Central Heating Wireless Stat Recommendations

I won't recommend the model I have as it's old and discontinued, but I'd say look at "programmable thermostats" in particular (can be wired/wifi/wireless as you wish) but give you the flexibility of programming different temperatures at different times.

Not unique, but supposed to be arriving soon at a game-changing price are IKEA LILJEBAGGE smart TRVs for £15 ea, would give you even more flexibility (different temperatures in different rooms at different times).

I tinkered with mine a lot when I first set it up to arrive at the right times temperatures and zones. Now apart from switching it off in summer, and hard on for hot water if I have visitors I don't tinker much

But its all home built from Raspberry PIs . If you are happy to compile and install code it works great. :-)

Well I looked at all the commercial alternatives and rolled my own. It turned out to be a pretty big project but it all works now, Happy to share code, PCBs and 3D cases if you want to do the same

I ditched mobile: Mine is a web server on my home network, the downside is that all the SSIDs and passkeys and server IP address are hard coded in. So it needs a minimal recompile/reconfigure to install a clone

The problem I faced was that if you wanted to avoid manual configuration to a home network, you ended up with a bunch of kit that wanted to talk to a bloody cloud.

If I were selling it I would make it somewhat home configurable, but I haven't bothered yet

After being up for a pretty fair time Iit's almost 100% solid now, Power cuts sometimes result in the thermostats getting stuck but a reboot fixes that instantly

My impression is that the commercial systems are all 'my way or the highway' Building your own means that e.g. I now have it integrated with an oil level monitor.

As I said, if compiling code is something you can do, its a good and fun solution.

If not, pick the least obnoxious commercial crap and live with it.

We've had a Salus RT510TX (and associated receiver) for over seven years. It works well and without problem to control the CH. It has, however, one major issue which can drive you mad, as ergonomically it is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. If you simply "set and forget" there's no problem, but if you want to pick it up you *will* press a button you never intended to. Worse, you might not even know you've pressed the button or what pressing it did. The last review at

PROS: It works.

CONS: The stand is not secure, and falls off easily.

It's forward-heavy and is extremely easy to knock over.

The buttons are all too easy to press inadvertently when picking the unit up.

I've not seen this. Google's Nest lost support recently, but not Hive. Do you have a link with info?

Anyways, I've had a Hive thermostat for several years and it works well. Best feature is being able to control it away from home. Otherwise it doesn't add a great deal for me. Controlled by the wall stat or a phone app.

Individual rads controlled by Tuya/aliexpress wireless thermostats. Effectively zones the system, and saves me having to mess about with individual rooms/stats. Hive's own stats might be a nice addition but a lot more expensive.

You could have one, other, or both.

Another option is Radbot TRVs. They have a light sensor and use that to guess when the room is occupied, or there's a 'push for half an hour of heat' button. Effectively the heat would follow you around when moving from room to room. They seemed to work better than wifi stats which in practice you'd never bother to change when moving around the house.

The downside is there's no call for heat to the boiler, so the 'push for heat' only works if the boiler is already on. The hardware did originally have RF comms for that feature, but it was never implemented and removed in later versions.

(Now removed since going heat pump, as that makes a smooth even temperature where turning rads on and off is counterproductive.)

Theo

Plus it's far from clear what the display means. Is it showing what the temperature **is** or the temperature you **want**. Given that there's hardly any sort of visual cue as to which is being shown one inevitably spends a lot of wasted time re-learning the way it works.

I cannot understand why this would in anyway be worthwhile.

You don't need to heat a house you are not in.

Unless there is danger from frost, just switch the whole CH off?

I have Wiser from Schneider mainly because at the time I bought it it was one of the few pre-built systems that supported self-install.

Sadly it can be linked to Alexa and my wife tinkers continually via our Echo but in reality its pretty much set and forget. Even if she does tweak it reverts to the pre-set points, I think after 30 mins. The hub can does get weather info and tweaks the "on" and "off" times to optimise usage. It learns so it should get better.

It does work if the internet goes down, and you can also control it from the app with no internet so long as you are on the same WiFi.

I also looked at Tado which seems similar but didn't seem to cater for self install.

