I have also recently installed these though I needed adapters from a company in Luton to convert my radiator valves to fit these. Conrad do supply them but they are around £9 each whereas I paid about £3 each. Batteries last over a year and come supplied with Duracell's. You actually don't need the thermostat in each room unless you want to see the temperature. The valves have everything in them but don't display the actual room temperature. I also didnt bother with the window sensors, so each room cost me about £26-£30. You can also get a switch so that when you leave the property you can turn all radiators down to a holiday setting. One slight drawback is that these are designed for the european market so the displays are upside down if mounted at the bottom of the radiator as is traditional in the UK. Another advantage is that these open and close the valves several times a day so prevents them from sticking during non-use in summer. You can hear them opening and closing as the motor works but it isn't too noisy. Only other thing is I managed to find a Conrad discount code so got a few quid extra off and they do occasionally have them on offer.

They come very well packed, complete with batteries and instruction and some adapters.

And finally, no at present you cannot control the boiler from them, so that is a bit of a disappointment.

Could you give a link please to the company in Luton? I suspect you have 28mm threads like me and all of these motorised TRV's use a 30mm thread.

You can control the boiler with the eQ-3 MAX! Switching Adapter Plug and also using a separate one for your hot water circuit, even easier if you can incorporate into each motorised valve. Both adapters can be controlled via the Max cube

I just had the Nest installed and it's brilliant, just like a manual one (if it aint broke) but with all the benefits of remote control, auto learning schedules etc etc.. it doesn't do hot water though!! mind you to be honest having our easy to use hot water programmer in the bathroom is better kept separate anyway.
I might invest in a few of these to add to our bedrooms, I don't need the rad's to be on all the time, just in time for bed.

Just an update, I just got my 3 month bill from N-Power, direct debit reduced from 180 to 150, it has been a mild winter though. This is £360 a year which is less than it cost me to install.

This is brilliant, moving into a hew house, I am trying to automate heading, lighting and curtains/blinds.

So for my house it would cost £350 for my setup - 8 wireless rad thermostats, the lan cube and then 4 thermostats for living room/dining room, Landing/bedrooms, kitchen and hallway.

But can someone confirm, do you need the wall thermostats, if you have them on the radiator as I am happy to control each room independently.

Can someone help me please? If all I want to do is control my room thermostat ie: turn it up, off, on etc from the app (thereby if I turn it up or down it'll effectively switch my heating on and off when I want it) do I only need the room thermostat at £25.99 and the LAN cube at £43.99 to make that system work? Many thanks in advance folks

PrePayment meter customers only...

:disappointed:

I've recently had a hive system fitted by British Gas I can control the complete system, boiler,hot water and radiators via my Samsung S3 from any location. Cost £200 complete and I can check and set the room temperature

Do you have a link to the OVO Energy page where it mentioned this as I cannot see it?

You can still get the smart metres from OVO Energy - they have a waiting list at the moment but are looking to send these aout very soon.

lucky you
if i knew about that trial i would have joined ovo and applied for it too

Bigeck, have a look at this system may be what you are after
http://evohome.honeywell.com/

I am with OVO energy and as I committed to have smart meters fitted (FOC) I was sent the Heatmiser NEO kit FOC, room thermostat and hot water timer, along with a little wireless box, now I can manage my heating and hot water remotely.

ALL FREE!!!!!!!!


http://neo.heatmiser.com/

I have an older system which doesn't have separate thermostatic valves so all I would like is a replacement for my room thermostat which could be controlled via an app. Does anyone know of such a system please? Please don't advise me about my older system needing replaced or the major benefit of thermostatic valves I've already done my homework on that and I've never actually found thermostatic valves to be much use tbh. I'm just looking for the ability to delay my heating from work if I'm asked to work overtime, bring it on earlier if I'm finishing sooner, delay it if I visit someone on my way home from work etc and as I live alone this would be of great benefit to me.

