Smart thermostat and clever radiator valves?

[GnarlyOldGoatDude]

Our ancient thermostat is playing up and I’ve started thinking about getting one of those fancy Hive/ Nest things instead. I’ve seen they also do smart radiator TRVs- our study is always freezing as it’s the end of the line to our ancient heating system. Previously we’ve just put enormous jumpers and hats on when we’re in there, but thanks to Covid we are using it on a daily basis and it’s COLD.

I’m wondering if this could be the answer to our prayers?

Any recommendations for a smart thermostat system? Especially one which has the potential to independently control and boost the temperature to one particular room?

Thank you

Following, I've seen the gadgets for sale but wouldn't know how to set them up so hoping someone does

@Summersdreaming yes they’re all in Black Friday deals at the moment so it seems a great time to snap them up. If only I knew what I was actually looking for

I am also interested in this. At the moment I manually turned off the rooms I don't need in the morning but obviously it's a hassle.

If anyone can recommend thermostats for individual room's electric underfloor heating that would be good too, preferably one that can be integrated into an overall system. I need 5 and want to go mid range but with wifi/app control.

Yes I like the idea of app and Alexa control too!
We just need someone who knows about these things to find the thread now

Hi op, might be worth flushing the heating system first to clean it and get rid of any air. You can add a cleaning product that keeps circulating. Can’t think of the name just now. We just did that and found the radiators are now responding much better to the trvs, which I had thought were bust. Even in our bedroom which is the end of the line. Then if you do get a smart system as well you can have confidence the rads will respond to it.

@SilenzioBruno thank you, we did have a plumber out and full flush/ cleaning last year. Fairly new boiler too.

The problem seems to be mainly that our old dial thermostat is quite hard to control, and also where it’s situated in the hallway, the house thinks it’s warm when the study is still freezing.

We have a Honeywell Evohome system. Not the cheapest but granular control of every radiator in the house plus hot water. Works with Alexa plus it's own app and control panel. I'm

@rslsys thanks that’s one of the ones I’d seen too.

Who installs it, a plumber or an electrician?

I would definitely not recommend HIVE for this, we got the radiator valves to go with a HIVE system we already had installed and they never worked well. HIVE ended up refunding us after a long time and a lot of complaints. The concept is brilliant but they just don't work.

Honeywell Evohome here too. We combined it with all new radiators, so the plumber/heating engineer did it all. The boiler is on 5.30am to midnight and each radiator calls for heat at different times and to different temperatures. Controlled by the main monitor and an app.
We didn't link it to hot water, as that's already controlled separately.

The central thermostat was our problem too, in the living room but when downstairs was toasty, the bedrooms were a good 2-3 degrees colder! When the rad in the office bedroom stopped completely was the incentive to get it all done.

[quote GnarlyOldGoatDude]@rslsys thanks that’s one of the ones I’d seen too.

Who installs it, a plumber or an electrician?[/quote]
Well we did it ourselves, but we're a bit like that! Rad valves were an easy swap. Boiler wiring took a bit of head scratching but made sense after a bit of thought. We had motorised valves for upstairs and downstairs circuits, these were paralleled up and controlled from the one controller. Didn't need to involve a plumber in any 'wet' work at all. Fitted it 4 years ago to a heating system that was already 20 years old with no problems. Just recently had to replace one rad controller recently as it had failed but other than that, no problems at all.

@aksiendks thank you, that’s useful to know

We have an Ideal Halo smart thermostat, when we had a central heating system installed in our new house.

DH and I went away for a couple of days leaving DD at home and we were able to adjust the heating from 200 miles away using the app. Amazing!

@WhatsitWiggle

Honeywell Evohome here too. We combined it with all new radiators, so the plumber/heating engineer did it all. The boiler is on 5.30am to midnight and each radiator calls for heat at different times and to different temperatures. Controlled by the main monitor and an app. We didn't link it to hot water, as that's already controlled separately.