I think the latest Honeywell, but after looking at some of the programable wall thermostats and trying to adjust one for a friend with dementia I am glad I bought the app.

I know

you have very little imagination...

It may contain a wife who turns it up. You can detect this and turn it down. It may also contain animals or plants which require warmth. Of course if its cold you can also turn it on a little before you return home.

if you are away for more than a few days, you might want to warm it up one day to reduce the build up of damp. There might be issues with legionaries with hot tanks?

Dave

I have plenty, but I don't ise it to invent imaginary problems in order top pat myself on the back for having just bought the solution...

Then you (plural) ARE in: Christ your marriage sounds worse than mine was

Then preset that BEFORE you go,

In my case it takes at leasta day to get back to temperature so I just leave it on anyway

My house doesn't suffer from damp. You can leave hot water on, It takes nothing to keep it hot on a well insulated tank

We have the Hive system however we still have not switched the heating on so cannot assess how it will perform in this new house. However, we had the same system in the last house and we were very pleased with its performance.

We used the app to set the temperature and timings and frankly once done it was a case of leave it to do its thing. We had Smart TRVs in every room set to heat on demand, this meant we could set times and temperature for each individual room. The main thermostat was left unprogrammed the TRVs handled all the heating requirements. When we needed to say boost a room we simply used voice control to tell the relevant TRV what temperature was required in our case that was using Alexa but you could do the same with Apple Home Assistant and Google. You could also set room temperature over the internet but we only did that a few times if we were returning outside of the programmed events or had left it in frost protection mode.

The only issues we had were due to the valve bodies on some the original TRVs were a little too stiff for the Hive TRVs to open resulting in the TRVs recalibrating themselves but once we changed the valve bodies the issues went away.

I believe Tado and a few other systems work much the same way.

Richard

Pretty sure that Hive killed off a load of "old" devices ... google claims that didn't include any heating products.

My daughter's tenants, being Spanish, didn't know about frost, so turned off the heating when they went back to Spain for Christmas. Oh dear

If your current system does everything you want - apart from being broken - I would be inclined to replace it like for like with Honeywell CMT927's (the current equivalent of your 20-year-old stuff).

If you want to be able to turn the heating on and off remotely, the Hive is worth considering. When we owned a holiday flat I installed a Hive system to control the heating and hot water. In the winter, we were able to turn the heating on before travelling to the flat so that it was nice and cosy when we arrived. I could do this either using the mobile app or using the web interface on a computer. I preferred the latter when possible. It also allowed me to edit the programme - i.e. set the time and temperature for each of the 6 switching events per day. I didn't need to to that very often, but it was a lot easier than fiddling with the thermostat.

My house heats up and cools down quite quickly. So when I'm away - or even out at the pub - and I fancy coming home to a warm house, easily done.

I understand of course that such a feature might not be of value to you.

I don't think my TRVs can call for boiler heat - at least on their own. There may be a way to do it via Alexa or whatever - and I suppose I could do it manually if I get a 'low temp' notification. One of the advantages of Hive stats - it's all integrated.

Interesting times. My 16yo boiler limps on, and while I have issues siting the external unit, and then insulating further and adding new rads, it'll be a decision I'll have to be making soon. If indeed new gas boilers will be allowed come the time.

Indeed! It needs a new mind set to forget all the complicated individual radiator controls, and just leave it to the heatpump.

Chris

Thanks Andy

My current controls are programmable despite the age, which I like.

I have only recently (couple of years ago) fitted Drayton TRVs, the dumb versions. So am unlikely to upgrade those any time soon.

Phil

Thanks NP

That looks like an interesting project, but as this is a break fix before cold weather I am inclined to go the commercial route.

Not familiar with Raspberry PIs, or at least the coding of, so it would be a stretch I'm sure!

Great info all the same - thanks for the detail.

Phil

Thanks Jeff

My investigation seems to show the Salus as a popular brand. I'm not sure if that's cos it's a cheap solution and therefore a favourite with installers.

To be honest, I'm alright with set-and-forget. As I get older, the attraction of complex devices is diminishing by the year :)

Phil