Thanks folks

So does this wall thermostat just communicate with the Rads like? I assumed it would work like my existing wall thermostat in that if I set the temperature the heating would come on and off to maintain the temperature I had selected. The only difference being that this wall thermostat could be adjusted remotely via the Internet. Hope that makes sense

Sorry do I have to be a British Gas customer to have the hive fitted?

No it wouldn't kill just one radiator it would kill the whole heating system the room thermostat puts the heating off and on when the temp has been reached. I've got the rest of the heating system balanced so that would be fine. It's just it would allow me if I'm going to be home late/early to send a command to have the heating to come on early or later. I'd just leave heating on all the time but change the temp to zero if I didn't want it coming on or change it to 15 degrees if I wanted heating to come on and heat the place. Hope that makes sense. I'm just wondering if it would work with the wall thermostat and cube the way I want to use it

Very interesting thread!
I'm a landlord that pays for the tenants heating. I have 8 tenants in 8 rooms, they all come in at different times.
Most times there will only be 2 or 3 people in at night and I feel we are wasting heat.
This system is a great idea however I was wondering if anyone knows if I could add a wireless Pir so
All common radiators will be on but when the tenant opens his/ her room door the pir will tell the wireless thermostat to open.
Ideally it would be great if they could work with geo tags so when the tenant is in the vicinity their phone would automatically open the valve.
Any ideas anyone? Any advice would be most appreciated :smiley:

I really cannot understand why people get so heated (sorry!) about these things. It seems sensible to me to be able to control a trv to only come on when you need it. For £15 you can buy a timed trv. For a bit more, you can do that wirelessly from anywhere. If you don't need this then fine stick with what you have. If you do, or consider yourself a geek, then this is probably the cheapest system around that does everything except control the boiler. Presumably there is a demand for it else British Gas wouldn't have developed their (inferior / different) system. As I travel a lot it does benefit me greatly. I don't get a return on investment from buying a bigger / better TV, so i am not specifically looking for an ROI, just convenience, comfort and the thought I might save some money in the long run. These also help stop TRV's sticking which would mean a messy job replacing them every few years so I expect some savings there. I also have a programmed main thermostat which turns down the temperature at certain times of the day and would have liked to be able to control everything together but that looked like costing a lot more. We also use a different system (home easy and telldus) to control lights and sockets in the house so if this could integrate with that I would be really keen on finding out how.

Yes it was. I collected them as i was local

I got [url=http://www.conrad-electronic.co.uk/ce/en/product/615950/Homexpert-by-Honeywell-Rondostat-HR20-Style-Radiator-Thermostat?ref=searchDetail]these[url] a couple of years ago for my living room and bathroom. They're not wireless, but otherwise the same as these in the thread.

What I've found is they are more responsive to the temperature of the room, resulting in a more comfortable consistent room temperature. I wouldn't call them noisey - but they do use motors to open/close the valve on the radiator, so may be bothersome in the bedroom if they operate during the night. The motor operates whenever necessary to maintain the set temperature in the room - not just at the set switching times.

As this set provides no interlock with the boiler, you must ensure you configure your thermostats to work alongside the boiler thermostat/program. I actually have my radiator thermostats demanding heat late into the night, even though the programmer usually cuts off the heat around 11 pm each evening. That way, if I override the program and extend the heat, the thermostat continues to keep the room warm without having to adjust it - I suppose with this eq3 set the boost function does help with that which mine don't have.

I can't confirm on any savings I've made, as the weather has been warmer since I got these, plus my prices have gone up, plus I've also upgraded my windows to triple glazing. However, my living room is no longer heated on workday mornings - this room accounts for a third of the radiator capacity in the house - so I should be saving something! Likewise, the bathroom is only heated to a toasty level in the morning and end of the day - in between its set to be cooler.

