jmak Posted January 8, 2018 Posted January 8, 2018 If anything drastic changes, I'll report back. Nothing too drastic, but... In our old, poorly insulated house with a museum piece of a boiler, I don't think we're saving money.... The house is warmer - but I was running the heating for 90 minutes in the morning to take the chill off the air. I set the Tado up to be warm (19°) by the time the first person is up and obviously it runs until the last person leaves. As it was cold last night, the boiler ran for nearly four hours this morning! Also having a problem with linking to a Huawei phone - it doesn't reliably recognise it's left the house and after you've forced that, it doesn't recognise it's come back. That's got to be phone settings rather than the Tado system, but it does mean I can't claim painless setup... I suspect that the other systems might be worse for our house, because they'd use their algorithms to quite quickly work out that for it to be 19° when we're in, the boiler would need to stay on most of the time.
XiJ Posted January 8, 2018 Posted January 8, 2018 Nothing too drastic, but... In our old, poorly insulated house with a museum piece of a boiler, I don't think we're saving money.... The house is warmer - but I was running the heating for 90 minutes in the morning to take the chill off the air. I set the Tado up to be warm (19°) by the time the first person is up and obviously it runs until the last person leaves. As it was cold last night, the boiler ran for nearly four hours this morning! Also having a problem with linking to a Huawei phone - it doesn't reliably recognise it's left the house and after you've forced that, it doesn't recognise it's come back. That's got to be phone settings rather than the Tado system, but it does mean I can't claim painless setup... I suspect that the other systems might be worse for our house, because they'd use their algorithms to quite quickly work out that for it to be 19° when we're in, the boiler would need to stay on most of the time. Might be worth changing the away settings to a more frugal setting. It means the house won’t be as warm when you get in - but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Having said that, the problems you are having don’t seem to be with tado, nest or any other system, but rather a result of the house/boiler. Insulation and a more modern boiler would likely be needed before a ‘smart’ system - and would likely see higher initial savings. At some cost outlay of course !
Andrew_C Posted January 9, 2018 Posted January 9, 2018 I replaced an old backboiler/gas fire thing with a combi.. In the following properly cold winter, I used HALF the gas I used the year before. Don't I wish I'd done that YEARS ago?
jmak Posted January 9, 2018 Posted January 9, 2018 (edited) Might be worth changing the away settings to a more frugal setting. It means the house won’t be as warm when you get in - but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Having said that, the problems you are having don’t seem to be with tado, nest or any other system, but rather a result of the house/boiler. Insulation and a more modern boiler would likely be needed before a ‘smart’ system - and would likely see higher initial savings. At some cost outlay of course !Agreed - which is why I went for Tado rather than the learning systems. From what I can see, it's much more configurable. Having had quotes of around £26k to insulate the solid walls of our house (before taking account of moving all of the radiators, light switches, sockets and redecorating), the aim is minimise the amount of heat we use to make it comfortable. With the extra information I now have through the app and controller, I can make better informed decisions about how much to run the heating. It will also save on days like today - I was expecting someone to be in all day, but actually there'll be no one home for six hours. Realistically I probably wouldn't have changed the settings on a conventional controller. As I needed a new programmer of some kind, the additional cost was marginal so I didn't have much to lose. Edit: I've now set it up so that I have multiple sessions per day and different patterns every day of the week. So for my specific use case, I've achieved everything I could have done with a conventional controller (and way more than with the controller I had), plus: times where there's often someone at home, but not always, use geo-fencing to ensure I'm not heating an empty house; much easier programming interface; easy monitoring of when heating is running; easy and flexible override of programme (defined time, until next scheduled change or until user input); remote control. I suspected that my home wasn't ready for full smart controls, which is why I selected Tado - it looked like the best compromise for me. The Honeywell Evohome might be slightly better, but was more than twice the price. Edited January 9, 2018 by jmak
Notperfect Posted January 9, 2018 Posted January 9, 2018 (edited) Tado here, installed myself (their guides are excellent and their helpline were always quick to respond). I wouldn't use anything else, we just forget about the heating now, house starts to warm up when we are nearby and it turns off when we leave home. Schedules are easy and not restrictive and the wall thermostat lets you control the temp or give it a boost - you can set the system online so that interaction with the wall unit is permanent/timed/until next schedule change. The system can even detect when a door or window is open and turn the heating off for 15 minutes if you want it to. The system takes a week or two to learn about the house and how fast it is to heat up, so initially the temps swing around a bit but now we don't notice it at all. Eventually you look at the graph on the app and it plateaus nicely at the right temps. I'm now looking to fit Tado TRVs to the rooms to make even better use of the system so only the rooms that need it get the radiators turned on. They're £59 each but I reckon I'll have them all in by next winter. Edited January 9, 2018 by Notperfect
mavhc Posted January 9, 2018 Posted January 9, 2018 Need TRVs that run on the heat in the pipes, can't be that hard surely, plus as I need 8 they should really only cost £10-15
Marci Posted January 9, 2018 Posted January 9, 2018 (edited) Need TRVs that run on the heat in the pipes, can't be that hard surely, plus as I need 8 they should really only cost £10-15 Mefinx you'll be waiting a while. Edited January 9, 2018 by Marci
garethEds Posted September 10, 2018 Posted September 10, 2018 Sorry to resurrect this thread - we're moving from oil heating to gas at home and wondered what people think of Hive. We have looked at the Worcester Wave system as it works with the boiler (38CDi) we are having. I'm stuck between that and Hive. I like the look of Hive for some reason. Has anyone got Hive? Gareth
nicholab Posted September 10, 2018 Posted September 10, 2018 Sorry to resurrect this thread - we're moving from oil heating to gas at home and wondered what people think of Hive. We have looked at the Worcester Wave system as it works with the boiler (38CDi) we are having. I'm stuck between that and Hive. I like the look of Hive for some reason. Has anyone got Hive? Gareth This system seems more cost effective. https://www.draytoncontrols.co.uk/products/Smart-Thermostats/Wiser/wiser-room-thermostat
noelmm Posted September 11, 2018 Posted September 11, 2018 I've got the Hive 2 system, had it around 2 years now and never had a problem. I like the flexibility of it however I'm guessing all of these systems are pretty much the same. No negatives for the Hive system from me or the other half.
