Heating Controls Tado/Nest /Hive etc

[SnoopySantaPaws]

I have Gas CH with a programmable Honeywell Thermostat & TRV' s on the radiators (except for the heated towel rail)

the Honeywell Thermostat is having a well known problem with its digital display screen. There's a known work around which I've been doing for a few winters, but it's getting less effective each time & needs to be done more & more frequently. It involves very fiddly circuit boards & heating them up & I just can't be arsed doing this all the bloody time.

the cheapest/ easiest thing is probably to buy a replacement Honeywell thermostat that's a newer version of my model - & hopefully it'll just connect itself with the bit in the boiler, but no guarantees.

However, one annoyance I've had over the years is that I can't have the heated towel rail on, when the other rads are off unless I manually turn each TRV's off ( and it's just too much a faff to do that every night & on again every morning!

( I want to do this as i don't like the heating on everywhere in the mornings, but I would like to take the chill off the bathroom)

i don't want to retrofit an electrical heating thing into the HTR either. It would mean removing tiling to get an electrical supply and they don't make the tiles anymore & I really like them.

so I think the only way to achieve that is a hive/Tado system. I had considered doing a Tado replacement myself (I've done lots of things myself) but I think it's a bit beyond me these days. (Brain Fog, physical limitations due to an accident, balance/BPPV issues) so I'm thinking I might need to have it done.

Anyone have any advice/opinions/idea of cost etc??

Some experiences of some of these in case helpful. We had Hive in our previous house and when something went wrong we weren’t able to get a repair for about 4 weeks.

We went for Google Nest in our current house. I don’t love it - we never put the heating on a schedule as that doesn’t work for us for various reasons and the one feature we really need, boost for 1 hour, doesn’t exist with Nest. So we have to switch it on and remember to switch it off again.

Hive is pretty decent, I recently bought their system from plumbers direct for under £100.

Also 20% off their TRV's right now. You could put their TRV on your heated towel rail I think?

www.hivehome.com/shop/smart-heating/hive-radiator-valve?cid=ppc.cid_tool=goo.cid_ctype=bran.cid_cname=NEW_UK_Hive_Brand_Heating_Modern&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAo5u6BhDJARIsAAVoDWuEKJ9Y4W4onRtp1Dd0hc7d5kZZDpGtfgYq-MqRfZaomHjbOcDMuXoaAk4iEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Thanks, I've used Hive when I stayed at work for a while. Hated it but assumed it was because I didn't have the App & was using the thermostat on the wall. But ???

The bloke that was here the other day (for something else) says it what he mostly installs & TADO is more aimed at people doing their own?! But he'd fit it for me if I wanted him to, but hive is better?!?!

so confused what to do 🙇🏻‍♀️

Thanks

the Heated towel rail is currently my free flow radiator, I'd have to choose another one & not yet sure what I'd need to do? Possibly simply remove the TRV from any of the others??

We had the same problem, the LCD display on the Honeywell went so it couldn't be programmed, we were using it on manual but a pain for IH who is up at 4am. We also went away one weekend and returned to 9 degrees in the house

We also seemed to have a problem where it was situated in the hall with lots of heat coming in. I felt it sometimes switched off too early and was still cold upstairs

So our new boiler man recommended and fitted a Hive. I've been very pleased with it so far. Only slight hiccup is the app quite often logs you out if your on unfamiliar wi-fi/mobile data but I just needed to login again

For a family that had irregular times it's been brilliant, sometimes it needs to be on at 3.30 sometimes later

We only have one heating area and hot water tank, but I can see you can add more zones so assume it could be programmed for just the radiator rails ?

I've had Hive since it was launched and had no issues, I had it installed and since added a couple of Hive TRVs which it controls.

Hive works with Apple home, so you can do all the programming on Apple Home which is really simple and use Siri to control it.

I like the ability to turn the heating off automatically when the house is empty, or only turn the office radiator on if there's movement in the room during certain times of the day.

i move my thermostat (on a stand) around to get the right heat in the right place 😂

yeah it's a PITA when you can't program it when you need to. Most of the time it's kind of ok on manual, but not when youre out & woukd live to come home to a warm house not a chiller box!!

When the Huve logs you off, does the heating stay on the already programmed schedule? ( I presume so, but I'm not taking anything for granted 😂)

when you say you only have one heating area... does that mean you can't control your individual radiators? Do, say, the lounge, hall & bedrooms all have to be the same temperature? (I thought the point was you could control each radiator separately?).

or maybe you mean you could if you tried, but haven't bothered? I assume each radiator needs a hive thermostat thing.

would you mind saying how much it cost you to change over?

It might be too clever for me😂😂😂

I assume that's a choice you can make? Not to turn it off when it thinks the house is empty?

Hive works fine on its own, but does give you the option, of doing more if you wish.

I feel your pain, we’ve moved into a house with a nest system and so many times we have forgotten to turn the heating off again. So annoying it doesn’t have the boost for an hour function.

Im so worried that this system will just go wrong one day.

I was wondering how easy/cheap it would be to remove it and go with an old fashioned system? The old fashioned wall controls last years as they are simple.

Oh I totally hear the temptation to do this! But I don’t want to give up being able to control the heating from my phone.