Outside of this set, I also recently upgraded to a weather compensating controller for my system. This actually measures the outdoor temperature, and tunes the boiler to run appropriately. This means the boiler will run gently on a low heat on a mild day, but full blast if it is freezing. This should mean the boiler runs in condensing mode more often, resulting in reduced consumption. I certainly have noticed that its rare the house is over or under-heated - which was often the case returning home on warmer days. Weather compensation is only available where the boiler supports it.

wow... seriously? I never said it was more important... I said you are more likely to hit your return on this faster.

A properly insulated house might not need heating (passive house).
Any way, your initial statement that some device is better than insulation is totally wrong, anyone taking your advice makes one huge mistake. Just trying to stop the propagation of such hugely ridiculous statements.

Is it this gaff? http://www.chalmor.co.uk

I did "I have a 3 bed semi"

Not heating a room you don't need is more important.

Hi,
Just wanting to get peoples opinions on the new evohome by Honeywell

It seems that each radiator controller communicates with the central colour screen controller which then wirelessly turns the boiler on or off.

NOTHING is better / more important than insulation.

This information is meaningless if you don't specify the house size and maybe even how many persons live in it.
You might have a studio flat of a 4 bedroom detached...

Because the winter is mild, I am saving up to 39% on gas with the same heating system as last year.
That's with one more person in the house as well, so more showers and so on.

To equip my house, I would have to spend the equivalent of 1 year's gas bill. To get a sensible rate of return, I would want to be saving over 10% of the bill and critically expecting the valves to last 20 years. I doubt that kind of lifetime is probable. Presumably I need to buy batteries.
When I installed the radiators, all were equipped with basic thermostatic valves at about £5 each. Therefore, in most rooms, I expect to get a very small fuel saving, as the temperature is already regulated properly.
There might be a worthwhile saving of 20% or more in rooms such as the lounge, which do not need heating in the morning from Monday to Friday. However, I could get that benefit with the more basic £25 timer valves.

Where's the business case for these more expensive valves?

Also how long do these things really last for?

Just to explain a couple of points on my post, The reason I fitted individual room thermostats is to give a better control over the room temperature. I have found in the past that using the radiator thermostat does not work too effectively. We have students in 2 bedrooms and children in another 2, they are all quite happy to sit there in 25 degrees, You can lock off the radiator thermo so it cant be manually adjusted and set a max temperature for each individual room, The window contacts are there so that when someone opens the window the radiator shuts down, We have 1 student from Qatar whose solution to a hot room has been to open the window!!!

The other thing I found was the wall thermostat in the hall was not very effective for this system so I by set the temperature up on this so it remains on all the time and fitted a pipe thermostat on the return pipe wired into the boiler time clock. This works great as you can fine tune this to give the rooms enough heat and no more.

I also lagged all the pipes I could get to which means that at times when no heat is required in the rooms the hot water simply circulates thru the lagged pipes and the return pipe thermostat cuts out after a couple of minutes.

Good idea...BUT... they look bloody awful! :neutral_face:

What about all the new kit coming from LightwaveRF now they are in partnership with Megaman - they seem to have a lot of heating control kit coming.

I agree with Musician. If you already have a good thermostat ( mine is a Drayton Digistat 2 with several time zones) and TVRs, you can set the temperature low for the times when you are normally out and just have the boiler come on when you are in. Use manual if you are in during the day unexpectedly. If your house is well insulated the temperature doesn't drop all that much when you are out so if you return early wear a jumper until the temp reaches normal. If you are late getting home you will waste a small amount of heat but not a great deal because you would need to raise the temperature at the later time then the heating will operate at a low duty cycle to maintain the temperature.

I only heat the rooms I'm using in my house but I don't need all this technology to do that - just turn off the valves in unused rooms - simple (and free)!

I'm wondering how many people want these automated systems because they are fun to set up and mess about with rather than for the potential energy saving.

I just installed a bunch of these (11 rads, 4 thermostats, 1 window sensor & eco button). I already had Hive but that didnt deliver what I really wanted but combined they seem to be doing the trick.

