Best Wifi enabled thermostat

[Gary C]

page3 said:

Has anyone any experience of Radbot TRV’s (https://www.radbot.com/). They look like an interesting alternative to the usual programmable “smart” TRV’s, but I’m not sure how well they’ll work.

Like their advertising

"Unlike smart thermostats, Radbot was created to reduce energy usage"

Oh, so smart stats were created to increase energy useage ?

But, the only thing I would be concerned about is the materials. I had some cheap self managed TRV's and after a year of temperature cycling, they cracked and failed.

[nunpuncher]

A few questions for those with Tado running the TRVs.

If you are in a house with brick internal walls are there any connection issues?

In lager rooms with 2 or more radiators should you run a smart TRV on each radiator or is one fine?

If you don't have smart TRVs in some rooms do those radiators just heat along with whatever radiator calls for heat?

[Gary C]

nunpuncher said:

A few questions for those with Tado running the TRVs.

If you are in a house with brick internal walls are there any connection issues?

In lager rooms with 2 or more radiators should you run a smart TRV on each radiator or is one fine?

If you don't have smart TRVs in some rooms do those radiators just heat along with whatever radiator calls for heat?

One of our stats occasionally looses connection, but it appears to be due to having the base unit too near a WiFi hub as the others, even on the third floor done have any problems.

The bathrooms have conventional ones as they also come on with the hot water and just heat and regulate themselves whenever the hot water or another radiator/room stat calls for heat.

One thing I found with tado, get a bigger hall radiator. Normally you slightly undersize that one as it controls the master thermostat and you dont want the hall to heat quick and turn the CH off before any other room has heated. With a smart stat on the hall rad, you can put a bigger rad in and heat the hall much quicker.

Need a thermobypass thingy though to maintain sufficient flow so that if its just a single rad running on low, there is enough flow to light the boiler.

[AC43]

dickymint said:

AC43 said:

rossyl said:

Thanks guys, a positive response for Tado, Wiser and Evohome.

Has anyone had NEGATIVE experiences with their system?

Thanks

Funny you should say that......after 3.5 years of faultless service, my Evohome system had a massive burp on Saturday. I woke up to a cold home and went to investigate. The first thing I noticed that the boiler was off, the second was that all the electronic controls on the manifold for the UFH were flashing red and the TRV's upstairs were displaying a comms fault.

For reasons not clear to me, the Evohome controller had lost communication with everything. I did a soft restart and the 6 x UFH heating zones came back but not the rads upstairs or the water. But that was liveable with as at the weekend we're mostly downstairs and I have an immersion heater for the water.

Went to the Honeywell site on Monday morning and by lunchtime had an extremely well qualified heating engineer on site. It took him about an hour to reprogramme it whilst explaining all sorts of aspects of how it worked that I'd never fully understood.

I've booked him back in for next month to do an annual service on my boiler, HW tank & Evohome system.

The moral of the story is that (1) if you are relying on a system like this and it goes wrong you're on your own (or at least I am) (2) Honeywell's technical back up is extremely good and (3) it's a good idea to treat the Evohome system to an annual service along with your boiler & cylinder.

PS; we never did work out why it dropped but at least now I have a decent guy to call out if it ever happens again and I now have an annual service plan.

Edited by AC43 on Tuesday 18th January 12:48

Basically it's costing you money annually now hopefully the call out was under warranty or you had to pay to get it running without knowing what the problem was....i wouldn't like that!

I paid for an hour of his time to reprogramme it. The most likely culprit was the (battery powered) sensor for the HW temp. Very old weak batteries, never changed.

I'll get the guy back once a year to service the boiler, cylinder & Evohome. He's already spotted two things that need to be sorted - the lack of an external expansion vessel (ffs...) and a leaking cold water valve. Plus he advised us on a more efficient way to run the UFH and hot water which should save more money than it'll cost to have him out once a year to chack things over and issue a Gas Safe cert.

I service my cars and see this as similar. £300pa isn't much in the scheme of things.

[S100HP]

A little help if I may.

I'm new to nest. I've set up a schedule as below, but have the learning functionality turned on. Will that learning overwrite my schedule once it's learnt, or should I be deleting my schedule?

[nunpuncher]

S100HP said:

A little help if I may.

I'm new to nest. I've set up a schedule as below, but have the learning functionality turned on. Will that learning overwrite my schedule once it's learnt, or should I be deleting my schedule?

It will overwrite your schedule. Lots of people on here seem to say it's best to turn the learning function off. I always had it off when we had Nest.

[nunpuncher]

Gary C said:

One of our stats occasionally looses connection, but it appears to be due to having the base unit too near a WiFi hub as the others, even on the third floor done have any problems.

The bathrooms have conventional ones as they also come on with the hot water and just heat and regulate themselves whenever the hot water or another radiator/room stat calls for heat.

One thing I found with tado, get a bigger hall radiator. Normally you slightly undersize that one as it controls the master thermostat and you dont want the hall to heat quick and turn the CH off before any other room has heated. With a smart stat on the hall rad, you can put a bigger rad in and heat the hall much quicker.

