Smart thermostats

[Caffeinequeen91]

any recommendations for Hive, Nest or something else?

currently have one wireless thermostat for main house and one wired thermostat for underfloor heating in an extension. No hot water tank. Combi boiler.

There was an episode of Sliced Bread on this recently which went into smart thermostats and when they might be worth installing - worth a listen.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rq3d

Correct. Unless you have them in every room they're most helpful for keeping some rooms cooler than others (because you need the main heating to be on for the individual rooms heating to come on) rather than keeping some rooms hot (unless you have the heating on all the time).

When I have the heating on in the evening it'll take a fair bit of heating to get the open plan downstairs (where the thermostat main control is) to the required 20degrees, whereas the box room nursery (with it's shut door) heats up v quickly. Having a TRV means it shuts off the radiator when the temp hits whatever I've set it for, so my kid doesn't overheat (and it kicks in again when he room gets too cold). Also means you can keep unused rooms unheated saving ££.

We've been looking into this and the two best systems seem to be Tado and Wiser. We're going for Wiser, it's a bit cheaper but has additional functionality. Getting TRV for all our radiators, at the moment when DH is WFH alone he has to walk round the house turning them all off (3 floors, 13 radiators).

We have a Nest but I can’t get it to turn on using the App. It keeps turning off. Has anybody any idea why this is happening?
It was working ok earlier today .

Yes! Confirming my thinking. Thanks

Yes we have the smart thermostats on each radiator and no main hub. For us it’s better as we are home most the time as dh and I work from home, but we can then individually control every room ie offices warmer Mon-Fri, cooler weekends. Spare bedrooms off at frost protection. Bathrooms we set higher for the morning when everyone is having shower, then turn down a bit, etc. it’s saving us a fair amount compared to just having heating on everywhere or off.

Thank you. I think I’ll invest in the radiator ones over time

I hate my Nest with a passion. I don't know if it's just that I don't know how to get it to work properly but I wish I had a straightforward thermostat that comes on when I set it to and not any other time. It comes on when I am not cold and won't come on when I am. I hate it.

We have the Nest and it does whatever the fuck it wants. We’ve had it a few years now and I still don’t know why it comes on when it does but tbh I haven’t really tried to look into it. Sometimes I’ll be lying in bed at midnight and hear the heating coming on. I’m pretty sure I don’t have any schedules set (they’re not that easy to set).

For me the good things about it are being able to turn the heating on from my phone when we are away from home and being able to tell Alexa to turn the heating on.

@Littlebitofacold @OutOfSyncWithReality you have to turn off all the automated features. This drove me nuts for a while until I worked out how.

It used to decide for itself to come on earlier than I'd set it to do as it thought it was doing me a favour heating the house to get to the temperature I'd set it to by the time it was set it to come on. I'd already taken warm up time into account, so it was unhelpful.

Same with leaving and coming home. I'd set the temperature to what I wanted it to be ready for when I got home, and it would unhelpfully turn off because nobody was home.

We have hive but it makes 0 sense to me. The account is locked with the previous owner and if I say heat to 18 at 6pm it comes on at 4. It guesses what heating I want abd gets it wrong. I know there's probably a knack to it, but I often want to throw it out the window.

You need to go into the settings and turn off auto-schedule. Then set the schedule you want.

@Caspianberg where did you get those, please, and what brand are they? Do they need professional installation? Thank you. They should ideal for our house!

@marmaladeandpeanutbutter - Tado. They are really easy. And you can install one or 20 at a time depending on cost

Thank you for this.

Just had Tado installed with smart radiator valves in every room and it's reduced our consumption by a good 25% in the first month, so very impressed.

It claims to be a DIY installation but we had our gas engineer fit it for us as we're pretty useless at that stuff.

I have Hive, recommended by my plumber, and like it. I have upstairs and downstairs on separate thermostats, which really helps - I can warm up the bedrooms in the morning without wasting heat downstairs (and vice versa if people are at home during the day). Smart TRVs could achieve the same function, but I find they’re universally ugly.