Hive controls timing on / off and lives in the kitchen (also coldest room in the house so most likely to need unplanned boosts), other rooms have schedules set around typical active use times. All working well.

For the real techies, this system also integrates to Openhab so can be hooked up to LightwaveRF, Zwave and many other things (not for your typical user yet though!).

You're being purposely antagonistic aren't you?

The FS kit has a boiler control, as per my post. Also available under other brand names such as HouseHeat (but with an incredible markup on the Conrad price eg boiler control £299 househeat, £89 Conrad - exact same item)

So as I originally said, not necessary unless you have a larger property.

Way too many variables to give a sensible average tbh.

That said if you have a big/old house / poorly insulated house / massive heating bill ..etc then using a system like this where you only heat areas that are needed will see a return on your investment much faster then if you have a small/modern well insulated house where your heating bill is already low!!

So as Kwh asked

"Bottom line.
On average, How long will it take for this to pay for itself." ?

That wasn't the point, you seem to be suggesting they aren't worth it because of your specific situation.

The ROI on these is going to be a lot better than cavity insulation and most other stuff people automatically think to do.

Having your heating turn off on a timer like you do isn't entirely necessary either, that's not the point.

A forum is used for discussion, regardless if you want the product or not. Well you're happy spending 250 on this that's all that matters. Personally I'm not convinced its necessary but I hope you gain a saving from it. Good luck.

£500? I paid around 250 for gateway, 8 rad stats, 1 wall stat and 1 eco switch.

You don't have to look at a pc or tablet, that's mainly to configure it.

Turning it off and on whilst out, not going to be home when you think? delay it, save money, sorted. Forgot to turn it off when you left? Sorted, etc etc.

Its all good having a "well" insulated house, but heat where you don't need it is still a waste. If you don't want this, then why bother posting?

Bottom line.
On average, How long will it take for this to pay for itself.

the problem is there is no boiler control.


If you want a COMPLETE system you need the boiler controller synced with all the TRVs.

The only way I think this can be done is with Z-Wave equipment.

Yes I'm ok because my old fashioned heating is well set up and my house is insulated properly and it's on these old fashioned timers and thermostats. Without spending around 500 quid to have this system in say 6 most used rooms. I disagree that radiator insulator reflectors are useless, we'll just have to agree to differ on that. Not saying its without merit on say new or larger properties probably a good idea. Also then there's replacement batteries and I dunno about you but I have better things to look at on a pc / tablet that keep me warm other than heating controls. :smiley:

This thread's turning into a geek love-in! :smiley:

Thanks both Tapi and MrHot for your replies, Ill check out the FS kit above, I am just planning the structured cabling for the house and networking to isolated the house network from the internet for security reasons.

I like this as it would sit nicely on the automation network as it uses a bridge and dose have manual controls along with the eco button. but there isnt much info regarding a best practice setup and I cant work out zones and how to efficiently manage the heating as one of my concerns is that if room a is up to temp, but room b isn't I don't want the boiler to turn on just to heat room b if for instance were going to bed. Likewise if bedroom is heated at 5am for us to get up, ideally we want living room heated for when we go downstairs.

This is more a personal issue than the product and I appreciate I have gone off topic.

Well you're okay, if your bill is "low" and you don't mind wasting heat you don't need at various times of the day.

Your foil reflectors, are useless... modern convector rads are designed to circulate the air around the room, much better ROI on zones than even cheap DIY foil reflectors. Remember gas prices and all that are going up all the time, so the "possible savings" will continue to grow.


The room stat is optional as well, can easily set 2 rads to have the same schedule - in the software you group them into a room.

They also have a wired stat, for electric heaters.

All seem expensive and a lot of hassle to me. Probably a good idea for 5 bedroom plus houses, I don't know. I have a 3 bed semi, with double glazing, cavity wall insulation, foil reflectors behind rads on outside walls and manual thermostatic valves in bedrooms.