Need a thermobypass thingy though to maintain sufficient flow so that if its just a single rad running on low, there is enough flow to light the boiler.

At the moment I have the thermostat in the living room but also have two radiators in there with a smart thermostat on each (all grouped as 1 room in the app). The master bedroom, office, kids rooms and dining room also all on smart TRVs while the hall, kitchen, downstairs bathroom, ensuite and spare room are all running on regular TRVs wound back in most cases.

I'm not convinced I've got the best set up at the moment. The thermostat seems a bit redundant being in a room with the smart TRVs so I'm thinking about reverting the dining room to a standard TRV and putting the thermostat in there as it's a bit of an open area with the staircase. Then stick the 2 spare smart TRVs I have in the spare room and either the kitchen or the hall so It's really only the bathrooms that are getting constant heat.

[B'stard Child]

Was recommended to this thread by PH'R Locoblade

Long post bear with me

Got up this morning to find heating and water had been on all night

Existing controller Danfoss (20 years old) has a blank LCD screen and the heating and Hot water lights are lit has defaulted to everything on all the time

Unit in question (Not my picture I googled the failure mode)



Reset makes no difference so along with the Google help it seems replacement is required

I'm pretty sure it had a std "UK Backplate" so swapping out should be easy (previous controller didn't and I remember the headache of converting the wiring)

It looks like £60 - £80 for a new controller

Is it worth going for a wifi enabled set up to control future wifi rad stats? (current rad stats are also years old in the main and some occasional stick shut so replacement was in the plan for summer when I can drain the CH system and replace them all) or should I just replace with a simple controller

Boiler - 6 year old condensing Boiler (in Kitchen)
Vented HW Tank
2 way valve in Airing cupboard (With HW Tank) so can do Heating or HW or Both
3 Speed grundfos Pump (set to slowest speed)
Single roomstat in the hallway (pinned on max for ever because the oversize rad in the hall turns of the heating for the whole house if it's not pinned on max)

House has 1 rad in every room (all with TRV's except the kitchen which has a small rad running without TRV and manual valve fully open as a heat soak if all the TRV's close down - it's the coldest room in the house due to "Cat Flap"

Rooms	Floor	Rad	Control
Kitchen	Ground	1	Manual
Hall	Ground	1	TRV
Downstairs Toilet	Ground	1	TRV
Utility Room	Ground	1	TRV
Front Hall	Ground	1	TRV
Dining Room	Ground	1	TRV
Living Room	Ground	1	TRV
Landing	First Floor
Bedroom 1	First Floor	1	TRV
Ensuite	First Floor	1	TRV
Bedroom 2	First Floor	1	TRV
Bedroom 3	First Floor	1	TRV
Bedroom 4	First Floor	1	TRV
Main Bathroom	First Floor	1	TRV

Looking to replace with smarter system that can control rooms in a more useful (possibly energy efficient way

Example

Heating is on 6.00 am to 8.30am and again 4.30 pm to 9.00 pm M-F (Different timing on Weekend)

Living room & Dining Rooms are heated in the morning M-F and it's not used but is used in the evening so programmable TRV's would enable me to change that to not heated morning only evenings

Was starting to look at the "Drayton Wiser" system because works with Alexa (which is already in most rooms) and this thread hasn't helped because too many options make my head hurt!!!

Thoughts/recommendations appreciated

[six wheels]

I need to add an Evohome HR92 to the towel rail in my bathroom.

Unfortunately the towel rail is at the foot of the bath so there's a splash risk.

Does anyone know of a cover or similar solution to protect the TRV, please?

I once saw something on eBay but cannot find that now.


Cheers, Steve.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Problem with covering it, it will read the temp inside the cover unless you vent it

[essayer]

There’s an anti-vandalism cover (Honeywell AVS90) which adds effectively another layer of plastic, it won’t make it waterproof but would add extra layer of protection

[Gary C]

nunpuncher said:

Gary C said:

One of our stats occasionally looses connection, but it appears to be due to having the base unit too near a WiFi hub as the others, even on the third floor done have any problems.

The bathrooms have conventional ones as they also come on with the hot water and just heat and regulate themselves whenever the hot water or another radiator/room stat calls for heat.

One thing I found with tado, get a bigger hall radiator. Normally you slightly undersize that one as it controls the master thermostat and you dont want the hall to heat quick and turn the CH off before any other room has heated. With a smart stat on the hall rad, you can put a bigger rad in and heat the hall much quicker.

Need a thermobypass thingy though to maintain sufficient flow so that if its just a single rad running on low, there is enough flow to light the boiler.

At the moment I have the thermostat in the living room but also have two radiators in there with a smart thermostat on each (all grouped as 1 room in the app). The master bedroom, office, kids rooms and dining room also all on smart TRVs while the hall, kitchen, downstairs bathroom, ensuite and spare room are all running on regular TRVs wound back in most cases.

