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I need to replace my thermostat as it's knackered and was thinking about going all in on a smart central heating system. Has anyone got any experience if the various brands?

The plan is to have smart valves on all the radiators, I mostly work from home and the last few winters have been thinking how nice it would be to heat just the office and not the rest of the house. I don't really like running the central heating all the time, especially if I'm just in one room. I often sit in a belay jacket etc but when it's really cold I occasionally have to resort to an electric fan heater or sometime give in and knock the boiler on.

I'm leaning towards Tado so far, looks like it would be the cheapest option, though not by a huge amount. I really hate the Hive tv adverts so would rather not reward them with my money but I could get over this. 

The current thermostat is battery powered with a two wire connection to the boiler. I think all the smart units I've seen are also battery powered but I could get mains power to it easily enough if needed.

I'd need 8 radiator valves if I fitted out the whole house.

Tado does have an internet hub thing which has to be plugged into the router, rather than being wireless, which is mildly inconvenient as I'd probably end up adding a spur and new socket by the router to power it if I want to avoid some messy cabling (the main phone socket is in a stupid place, router power cable is already extended several meters to a socket but there isn't another handy one for another device). This wouldn't especially be a massive job though.

Anyone had any experience good or bad with these systems? 

Not sure whether I'd recoup the costs as I use the heating very little, if anything I might use it a bit more, plus using the gas boiler to heat the office rather than an electric heater means it's definitely burning gas rather than potentially using renewable power. Trying not to overthink it too much though, it's more about making my working day a bit more comfortable.

I have Hive and am reasonably happy with it. I like what I have achieved with it. I hate the Hive aspects of it!

The positives are really good. I can control the temperature in each room of the house independently on its own timed profile. The smart radiator values can turn the boiler on/off when required. This is great for having variable temperature set points throughout the day, for example my bedroom is set to be warm from 06:00 - 08:00 and then on frost protect the rest of the time. Kitchen up to temperature for breakfast before frost protect during the day when out. Home office warm when required.

The negatives were the interface, the set up and the fact that Hive wants to charge you for the data it gathers. For example, I how have a dozen smart TRVs all recording temperature, Hive wont provide historic data for these showing room temp or boiler firing without giving them more money.

Use of thermostats within the rad values is also a bit poor tbh. I would go for a system with multiple stand alone thermostats if possible as controlling the room temperature by measuring air temp at floor level by your radiator is a bit poor.

Their description of how it all works is also very poor.

I set up a stand alone raspberry pi home assistant to pull and record all the data which was much more useful to see what is going on and to check whats happening.

I'd second the recommendation to avoid Hive. I have one of their setups because it came with the house. The previous owner left me the network dongle that connects the thermostat to the router but they've designed that to be single use, it can't be associated with a new account. No direct relevance to you but it shows the kind of consumer-hostile decisions they make.

Of more relevance to you, an obvious feature for any smart thermostat is to change settings automatically (however you decide to configure it) when you leave the house or arrive home. To me, it's obvious that there should be an option to trigger that off smartphone location or network connection data (which Tado does, and probably so do many others). But Hive doesn't do that because they'd rather sell you their motion sensors. They used to have an API so that if you're suitably geeky you could hook into it and add features like that using other software, but they got rid of that, presumably because they thought they could extract more fees from people by doing so.

Having said that, it is basically functional, fairly user friendly and has been very reliable for me. But the artificial limitations and the money-grubbing approach put me off. Tado is cheaper to buy in the first place and seems more fully featured without paying a subscription fee. I'm thinking about getting smart radiator valves and seriously considering switching to a different system altogether, despite the added cost of replacing the thermostat I've already got. Though last time I looked the cheaper radiator valves quite significantly offset the cost of thermostat replacement.

My thermostat packed in last autumn and I looked into the costs, potential benefits and possible savings of a smart system.  I'm retired and my wife works from home.

In the end, I just replaced the thermostat.  Yes, we might have saved money over the medium term with a smart system but I worked out that it wasn't a given even with last winter's power prices.  It's not that much effort to turn a few valves off and on if required.