The thermostat is set to 19 degrees, the heating comes on between 6am and 830am then between 5pm and 10pm if under 19 degrees.The heating can be overridden if very cold at weekend etc. If one bedroom is too hot/cold can adjust it on the thermostatic valves.
I had the whole system balanced when we moved in. So the house is even heat throughout.

Also have an owl electricity monitor (like a smart meter) so I can see the cost per hour of electricity and moan at the kids if too much is on.

Our total gas and electric bill for a year is around £950 with edf fixed price.

Really don't like the idea of radiators shutting off when the windows open. Call me old fashioned, we tuck the curtains into the rads, but if we want a bit of air through as well can have the vent open and the curtains a little bit so we don't get stuffy.

This is solving a problem that doesn't really exist in the average home. For large buildings maybe though..

i just added 6 thermostats and the cube box: almost £200
wondering if Hive for same price is a better option

any opinions?

At least with this kind of setup, you can remove the wireless stats and take them with you to the next house...


That's kind of up to you - for just boiler control, turning it off when you are out and turning it on just before you get back will save you a bit. Having zoned heating (even upstairs downstairs) will save you even more as you wont heat bedrooms in the day etc when you want the living room warm.

This system(s) zones every single room, the time I wake up (and go to bed) etc is different from the kids etc, kitchen is only in morning and afternoon, living room is most the day minus a bit in the morning for breakfast in the dining room, the "play room" is on only after school for a bit etc...

I don't think it will take all that long to return savings, probably a few years of course - sadly a lot of people seem to only care about the now these days.

Well that is the same for any, but then people don't want to do things themselves and rather rely on 3rd parties all the time. Apparently its only going to be around £5 a year. Even then its a bit crap - the lan gateway checks so infrequently (it goes outwards so no port forwarding needed).

If you have a spare PC, you can run their software, which has a web front end - and forward that port over the internet... would need to put your own security on it though. Also i've yet to get it (java app) to run headless on my (linux) server yet.

Software doesnt show current temp at the rad stat, although if you have a wall stat it does.

There is possible 3rd party integration, although people arent all that impressed with eQ MAX for this. MAXBuddy is the only one that is only for this, that reads current rad stat temps.

My radiator thermostat is stuck behind a curtain,so the setting of it is difficult.

Would this solve my problem? or is the temperature still monitored at that point? ie on the end of the radiator?

Although it's hard to tell from the description - I think the next model up just adds a local timer - you can set it to be "always off" at some times of the day and on thermostat at others.

Both models should do the basic "maintain the valve to heat the room" functionality completely locally. Adding a thermostat for a room or zone should improve that. Adding a network unit gives you full remote control.

I have the thermostat in the lounge in my apartment which has kitchen on one side and next doors lounge on other so its warm. But the bedroom has an external wall. This means bedrooms freezing cold when the lounge is nice and cozy. If it was my property then I would've sorted a multizone thermostat system. I'm also thinking of the nest system for my new place

Not knocking this deal as it might be useful for some....but isn't it easier and healthier to get up and just physically turn the thermostatic valve down or off, or indeed use the timer to control the whole system.

In our house, it's false economy to turn the heating totally off, or an individual radiator off anyway. It makes more sense to just lower the temperature at night or when nipping out, as otherwise it just uses more gas to heat the house from freezing.

Not voting either way though.

one valve per radiator
one thermostat per room (or group of radiators, if you wanted a zone i.e two bedrooms and landing to have same schedule and temp)
one window sensor per window - optional (or just on chosen main windows)
one lan gateway per house - optional, for central control

So you only need one of these gadgets per room, not per radiator? Or have I completely missed the point lol

you're right, each room needs a thermostat (which can control up to 8 rads in a room or zone). if the thermostat is elsewhere then the measured temperature is different to the room being controlled! original poster seems to think the trv has a thermostat and just reports the temp to the controller, the opposite being the case.