I'm not convinced I've got the best set up at the moment. The thermostat seems a bit redundant being in a room with the smart TRVs so I'm thinking about reverting the dining room to a standard TRV and putting the thermostat in there as it's a bit of an open area with the staircase. Then stick the 2 spare smart TRVs I have in the spare room and either the kitchen or the hall so It's really only the bathrooms that are getting constant heat.

How does it start the boiler if the stat is in the living room ?

I have found with Tado, that it doesn't play well with traditional TRV's unless they are in isolated rooms so cant affect whats going on.

[AW10]

Often times towel radiators are on the bypass loop so are deliberately not fitted with TRVs.

[six wheels]

AW10 said:

Often times towel radiators are on the bypass loop so are deliberately not fitted with TRVs.

Oh really? I think I need a heating engineer 🤔

[Sheepshanks]

six wheels said:

AW10 said:

Often times towel radiators are on the bypass loop so are deliberately not fitted with TRVs.

Oh really? I think I need a heating engineer ??

Older systems were done like that but modern ones aren’t usually as boilers have a built in bypass.

You can tell if a bathroom rad is being used as a bypass if it gets warm when just the hot water is on. And it’ll usually get hot for a couple of mins as the hot water motorised valve closes when the cylinder is up to temp so the boiler water is just pushed through that rad while the pump is doing its over-run.

[Gary C]

Sheepshanks said:

six wheels said:

AW10 said:

Often times towel radiators are on the bypass loop so are deliberately not fitted with TRVs.

Oh really? I think I need a heating engineer ??

Older systems were done like that but modern ones aren’t usually as boilers have a built in bypass.

You can tell if a bathroom rad is being used as a bypass if it gets warm when just the hot water is on. And it’ll usually get hot for a couple of mins as the hot water motorised valve closes when the cylinder is up to temp so the boiler water is just pushed through that rad while the pump is doing its over-run.

Our bathroom rads are fitted on a third non-motorised valve leg so are on with either the central heating or the water but they have TRV's (non smart ones) and the system also has a pressure/temp bypass valve. It also has a smart pump which controls its speed to maintain a diff.

The key to making my house work, was replacing the undersized hall rad and fitting a smart TRV

[shady lee]

After 5 years with evohome I've sold/selling the lot on eBay and made the move to tado.

No real reason, evohome has been faultless.

I simply want more modem geofencing, temperature recording and more modern looking hardware.

Hopefully I don't have another "wiser" range experience, but we now have a full mesh setup so should be ok.

If anyone's interested there's still some y87 sensors and the colour WiFi controller left on the e to the bay.

£434 for the full tado kit and trvs from their "refurbished" range, looking forward to more features out the box rather than using 3rd party apps to make certain things work.

I'll keep you updated.

[ADogg]

Fwiw ShadyLee I stuck with Wiser (I used to have a B&B and we spoke about it lots!) and in my house with a mesh WiFi system it’s been a peach to use, compared to what it was!

[LocoBlade]

I'm ditching my Geniushub setup and getting Vaillant weather compensation controls fitted to my Vaillant Ecotec boiler. As with most third party systems they have lots of bells and whistles with fancy control strategies and room by room zoning etc but since buying it 18 months ago I've learned that's not always the most efficient way to heat the house, and the big kicker is that fundamentally they still control the boiler in the same way as a £20 mechanical stat does, just switching the boiler on when it needs heat and off when it doesn't. There's no weather or load compensation to modulate the boiler water temperatures to suit the demand when it's milder outside etc so the boiler is always throwing out water at ~70c regardless of what the house actually needs, relying on room stats to shut it all down when it starts going over temperature meaning the boiler cycles a lot more than it otherwise would, making it less efficient. I know some third party controls like Evohome support Opentherm load compensation which is great if your boiler also supports it, but manufacturers like Vaillant don't (at least not in the UK) and many of the controls don't either so for many of us I think third party controls are a bit of a false economy.

Apparently with properly set up weather compensating boiler / controls (Veissmann seem to be the best, followed by Vaillant), you can run the system without ANY indoor thermostats at all because the boiler/controls will modulate the heat output into the heating circuits into the house to reach an equilibrium of heat in = heat out at the desired target temperature (say 20c), and the weather compensation will adjust the output based on outside temperatures so the inside temperature will remain the same without actually knowing what the inside temperature is.

[Sheepshanks]

LocoBlade said:

Apparently with properly set up weather compensating boiler / controls (Veissmann seem to be the best, followed by Vaillant), you can run the system without ANY indoor thermostats at all because the boiler/controls will modulate the heat output into the heating circuits into the house to reach an equilibrium of heat in = heat out at the desired target temperature (say 20c), and the weather compensation will adjust the output based on outside temperatures so the inside temperature will remain the same without actually knowing what the inside temperature is.

I’m not sure what the right term is, but do these boilers modulate down far enough for that to work effectively? I guess it also depends how many rads are in the circuit.

I recall trying weather comp on the Worcester Wave system in daughter’s house and I think it ran the pump all the time as it needs to continually monitor flow and return temps - and her boiler is one of the last without one of the new variable power pumps.