected.honeywellhome.com/s...

Is does not tell you how to get around not getting a SUCCESS message repeatedly.

On the controller I keep getting that it is bound, but, in reality, it is not. The controller says that it’s bound, but not the TRV- just says Binding.

[ADogg]

paulwf said:

I have it for over a year.

It's been pretty good but has needed to be fiddled with occasionally. 3 TRVs have had to be deleted and readded to recalibrate them so they shut off the radiator. They just stopped fully pushing down on the pin. One of these was after a month on new Drayton TRV body and the other two on older TRVs

I wouldn't want to fit it in someone's house as a professional, you would likely to have to make return visits

I had it for under a year, one of the 12 TRVs would need resyncing at least weekly, al the batteries has to be replaced at least once, some of the TRVs randomly stuck on off their own accord with the biggest room temperature we saw was 28oC despite it being set to off as we were in Fuerteventura, this was day 2 of a week long holiday and filled me with nothing but happiness and glee.

It was set over 4 storeys with the hub/boiler pretty central but we had at least one range extender on each floor, and a couple of floors with 2. Still the signal readings were weak (I think they removed this from the app in the end).

It was pretty much when they released it however so I’d initially hoped it was teething problems but things didn’t get better despite them replacing the whole system.

It couldn’t really have got much worse than my time with it so am/was intrigued to hear it’s got better!

[essayer]

rdjohn said:

I was having issues with Evohome hot water so have attempted complete reset. Water now working OK.

HOWEVER, I have an issue with 3 valves - I need to unbind them to clear, but whenever I try to hold the button for 15 secs, it just goes to Language of the settings menu. I have tried removing batteries but just cannot get round this issue.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong? Or how to rectify?

Thanks

Press the button a couple of times, the screen says the zone name
Then press and hold for 15 seconds
Should clear it.
Then delete the zone from the controller and recreate