Depends, some older systems are fed by the hot water loop, and the by-pass/passes, need to be able to take the flow generated by your pump. can result in burned out pump due to overheating.

I love the idea of wireless communication though the reality is horrible. I live in an old house, wireless is a major pita!
Quoted ranges are incredibly optimistic in my experience.

can you control this locally(eg without the control box) or do you need the next model up (This one ) to do that?

For £200, you know the answer is no. :-)

Be aware that your system will need a by-pass to avoid dead heading the pump (as with all thermostatic heads)

Fair enough. I just assumed a cheapo WiFi USB stick may be able to do the trick, but have done a little more research and I agree, I completely misunderstood how these things work, so cheers for the heads up. Should have been clearer and said my NAS isn't actually a NAS, but a HP Microserver.

When you say build your own circuits to control, do you mean something like this?

http://www.uk-automation.co.uk/products/RFXCOM-RFXtrx433.html

Also, can you recommend any software? This looks like a reasonable option, but if you have any first hand recommendations for software/different radiator thermostats that would be very useful :-)

http://www.domotiga.nl/projects/domotiga/wiki/DomotiGa_Screenshots

How do you control the TRVs from your phone - does involve port forwarding and all the pain that goes with it or is it a proper easy to implement system that does require a degree in computer science.

I ask because have installed a wifi tstat which required fixed IP and Port forwarding and it was a pain to set up and dropped out so much I just use as a conventional tstat.

One question

Surely you need the thermostat so the heat sensor isn't physically attached to the radiator - I guess it would be very prone to air currents in the room which would be much reduced by positioning the sensor across the room.

Shame you have to buy an extra box to control the valves, as it would be quite nice if the hooked up wireless to 2.4ghz and controlled from my NAS. Nice concept and product though- impressed they have kept the prices nice an low to make it affordable, it's all too common to see these home automation companies go silly with pricing!

This one is £10.77 at Amazon. No pc/iPhone control though http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004LAT0J2/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?redirect=true&tag=ho01f-21

£10 off code for orders over £75 'womensday1' from 7 March to 10 March.

would you care to share where you got the £3 adapters from? Thanks

Indeed but I know what he means. If the main room where the boiler thermostat is located is warm enough (because you should not have TRV's in this room), then the boiler will turn off even though the other rooms may be cold. Ideally you want the system to know if any room has a demand for heat and keep the boiler running until it is satisfied, which of course would mean putting radiator valves in the main room, removing the thermostat and controlling the boiler via this system. Probably a bit risky imho in case you lost the router for some reason and come hone to a sauna.

Can this system be wired to the boiler to turn it off when none of the radiators need heating?

I have also recently installed these though I needed adapters from a company in Luton to convert my radiator valves to fit these. Conrad do supply them but they are around £9 each whereas I paid about £3 each. Batteries last over a year and come supplied with Duracell's. You actually don't need the thermostat in each room unless you want to see the temperature. The valves have everything in them but don't display the actual room temperature. I also didnt bother with the window sensors, so each room cost me about £26-£30. You can also get a switch so that when you leave the property you can turn all radiators down to a holiday setting. One slight drawback is that these are designed for the european market so the displays are upside down if mounted at the bottom of the radiator as is traditional in the UK. Another advantage is that these open and close the valves several times a day so prevents them from sticking during non-use in summer. You can hear them opening and closing as the motor works but it isn't too noisy. Only other thing is I managed to find a Conrad discount code so got a few quid extra off and they do occasionally have them on offer.

They come very well packed, complete with batteries and instruction and some adapters.

And finally, no at present you cannot control the boiler from them, so that is a bit of a disappointment.

Great stuff! Gas is soo bloody expensive, for me it's double my electricity bill!

Sounds interesting but how often do your need to replace the batteries on the valves?

Great pitch / deal . However, I missed the Remington advert sentence....I love the product so much I bought the company lol

Heated!