They are but what I hate about using mine manually is you have to either leave the heating on (£££) or come home to a cold house. Given how long they seem to last, I'd trade the once every 19/20 years replacing the control system!

mines 10 years old this year, and I could do the fix continually, takes about 15 minutes. It's just a lamination issue with the board/display. But I'm fed up with doing that.

next option is to buy a replacement thermostat & hope A) Honeywell have sorted the problem out & B) Hope it just replaces the old one fresh from the box (if not will have to get them talking!!). I think that's only about £100. In 10 years.

I'm only looking at replacing the whole set up because I'd like to have control over just the towel rail coming on. But that's just a fussy pants thing!!

so, no, I wouldn't go back to just having a manual on/off thermostat.

im surprised yours doesn't have a 'boost' function. Have you tried asking Google? Sometimes it's a combination of buttons, rather than single 'boost button' but failing finding it, I'd just set an alarm on my phone!

What would be the advantage of getting your one removed now??

@SnoopySantaPaws definitely no boost function. Google search results full of people complaining about it.

I never thought to check as I just assumed it was a given - every heating system I’ve ever had has had it.

If you just want control over your towel rail, could you swap it for one with an electrical element and get a switch installed? We did this when we changed our boiler and radiators - we paid a little extra for the electrical element and got an electrician to connect a switch in the room next door.

yes you'll stay on the schedule when Hive logs you off as long as you saved it.
Each radiator would need at TRV, they're about £50 on hive's website 🙄

We have hive. We have two zones set up for living space / sleeping space. So we can control each zone separately. With the trvs you can also control the radiators on top of that so eg can have living space on, but turn off the dining room.

I think you could easily achieve what you want to do, but as you say, you will need to switch the heated rail for a different non thermostat controlled radiator.

I love being able to turn the heating on so it is warm when I get home!

We have Tado on each Radiator and it’s great.
We have some parts of the house not used every day ie office space is mainly used mon-Fri and not weekends, and only 9am-6pm. So that area we can control differently, bedrooms set to be warm first thing, cool down daytime when we don’t really use and warm up in evenings. Living areas and kitchen on more. If we go out all day or away we can just adjust via app to off or cooler.
We have really old radiators that used to have no thermostat at all and just all came on and off. Tado is much nicer at controlling.

Bummer there's no 'booster' . I wouldn't have thought to check for one either, but then again, I have one & don't use it!! Shame I can't give you mine!!🤣🤣

I've thought about getting a converter element for the HTR. But I thought the switch would need to be near the radiator rather than in another room which would mean having to risk taking a large tile off & they don't make them anymore🥹. I only have a couple of spares thanks to dipshit bathroom fitter!!). I hadn't actually considered just replacing it with an electric one. Either way the switch would have to go in an often used guest room. But I suppose it would be possible to use a timer switch (??)

iI'll look into it again!

I think a previous poster has answered, but yes I assume Hive still comes on if I ve been logged out..... Its just I need to log in to the app again

Our house is 25 years old so all the system is 'one' IYSWIM. I think modern systems have the zones so that you can programme seperate temps for say upstairs or downstairs

@Oldraver we had our plumber zone our old house for us so it can be done if wanted!

@Caspianberg that's great!

did you do it yourself or get someone in?

I would have just done it myself, but as per my original post, I'm not as able anymore.

As long as I can adjust each rad (on the App) I'll only need one 'zone'. It's a small home. My friend says just to turn the other rads off at night & on in the mornings, but I really cannot be.bothered with that, despite there not being hundreds of them.

We have had tado since it first came out and love it. I fitted the first one and have replaced the thermostat since too - our thermostat is wired in but they have a wireless option. Over the years we’ve gradually added radiator thermostats around the house so the rooms all run on individual timetables.

the magical thing about tado is geofencing - if you all have the app on your phone then when you are all out it turns the heating off. It senses when you are nearly home and turns it on again for you. You can manually override this if you want to, and it has a boost function too.

@SnoopySantaPaws - we did it ourselves. Needed plumber to alter a few values on some really old radiators as no thermostat on but if you already have standard radiators with 0-5 adjustment then it’s just taking that off and swapping.

We don’t have a wall thermostat as never had one previously either as it’s an old house that use to just be run off oil. So we just bought the radiator value system. You can then just add to each radiator. We control all ours via app. If you already have wired house to wall thermostat that’s also an option.

Although once you set each radiator schedule you don’t really need to touch app unless to override. Ie we keep guest room low when it in use, when guests I alter schedule for that week to warm etc. you can still turn the actual thermostat physically also on radiator to override until next schedule.

we have a largish house, so have 21 Tado valves now! We added them over 2 years when on sale. And they all work nicely.

Interesting, thank you!

my Honeywell is wireless. I'd want wireless again.i wonder how difficult it is to fit the 'receiver' (??) to the boiler?

I presume the TVR swap is just unscrewing the ones I have & screwing on the Tado/hive one?

as you've gradually added thermostats, did you leave the old ones on in the meantime ??

We have Hive smart TRVs on every radiator except our hallway which is the one uncontrolled radiator. They work great, I have different schedules for different rooms on different days etc. We definitely noticed a reduction in our gas usage since getting them.