MatthewL Posted January 21, 2019 Author Posted January 21, 2019 It's a while since I initially posted this, things have changed and I am ready to launch my boiler out the window if I don't have hot water in the morning. I am seriously looking to replace the full system in the near future and want to make it smart. I'm looking at doing the full works, new radiators plus the boiler and the radiators I have are original and just want to start again, as regards to boilers any recommendations, I am after a combi one. As regards to the controls the Honeywell Evohome and Drayton seem to be popular, I want to zone the house, I have seen the TRV's that are programmed for each room which is a good idea for me, I want ease of access to program schedules in, not the end all but would be handy if I can access on my phone for when working late etc I can fire it up on the way in rather than having it running for hours before I do get home. Anyone got a smart system running at home and want to share their experiences of any they have? This is one project I want to go to town on, parts of my house get too warm as currently no thermostat and others are chilly, I want to control it and reduce what I spend unnecessarily.
3s-gtech Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 Recommended boilers tend to be Worcester Bosch or Ideal - Ideal have a slightly better warranty and I’m very pleased with mine - compact, quiet and not expensive to run.
Andrew_C Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 When I did mine a couple of houses back, the fitter said Bosch or Valient. Just had Valient serviced in this house, and service guy full of praise.
jmak Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I use Tado which works well for me, but I'm not convinced I'd buy it now. I chose it to cope with irregular hours at home - it uses geofencing based on the location of your phone to ensure the heating isn't in when no one's home. Add you head home it turns the heating on so the house is warm when you get home. It also adjusts its start time based on what it learns about how long your house takes to warm up and the outside temperature. It does all of this very well, so why am I hesitant? You now have to sign up to a monthly subscription to get access to the Geofencing functionality.
caffrey Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I had a Valiant in my house for a long time, replaced last year with an Ideal Vogue after I got fed up of replacing diverter valve components I quite like the idea of smart TRVs , the thermostat in one location is not great
PD1279 Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I have Nest and it works a treat. I still have TRVs on all the Rads though so I can still change the temp in a room if I feel like it, and it does similar to the Tado and detects when you are Home/Away and learns in the first couple of months your routine and creates the Boiler times for you
PyROm Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 Careful with Drayton, I dont know if things have changed but at one point Drayton didn't officially sell or support their smart TRV`s in the Uk. I still have the evohome system. Using HR92 smart TRV`s on the radiators. I have one room where one area was colder then the rest so I use a DTS92E1020 as thermometer in one room to control the TRV (The TRV`s are seen as a control unit and temperature sensor in the controller, meaning you can bind a different sensor to the room to replace the TRV`s). If you have rooms with 2 radiators you can link them together on the controller and it will take the average temperature from the two to control that room. I am currently using it with a BDR91 realy to control the boiler (direct thermostat replacement) as my boiler doesn't support opentherm, if you are getting a new boiler and looking at evohome I would definitely get an openthem compatible boiler (Valiant does an interface module but will not support it, or sell it in UK) and a R8810 opentherm bridge, as this alters the radiator water temperature of the boiler based on demand (eg. more radiators means higher temperature water, bigger difference between room temp and target means higher temp etc.) so a lot more efficient and less wear on boiler. There is a smart home app for it, you can control it through a web page and you can control it from the touch screen controller. If the internet/wifi goes down it still continues to work and you can still make changes from the controller. There is no subscription. I am currently using with alexa devices as well, I believe it works with google home and IFTT (so can geofence etc.). I brought all my evohome stuff from https://theevohomeshop.co.uk/ they were happy for me to call and ask questions. I also have a couple of rooms I use radfans (https://www.radfan.com) in, one is quite long with radiator at one end, this left a temperature difference between the two ends, the radfan helped a lot. The other room as a very small radiator, again the radfan helped a lot. 1
Danp Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I have a Valient combi, it has a digital wireless thermostat, wish I could replace this with a smart version! Happy with the boiler though, only issue I've had in 4 years (since I moved in, boiler is now 7 years old) is once we had a slight loss of pressure (didn't know that at the time, engineer told us when he came out) and all I needed to do was add some more water to the system using the tap under the boiler!