Thank you, will have a look at Honeywell

@Warmduscher

We have an Ideal Halo smart thermostat, when we had a central heating system installed in our new house.

DH and I went away for a couple of days leaving DD at home and we were able to adjust the heating from 200 miles away using the app. Amazing!

Thank you- does it have individual room/ radiator control?

No, we adjust the thermostatic valves for that.

TRVs should - in theory - work in your situation. A setting of 3 is supposed to equate to a room temp of 20 degrees C. You could lower the temp in intervening or any unused rooms to 2 and raise the study to 4. What happens in practice is people feel the radiator is cold and crank up to 5 (they cut in and out, so just leave them).

Hive etc as a pp said depend on where they or their sensors are located. If they are in a cold room, they think the whole house is cold and vice versa. They are internet connected, so can be used remotely.

You could consider zoning for colder/warmer parts of the house, but that may be a bit of a big job.

Where I was working (in a house) we had a hive system. It was an absolute bloody nightmare, I'd never have one!

I have a Honeywell thermostat, it's a unit that can either be freestanding or mounted on the wall, it's not a fancy app controlled one though, just a programmable one.

It's fine for here, but in our old house an app one with individually controlled rads would have been fab - but they weren't a thing back then. When we move...

We have a smart thermostat looked originally at hive but there was a very cheap alternative in Black Friday sale last year for £40.
We fitted it ourselves, if you’re not happy to do it yourself an electrician would be able to wire it in.
We have ours set to different temperatures at different times and can change it on the app or through Alexa.
We only have a small house so no need for the smart radiator valves.

Thank you - we have regular 1-5 valves on all the radiators in the house. But the house thermostat has to be on about 30 degrees for the study to finally get warm as it seems to be end of the line!

@Nandakanda

TRVs should - in theory - work in your situation. A setting of 3 is supposed to equate to a room temp of 20 degrees C. You could lower the temp in intervening or any unused rooms to 2 and raise the study to 4. What happens in practice is people feel the radiator is cold and crank up to 5 (they cut in and out, so just leave them).

Hive etc as a pp said depend on where they or their sensors are located. If they are in a cold room, they think the whole house is cold and vice versa. They are internet connected, so can be used remotely.

You could consider zoning for colder/warmer parts of the house, but that may be a bit of a big job.

Yes you may be right. If we turn off the bedroom radiators completely then we eventually get heat to the study. But DH wary about leaving unused spare bedrooms totally cold as we had a leak previously (we have a loft conversion with spare bedroom in)

We have Evohome too. It's been installed for three years now and seems very reliable. At the time it was hands down the best system you could get but I haven't researched the market recently so cannot comment comparing it to other systems now.

You can use it to control electric underfloor heating, unlike other systems. It will also control simple/complex wet underfloor systems.

It may or may not fix your cold study depending on why it doesn't get warm enough. But as a quick test if the study radiator can get toasty warm but then shuts off before the room gets warm enough then it should improve matters.

I installed it myself and would consider it an advanced DIY proposition. Not too difficult really and there is lots of help available on the AutoMated Home forum

If you look around you should expect to pay around £50 per radiator, £200 for the control box, £50 for the boiler relay and if you want to control hot water around £80 for the hot water kit. Check your radiator valves can accept the Evohopme controllers - most do.

Because you can control the heating in every room independently of the others you can keep everywhere just the temperature you want. We carefully set the schedules to only heat where we need. Our house is toasty warm everywhere we need it to be and we've saved money too - our heating bill has dropped by at least 1/3.

@TobyHouseMan thanks that’s v helpful.

Sounds like Evohome the front runner for our situation (and probably the most expensive, quite typically…)

Our study can heat up, but hot water has to run round every other room to get there, so the house thinks it’s hot enough (which it is) before the poor study gets any

We have them, linked to an app called WiserHeat. Absolutely brilliant, especially if you are working from home as it means you can target specific rooms. Would definitely recommend.