Best Thermostat for Vaillant Boiler and Zoning?

[TazzyM]

Hi all,

Having just purchased my first house, I have just started a whole of house refurbishment project.

I am going to be putting in a new central heating system. The boiler I've chosen is the Vaillant Ecotec IQ Combi boiler (35kw). I wanted advice on zoning and the best smart thermostats (app/internet enabled) to help with this.


I wanted a simple two zoned system for upstairs and downstairs.

Upstairs all the bedrooms will have radiators and bathroom will have wet underfloor heating possibly with a small heated towel rail as secondary source of heat. Downstairs there will be radiators in the lounge and the hallway with underfloor heating in the kitchen and downstairs toilet.

I need advice on the best thermostat to help control the two zones. I'm not a heating expert but understand you'd need a separate wall thermostat for each zone. I was originally looking at Nest but was put off by the price of purchasing two thermostats.

So I have shortened my options to:

• Hive (adding another thermostat is £99 which is reasonable)
• Drayton Wiser (using thermostats but potentially adding their iTRVs
• Vaillant VRC 700 (this seems to be Vaillant's answer but not seen too many reviews)

I am keen to gather people's experiences and opinions on either of the above options.


Thanks

 

[CBW]

Good evening Tazzym,I don’t know much about smart thermostats to comment on which is best, although a lot of folk on here seem to want help with wiring a Hive or Nest. You are correct on the zone valving needing x2 2 port valves (referred to as an s-plan) and separate thermostats to control each zone.

 

[Milleniumaire]

Hi Tazzym, just interested in what you went for in the end. Did you use the VRC 700 or go for 3rd party controllers?

 

[ianmcd]

Dont worry that you have Hi-Jacked an old post, ericmark will be along in a minute to tell you a lovely story about his auntys grandmothers nieces house

 

[CBW]

Dont worry that you have Hi-Jacked an old post, ericmark will be along in a minute to tell you a lovely story about his auntys grandmothers nieces house

 

[ericmark]

Every system has good and bad points, and it is down to how much control you want and what you want to spend.

EPH it seems do OpenTherm thermostats that can be set master/slave.
Drayton it seems make TRV heads which learn how long it takes to heat the room.
Although the Hive wall thermostat will not work with OpenTherm, it has a good idea on how to work with their TRV heads.
Nest is OpenTherm but does not link to any TRV heads.
Myson fan assisted radiators can heat and cool.

But you can easy spend £2000 on the control, and the question is if worth it? So looking at the cheap side, found programmable TRV heads at £10 (eQ-3) and a programmable wall thermostat at around £27 (MoesGo) and the big question is how much better are the more expensive versions? Do we need OpenTherm or even wifi connection?

Much depends on the home and life style. With an old people home likely you want a steady 20°C night or day, but personally I like it cooler once I go to bed, and the fabric of the building acts like a sponge absorbing the heat when heating is on then slowly releasing it, so if it takes 10 hours to drop 2°C hardly worth using programmable thermostats, same with heating, if it takes 4 hours to raise the temperature 4°C then having a thermostat that uses geofencing is a bit pointless, one the other hand my old house with 3 kW Myson fan assisted radiator and a 4.5 kW gas fire plus a 2 kW standard radiator in the living room, from 5°C to 20°C took 15 - 20 minutes, no point switching on before we arrived home as we could heat the prime room so fast.

So there is no best, it is all down to what you want.

 

[Milleniumaire]

Dont worry that you have Hi-Jacked an old post, ericmark will be along in a minute to tell you a lovely story about his auntys grandmothers nieces house

I was mainly interested to know if the OP went for the VRC 700 as I have just upgraded my system and now have a VRC 700, replacing my old VRC 430. I'll start a new thread to try to get some usage information for this controller.