MatthewL Posted January 22, 2019 Author Posted January 22, 2019 Thanks for the replies. I have been looking and I am probably going to invest in the Honeywell system before I replace the system to save a bit of cash providing my boiler will support it. One question for users of it with the app can you login to it when you are away from home or is it only when you are on the LAN? No an issue as I could VPN back!
PD1279 Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I can only respond as using Nest - but it uses your internet to get back to their network which you then login to using the app, it then shows you your device (and in the case of mine my cameras in the house too) No VPN needed. I do have all house IoT devices on their own wifi SSID VLAN so no one in the house can muck around with them, unless logged into my account
garethEds Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 We've just changed from oil central heating/water to gas. It has been amazing. We've never had a combi boiler before. We researched many boilers and there was one German make which we looked at fitting. We were advised against it and ended up going for a Worcester 38CDi. This powers our heating, our water and our under-floor heating in the kitchen. I looked into different systems but decided on Hive. It works well - I have two thermostat controllers - one for the heating and one for the UFH. I bought the Hive Hub which links with my Alexa - although I've not set this up yet. It's ok on the whole and does the job but my main gripe is that I cannot have controllable radiator thermostats with Hive. I can have lightbulbs and firealarms etc but not thermostats for individual rads. I have a mate who has a Tado system and he swears by it. Each to their own. Since having the Hive, I've read up more about Tado and might have gone there had I known a bit more. Gareth
andy_b Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 We've just changed from oil central heating/water to gas. It has been amazing. We've never had a combi boiler before. We researched many boilers and there was one German make which we looked at fitting. We were advised against it and ended up going for a Worcester 38CDi. This powers our heating, our water and our under-floor heating in the kitchen. I looked into different systems but decided on Hive. It works well - I have two thermostat controllers - one for the heating and one for the UFH. I bought the Hive Hub which links with my Alexa - although I've not set this up yet. It's ok on the whole and does the job but my main gripe is that I cannot have controllable radiator thermostats with Hive. I can have lightbulbs and firealarms etc but not thermostats for individual rads. I have a mate who has a Tado system and he swears by it. Each to their own. Since having the Hive, I've read up more about Tado and might have gone there had I known a bit more. Gareth SoonTM: https://hivehome.uservoice.com/forums/223103-product-ideas/suggestions/4969272-wireless-radiator-thermostat-valves
PyROm Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 The honeywell system checks in with their servers, and the app (even when at home) connects to their servers rather than directly to the controller. This means you can use it away from home through the app and their web page and doesn't need vpn. A feature I missed, can set temporary overrides, e.g. set temperature in living room to 20c until 20.00 so you dont have to remember to turn it off and also permanent overrides that stay in place until you disable them.
jmak Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 I have Nest and it works a treat. I still have TRVs on all the Rads though so I can still change the temp in a room if I feel like it, and it does similar to the Tado and detects when you are Home/Away and learns in the first couple of months your routine and creates the Boiler times for youFrom what I read when I was choosing, the way they detect whether you're at home or not is different; Nest uses a motion detector on the thermostat to detect movement. Oir thermostat is in a room that is on average fairly unused - deliberately chosen for our old school system as it's then most likely to be at a constant temperature, but not suited to nest as it might be hours after someone comes home before the door to the room gets opened and it might even be unused for a while day while someone's at home. I also had doubts about it being able to predict our routine. With term time and non term time, plus a shift pattern meaning different days at home each week, I reckoned our household was beyond its design. I gather you can now buy a "home/away assist" add-on which uses the location of your phone in the same way as Tado. As per my previous post, not necessarily recommending Tado, but the different systems have different strengths depending on your use case. Also worth finding out exactly how they behave when they lose connection to the internet. My "Smart thermostat" is actually pretty dumb. It doesn't store any programming, so if it loses connection to the internet/remote server, it will just stay in the same state. Eg, I have it set so that even when I'm home, the heating is essentially off at night, but if the connection is lost during the day, it won't receive the instruction to turn off. Or if it loses connection during the day when I'm at home and I then go out, it would stay on; the server in Germany would know that I'm out but wouldn't be able to tell the thermostat to turn the heating off. That might be somewhere that the Nest system works better.
jmak Posted January 22, 2019 Posted January 22, 2019 We've just changed from oil central heating/water to gas. It has been amazing. We've never had a combi boiler before. We researched many boilers and there was one German make which we looked at fitting. We were advised against it and ended up going for a Worcester 38CDi. This powers our heating, our water and our under-floor heating in the kitchen. Gareth You know that Worcester is British in the way that Mini is a British brand? [emoji3] Doesn't make it bad, just that it's still German...
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