Evohome in a large property

Author
Discussion

RockyBalboa

Original Poster:

768 posts

163 months

Monday 20th November 2023
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Does Evohome work in large properties?

After a few years of buying most of the kit, finally setting it up in a three storey property but even on the ground floor some TRVS are losing signal.

Do they need to maintain signal with the touchscreen controller? This is the only the ground floor and if it's losing signal here it won't get any signal on the first and second floors?

Andeh1

7,123 posts

208 months

Monday 20th November 2023
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It is sensitive to range I found in a previous property, sadly Its really old tech now and these limitations do show themselves. I used to be a big fan, then moved house and found heatmiser kit and realised how far the competition had evolved.

RockyBalboa

Original Poster:

768 posts

163 months

Monday 20th November 2023
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Is there any way to boost range as such?

What's the top system these days?

Andeh1

7,123 posts

208 months

Tuesday 21st November 2023
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I really like heatmiser, Drayton also looks to have some interesting kit.. Asking on buildhub as well as I'm here is a good start.

You'll probably want something that can mesh to extend the range. Evohome doesnt have any range extension capability.

Crumpet

3,907 posts

182 months

Tuesday 21st November 2023
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My EvoHome manages ok through very thick, stone walls. The controller is mounted in the centre of the house and I guess the furthest the signal has to go is about 12m, but that’s probably through the best part of five feet of stone.

Personally I don’t think I’d bother again with individual smart TRVs as I feel it’s costing me more. If you have unused rooms, where you don’t want it heated and want it at a sensible low temperature like 10 degrees, I find it’s just a pain in the arse. It’ll just bounce along constantly firing the boiler, heating it to 11 degrees then turning off until it hits 9. Then repeat. Multiply this by three or four unused rooms doing the same thing and your boiler never really switches off.

So now I’ve reverted back to heating the whole house twice a day but only heating the unused rooms to 16; that seems to keep them from dropping to the low set-point when the heating isn’t scheduled.

So, for me at least, they’re a con. Especially if you’ve an old house that’s not very well insulated.

PurpleFox

435 posts

87 months

Tuesday 21st November 2023
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Have you only just set it up and experienced the issue?

If so, it could be interference with some other devices. I have evohome in a large, old, uninsulated house and it works great. Love the flexibility of 12 zone control, time and temperature.

Our house is over 4 floors, signal is fine but I did have significant problems when I installed some zwave stuff which seemed to interfere and cause all the TRVs to loose communication with the central hub. It sorted itself out over a 24 hour period though.

I haven't found anything else that gives the flexibility, has a touch screen in the house (not just via an app), long battery life for the trv's too.

To stop my boiler from cycling on and off, I have one TRV (one zone) on a shelf in the porch which is unheated. During the heated times, so 6am to 8am and 4.30 to 10pm for example, this zone is set to 25 degrees. This tricks the evohome to always demand heat from the boiler because it thinks the porch needs heating. All other TRVs then slowly turn down and provide an even, constant heat, rather than on,off,on,off as above. The boiler then modulates down to tickover.

Works for me.