Your house, your circumstances and your demands may all be very different from mine so do your own calculations, but don't forget that a new thermostat doesn't cost a lot in cash or household disturbance and has a very small learning curve.

T.

I've got a Wiser system, mainly as it's what got fitted when we changed boiler (to a mains pressure combi) a few years ago. That was just the boiler controller and a single thermostat (battery). We had thermostat valves on the rads but I changed them to smart valves in bedrooms and living stuff downstairs, shortly before prices went stupid, bathrooms and downstairs toilets left on dumb adjustable thermostat valves. 

No subscription, Web app via router onto controller.  Can add more valves and thermostats in if I want, set individual programmes for each or group them collectively, which I did for living and dining rooms as they're joined, kitchen is still dumb stat but it's sort of joined to dining room anyway. Rad valves have a twist top which gives 30 min 1 or 2 degrees boost.

Just looked and I've got room temp data back to Oct 2021

Mark

I’ve got Tado and the drawbacks are (as mentioned by you and others):

There is no relay or booster available between the bit that plugs into the router and the main box by the boiler meaning we sometimes lose connectivity between the two. 
The radiator valve can be reading 21 degrees and the room is still freezing. There is an offset you can do on the app but a speedster room thermostat would be good (at a cost obvs)

I have Tado and I'm pleased with it so far.  Every rad has a smart TRV (13 in total), and I have a wireless thermostat in the sitting/dining room.  Replacing the existing heating/hot water controller with the Tado wireless one was very straightforward, once I'd worked out how the wiring for the existing one worked - which required some time poring over the installation manuals for the old system (which I hadn't installed myself).

I am very happy with the room-level heating control.  I did spend some time "calibrating" the temperature sensor in each room to make sure that what I asked for temperature-wise in each room was more or less what I got.  This meant primarily the TRVs, since they are not ideally located to report a meaningful room temperature measurement.

Tado's geofencing function isn't automatic unless you subscribe to their "Auto Assist" service.  It does alert you via the app when there's no-one home, and ask if you want to turn the heating off, and vice versa when it detects someone returning home.  The same goes for the "turn the heating off in the room if the window is open" function: it's not automatic unless you're a subscriber.  TBH that's all fine with me as I prefer to retain manual control over such things, but it is helpful to get the prompt.

If you are an Octopus customer you can (or could) get a discount code for Tado kit - IIRC it was 20% (correction, it was 35%!)  I certainly made good use of that when I bought the starter pack and the required TRVs.

Edited to add: The other day my Tado system e-mailed me to let me know that the batteries (2xAA) in one of the TRVs was running low.  Which was handy.

Also, as mrphilipoldham says, there's no point in having separate heating schedules for different rooms if other members of the family behave as if it's open plan throughout!

I’ve just installed trvs adding to just the basic wireless thermostat and receiver. Liking it so far. The ability to programme the heating schedule is great, turns on (and then off) individual rooms at the set times for getting up etc. All I need now is the wife and boy to close doors behind them 😅

Swapped out our old one with a wiser earlier on this year. 
Super easy to fit but not 100% plug and play as there are minor differences in the so called standard mountings. I also had to adjust a bit of the wiring at the boiler to do with the hot water but it’s well documented and only added a few minutes to the job.

The app is easy to use and kept up to date. Didn’t bother with any smart thermostats as they aren’t needed for our usage.

Any questions let me know.

I have tado. Like it. Happy to answer any specific questions.

Not worth it without the individual trvs imo.

There are subscription only features which is annoying, but I don't have them and it doesn't bother me.

The best thing about it is the individual room control. Especially useful as I work at home most days.

I'm not convinced that it saves me money (I really have no evidence either way tbh as I installed straight away after moving in).

Installing it was easy except for the thermostat, which was only hard because the wiring in place already was confusing.

We only use the trv thermometers, which often seem a bit off. Considering getting a couple of the independent thermometers (which are annoyingly expensive) for 'important' rooms.

