you can get smart TRVs but its a sticking plaster solution - you should try and balance the system so it works properly in the first place. If you’re pushing the boiler just to heat a couple of rooms a bit higher because its unbalanced, you’re wasting energy.
check your boiler - assuming you’re not replacing that - and if you can find one that isn’t just on/off but can control the modulation of the boiler too that would be effcient. Combined with a balanced system you’ll be able to run at lower flow tempertures to get the same room heat and save energy/money
Wiser (by Schneider) is outstanding, I've had it in two homes for last 7 or 8 years, absolutely no issues at all. Not particularly cheap to set up, you'll need a control box to operate it all and a WiFi thermostatic radiator valve on each radiator. You can get room thermostats too but you don't actually need them, we use one in our guest bedroom so guests can control the temperature in their room directly.
You set the temperature you want in each room and schedule it per room, very simple to operate. All run from your phone, can control remotely too, lots of good features like Away Mode do when you go away it just turns everything down to whatever you want it to be. Then when you're coming home, you can switch Away Mode off remotely so by the time you get in the house is warm and you have hot water.
Don’t buy a Nest, it’s been discontinued. Tado is the smartest of them all but isn’t cheap and for the smarts you pay £30!/ year. If your boiler supports OpenTherm then Tado can adjust your flow temps on the fly which is where a lot of money is saved, Tado can check the outside temperature and then turn the boiler temp up or down, the lower the better for a boiler for efficiency. The TRVs are also great for closing off rooms or fixing cold spots in the house. For example I turn down our loft room in the evenings because nobody is up there, which means the boiler isn’t working to heat 3 floors. The app is very slick also.
If you have a hot water tank, you could get Honeywell Evohome. There is no subscription, the app is slow. Expensive setup but it was the only smart thermostat that can tell me the hot water tank temperature with their sensor probe.
if you don't have a water tank then Hive, drayton wiser are fine.
https://preview.redd.it/8koovq1a8a2h1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac36f02512f1d2e48775a8b804ac2d1c74ea7ddd
yeah the app is bad in comparison to others, but HA will be out of reach for many. I'll be hooking the setup in HA with the wireless debugger, but yeah there is an cloud Add-on which I found not so reliable.
Overall I like what evohome can offer me, drayton wiser was very close, but they are not releasing a sensor probe anytime soon.
This looks cool. Can you access the control from your phone? Can this also set the temperature for each room? Im guessing by controlling the flow through each radiator
https://preview.redd.it/t14s1brwsb2h1.png?width=1096&format=png&auto=webp&s=b1720e89dc96b7add406ed42a0d3825b30f45842
Yes, there is a App, both the screen and App can set the schedule and on demand changes. If you want it fast, the screen is direct. The App is very slow and I believe it's badly designed to suit the screen device style.
It's not as fancy as Tado, Hive and Drayton app, but Evohome is smart not to reboil the hot water tank if it's above 50oC. All other manufacturer that handle hot water control are dumb, they just turn it on regardless.
Able to see the temperature helps us put boost when needs be
I moved house a couple of years ago and went from Hive to Nest. They work equally well but the one difference I wasn't aware of is the lack of the boost feature on Nest.
It's so handy being able to wack the temp up for an hour without needing to remember to turn it down again or put it back on schedule etc..
One question when you say the app is slow; are you still using the branded Nest app or Google Home?
We have a nest which doesn't have a subscription.
You can get smart thermostats for each radiator which would let you set individual target temps for each room. They work similarly to the dumb twisty valves on radiators, just with more fine grained control. Both Hive and Tado make them.
If you’re going for smart heating, don’t just get a thermostat, it’s honestly not worth it and aside from remote control, doesn’t do anything (early Hive systems were guilty of this)
You need to look for a system where it includes the valves too, so only individual rooms get heated.
Look at Tado, although I think they have a subscription now as I was an early adopter I got it free
The DIY route would be buying way cheaper valves/thermostat, a small computer like a Raspberry Pi, it runs locally, no cloud, no subscriptions, did my house for £300 and I save about 30% compared to a normal “dumb” system
There’s a system called Home Assistant (there’s a subreddit for it) it’s free, as long as you’re on your home network, you can control your heating, lights etc.
