Smart TRV's, advice on set up

[beno148]

Hi all,

Looking at setting up some smart TRV's, looking on advice on which ones to go with and whether to pair with thermostats etc... We have a 4 bedroom detached house, kitchen and dining is open plan, so no doubt leave them fully open on manual TRV's. Living room is a log burner so we have rad turned off in there.

Bosch boiler and we have an easy control thermostat in the bedroom which the first radiator. We have it here as we know what temp this needs to get to, to roughly get the heat where we want it around the other rooms.

We are now expecting, so looking at the options of smart TRV's, ideally control the rooms by an app, or have a schedule in place so rooms we need at constant temps stay that way.

Any advice on brands and set up, would be great. Anything i haven't thought ok as well.

TIA

 

[ericmark]

If the TRV shows current and target, then that makes setting up the lock shield easy. I have three makes, Energenie, eQ-3, and Kasa, I am about to move to Wiser as they are linked. In real terms, you only need some TRV heads linked, the eQ-3 in 2019 were cheap £15 each, they are bluetooth, but will only link to one phone, has window open detect built in. It only shows target temperature, but they have worked very well. The Energenie have no option to work manually, but can work with both PC and phone, shows target and current, can use IFTTT for geofencing, but the anti-hysteresis software is OTT, so would not get any more. The Kasa is the best of the TRV heads I have to date, only works with phone or emulator on PC, the software shows graph of room temp, so you can see what is going on.

I have just fitted Wiser hub, and Wiser wall thermostat in parallel with my Nest thermostat, as Nest will not link to Energenie even when it said it would, so the idea is now to add Wiser TRV heads in key rooms.

 

[Mister Banks]

Are you planning on keeping the existing boiler controls and just installing “smart” TRV’s to act like standard TRV’s?

 

[beno148]

Thanks for the replies. i would look at any option basically, and compare costs against rewards. If it was better to have a separate thermostat for TRV's and even if extra cost, i would get more of a benefit from that i would consider that.

TIA

 

[ericmark]

To continue, the Energenie were the first, they needed the spacers selecting, the showing of target and current resulted in slowly closing the lock shield valve until current never exceeded target. The set-up varies the Energenie was near enough, the eQ-3 can only be paired to one phone, but most can be done without the phone.
The units work well, ⁣ but either my wife or I have control, not both. The Kasa is like the Energenie internet connected, so both can be controlled by my Nest Mini's so single command "hey google set living room to 21 degrees." will set the Wiser, Energenie, and Kasa to 21ºC even when using three different makes. The Kasa software, shows how well it is doing, the hysteresis is because I had an oil boiler which does not modulate, simply switches on/off. It would be smooth if the boiler modulated. The Kasa I think will link to a wall thermostat, but the thermostat is hard-wired type, so no good for me. Hence, moving to Wiser. As yet only a Wiser wall thermostat, it says Wiser will work out time to heat the room, so you can set time when you want room warm, and it works out when to turn on boiler.