Another tado user, very happy with it. Particularly the graphs, and adaptive schedules. For example: rather than set it to come on at 7am, you can tell it to be warm at 7am. It learns how long your house takes to heat, considers the internal temperature and weather forecast, and changes its start time accordingly.

Though it worth suggesting: some routers have a USB port on the back, which would be enough to power the tado bridge rather than get a spur there.

Thanks all

Hive sounds like a disappointing business model, so happy to avoid.

I'd originally thought Tado would be the easier install cos there's a kit that gives a straight swap for the existing thermostat but it does have the additional internet thingy. Thinking Wise might end up easier but I'll have to have a poke around the boiler to check I can wire in the hub bit easily.

Might seem a daft question, but do the TRV bits just clamp on the existing valve? Almost all my radiators have a normal manual valve, the installation video on the Wise website shows swapping a traditional TRV for the smart one. In that there's a thread on the valve body to attach the smart bit, but mine don't have that. The pictures on the Tado site show an array of adaptors and say it'll work with most valves. I'm assuming it's the same with Wise. 

How long do people generally find the batteries last?

Some valid points, though currently the thermostat is in the kitchen and if I want to heat just the office I'd have to turn off all the other radiators then nip up and down stairs to turn the boiler on and off. I've never bothered doing this so far, unfortunately human laziness means it seems like too much effort, especially when I can just buy some gadgets to do it for me. Maybe I should view it as a bit of extra exercise, might keep me warmer too.

It's a good suggestion, had the same idea but sadly it doesn't.

Can't speak about Tado specifically but all the ones I have and all the ones I've looked at fit onto an existing TVR. The basic metal valve base of a standard TRV is required. You then remove the plastic "standard" TRV and replace it with the smart TRV. No plumbing ability required. They were slightly sensitive and two of the old but functional standard TRVs failed to work as smart TRVs and required replacement.

The batteries have all done a year with the exception of one which is on the edge of range and only managed six months.

Not sure about Tado but Hive works with a fifteen minute check rate. Every fifteen minutes it checks the room temp and opens and shuts accordingly.

We have Tado; had it fitted about 5 weeks ago and been using it since (live in the highlands and had CH on a few times already this month).

Very happy with it. TRVs are easy to fit, they come with a whole set of different adapters to suit virtually all likely radiator fittings. Really straightforward.

Since my role on this thread seems to be the one arguing against major household investment and disturbance and promoting the low tech answer (and also not answering the question that was asked, as is traditional) have you thought about getting a convection heater for your office?  All it needs is a plug, and it's a lot quieter than a fan heater.

T.

+1 for using the most simple method that achieves the desired outcome. Obviously electricity has a higher cost per unit of heat than gas but there are efficiencies in 'point of use' heating. Even with only one TRV open, the central heating system will need to get up to temp and will still be circulating heat through all the pipes in the house. Also a lot cheaper up front than wireless programmable TRVs (sorry, can't bear to use the word Smart). Not sure where the break even point would be but it's worth considering.

I did quite a bit of research into this last year when I wanted to replace my dumb thermostat and came to the conclusion that Tado was the best combination of cost and features.

Find the geofencing a really useful feature, had to keep an eye on the distance settings as my wife works relatively close to home and Tado keeps the house ticking over, but below your target temp, if you are close.

I have smart TRVs on the rooms upstairs, but a relatively open plan downstairs with a wood burner means one room thermostat works fine.

As well as the Octopus discounts mentioned, Amazon often discount and Tado have a refurbished store which I've bought TRVs from with no problems.

Two things I've not seen mentioned yet;

Installation was a doddle, the app provides really clear system specific instructions. I'm not a dunce when it comes to wiring, but very nervous about starting work that would be expensive to remedy but it was super easy.

Wiring for the Internet bridge, it's just a 5v micro USB, so as has been mentioned, you may have a USB socket on your router that will power it. Alternatively a long micro USB cable alongside your extended router power cable would be fine and unobtrusive.

You do need an app and subscription to get the best features, which some people are wary of, but I give my data away to much shadier companies, so that doesn't worry me.

https://community.hivehome.com/s/article/Hub-Guide-for-Home-Move

?