There’s an app you can download, connect to the device that works as a hub, and create a custom dashboard (see attached image) it’s a little bit of faf for a long term gain
https://preview.redd.it/1jhgex1iva2h1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42086fa404283c2669eecab8a4a57ea4afb4e487
Your other option is to look for any devices that say “HomeKit” if you’re an iPhone user or “Google Home” if you’re an Android user
Hive has a subscription free option which does everything I need (thermostat, boost heating, hot water cylinder, scheduling, remote access).
My house came with one, but the app is a bit pants - although it has gotten better in the last year.
Look at Tado, I hear good things, but it's more sophisticated.
I have Tado and it works well. No subscription for the main point of controlling the temperature.
Can set different days and times, if you get the radiator controls, gives control of the different rooms independent of the main control.
Can have it so as you get close to home it'll start heating the house/rooms as needed.
I have Tado, you can just manually put the heating on with an app if you want it warm when you get home and dont want to pay for the subscription. I put it in myself, just wired into the boiler, the instructions come in the box.
We dont have any smart radiator valves so it just goes of the wifi thermostat that you put in whatever room you want, but I'm guess you can get more than one of them or something that you can monitor/split the heating up by floor.
I have Hive. Subscription is not needed, not even sure what it does. The TRV can keep rooms at a set temp. Each room can have 6 periods of the day set to a certain temp. Also, each TRV can be set to “call” for each heat, ie, turn the boiler on, or just open the valve and let the hot water warm the room up. Can be controlled outside of the home too. Works great.
I have HIVE and it's great, I live alone and have an erratic schedule so it's great to put the heating on when I'm on the way home etc
I can also use it for lighting and smart plugs etc.
My boiler is a Worcester Bosch and I've got one of their wireless thermostats.
It's fine, it works. I can set and change schedules, there's a boost function that raises the temperature (and you can set how long it lasts).
The accompanying app also stopped you the pressure reading, which is very helpful right now as I seem to have a very small leak somewhere which is causing the pressure to go down, so I know when to top it up.
The only problem I'm having is between my ears where I keep forgetting to get that leak sorted!
I've got Hive and there's no sub to work it. I don't have smart TRV's fitted, however the app works fine and i can turn the heating on/off at the press of a button, and i have it linked to Alexa in case i'm too lazy to pick up my phone.
I do need to go around and manually adjust the TRV's we have if i don't want them too hot or on at all (they're set to Max atm on advice from the chap who installed our new radiators. They said setting to max prevents the little pin from possibly jamming due to not being used)
I have a Meross smart thermostat. I took the old wires out of the thermostat controller by the boiler and plugged them into a Meross box - easy to follow a youtube video. It connects to WiFi, so now we can use our phones to set the temperature, scheduling etc. Cheap, effective and no subscriptions.
Downsides are you'll need decent WiFi near your boiler and the external temperature probe is limited to a few meters away from the boiler.
As for the temperature differences between the floors, it should be easy/cheap to install thermostatic valves on the radiators (i.e. so they can be adjusted to the desired setting)
I have Hive, but I would prefer something that support weather compensation from my boiler company (Vailant)
Weather Compensation runs the boiler at an appropriate temperature based on how cold it is outside, still to meet your target indoor temperature but the boiler is on to a lower setting. Hive doesn't do this, it's either on or off. Gas boilers are more efficient running to a lower temperature.
I have a hive but no subscription (Had it for nearly a decade now), is this a new thing with them?
It works fine with my phone. Can turn it one, off, set the heating times and check the temp. One benefit is the unit being easily taken off the wall. When I had my son we put it in his room to ensure that room was at the correct temp for a baby (old draft house so just because the hallway downstairs is the correct temperature it doesn't mean everywhere else is)
I have a Hive and there’s no subscription. It does what I need it to do, I’m not interested in any of the other upgrade features.
Put heating on, change temp, turn it off. Move thermostat as and when you want. We keep ours in the geckos room and soon it will move to the baby’s room.
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