Smart Heating Advice

[Tom_Thumb]

Good evening all,

I am looking for some advice on what smart heating system to upgrade to…

Current set up is as follows :-
Boiler : Ideal Logic Combi C30
Thermostat : Neomitis RT7RFD
Radiators : 11 (TRV’s fitted to 10)

I am wanting to gain full control over my houses central heating from my phone, with the ability to control individual rooms independently of one another. In order to do this I believe I need a smart thermostat and smart TRV’s on every radiator apart from one, which has to remain open at all times?

So my question to you heating experts is, is there a certain smart system that you would recommend for me given my set up & requirements?

Note : I believe my boiler has Opentherm capability so I suppose it would make sense to opt for an Opentherm smart thermostat to make use of this?

Thanks in advance!

Tom

 

[CountryFan]

Few options including opentherm (none of which I have installed, but they get good mentions):

Hive, Wiser, Evohome, Tado

 

[ericmark]

I believe I need a smart thermostat and smart TRV’s on every radiator apart from one

Only if no by-pass valve, in the main there will be a by-pass valve, so can have a TRV on all radiators.

Position of radiators can change what is required, an outside wall will cool a radiator, and so mean a TRV connected to the radiator will show less than the real temperature of the room, until the radiator gets hot, and starts a natural circulation, so it will start the boiler too early, but as to if enough too early to worry about, that depends on design of the room, and furniture in the room etc.

Fan assisted radiators are smaller, but really should be in series, not parallel, you can likely get away with one or two fan assisted, like in the kitchen, but not all. They use fan speed to control heat output, where normal radiators use a TRV. The TRV can have three basic types of head, mechanical, programmable, and linked programmable, and often you don't need them all to be linked programmable.

By setting out rooms, a wall thermostat can control the TRV head with some makes, like the Drayton Wiser, but to find out which does what I found not as easy as one would hope. As @CountryFan says, Hive, Wiser, Evohome, Tado, all have some versions which have OpenTherm, and all have some sort of hub to accept signals from TRV heads, in some cases the hub is built into the wall thermostat, I am only an electrical engineer, not heating and ventilation, and to design a good system we are looking at least level 5 university education, and that is not me.

Central heating has progressed through the years, and what was good practice in 1980 is not necessary good practice today, so it was good practice to have the radiator in a room with a wall thermostat, to not have a TRV, but with linked programmable TRV heads that is no longer true. But of course you don't NEED to use linked programmable heads, so there will be cases where the old ideas still hold true.

I now have Drayton Wiser, which seems very good, but now we need to look at price. For the Wiser system, TRV head around £52, the hub tends to be sold as a kit £100 with a wall thermostat, wall thermostat £75 so with 10 TRV heads can be looking at £650, I used some eQ-3 TRV heads, at £15 when I got them, more expensive since Brexit, but with for example two bedrooms which will be used at the same time, only one needs to be linked.

The old Evo home allowed you to control it from a central unit, most you need to use a phone, the old Energenie TRV head I could control from a PC, but could not control it direct on the TRV. Wiser should work with an emulator on the PC, but it is so slow, tablet or phone is the only real method.

I tried geofencing, with Nest Gen 3, it would turn off the heating when I left, but would not turn it back on until nearly home, so in real terms useless. Wiser uses IFTTT, not tried using geofencing with Wiser.