Glad they've changed that policy. I wasn't confused or making it up, there's plenty of discussion all over the internet of how it worked until very recently. The fact that they've just quietly changed it shows quite clearly that there was never any technological justification for it, and they're obviously a bit ashamed because I can't find any big announcement about it.

I have the Wiser system and am generally very happy with it.

The good:

- it's VERY nice to be able to boost individual rooms, and leave the rest colder

- great stats for historical temperatures etc

- I'm sure it saves money overall but I haven't looked at my stats to figure out how much

The gotchas:

- battery life in the TRV isn't great.  The 2xAA last about a year, but it's a pain in the butt to go around and change them.

- like all home automation, it's a real pain for house guests, especially those who stay a while, to work out how to use it.  The TRVs are particularly fiddly to tighten down and an unknowing house guest can easily unscrew it from the valve if they fumble trying to boost it on the device.

- the answer to good heating automation is NOT to throw a smart TRV on every radiator - some (the ones you want primary control over) should be smart, and the rest benefit from staying dumb.  For example, I don't care if the foyer gets cool but putting it on a dumb TRV let's it warm up when another rad is on, versus a smart TRV when it needs to actively decide to heat to get heat.

In some new houses, there is a manifold after the boiler. Rather than a circuit of rads in series, the rads are in parallel, each with their own connection. If one rad comes on, the water is just piped directly to that one, rather than around the circuit. If you think about it, the savings would be just to stop the thermal loss, from pumping water around a bunch of pipes to heat one rad. However, the thermal loss, will still be heating the house. So a saving, but not massive.

Another Tado user here. I find the graphs really good. Also the ability to turn the water on when out for a run, so I can have a bath when I get in. Geo fencing is good. I have manual TRV's. generally, I'm not convinced that taking a heat reading, from next to a heat source is optimal. I've tweaked the system so it works for me and I dont really see a need to mess regularly. I may experiment with a smart one, but its not high on my list.

British Gas have recently stopped supporting some Hive home security devices. It would seem that there is a forced upgrade path in their business model. I dont know if the Hive Hub 1, is for the CH or the automation or both. Possibly something to consider.

Tado is I think the only one that does proper geofencing, setting the holding temperature based on how far from home you are and how long you've been away so it'll get to the required one when you get back.  I wonder if they have a patent on that perhaps?  Hive didn't do geofencing at all last time I looked at it and thus is markedly inferior.

The Tado router box does require power but my router has a USB socket on it (may want to check if yours does?) which seems to power it quite happily.

Edit: now read yours doesn't, sorry.  Might be easier/cheaper to change the router for one that does than run power to it!

I don't have the TRVs and it very much IS worth it.  It's "fit and forget" - I set once what I want the temperature inside to be and just leave it, no need for adjusting timings or anything (though you can do timings, I set a lower overnight temperature).  If I go out it allows the temperature to drop.  As I don't go into an office every day and am not consistent over when I do, it's perfect.

In a family setting it'd only work if the kids only ever went out with the parents or had smartphones though.

Would be better with the TRVs of course.

My Tado box just replaced the main wall thermostat, there's nothing on the boiler itself though I believe with a fully TRV-ed system some people put it up there instead of on the wall?  If you have trouble getting a signal to the boiler, that would be an option.

That's interesting and not something I've seen other than with under floor heating, or with larger properties that have low loss headers and multiple circuits. I'm guessing the manifold is controlled by a number of zone thermostats. Sounds like a good solution. 

I dont have first hand experience of them. The guy who fitted my boiler mentioned them, in relation to smart TRV's. I believe the manifold is dumb, but by controlling the rad TRV you open the circuit and allow heat to just that radiator. With a modern boiler, it can reduce the heat output to compensate for the reduced load.

Only just spotted this thread - it's something I've been doing a lot of research into over the last year having had to install a new boiler. I ended up with the Worcester Bosch EasyControl thermostat and their TRVs. I went with this partly because it's a perfect fit for the new Worcester Bosch boiler, but also because it allows for weather compensation and boiler modulation, as well as a few other nifty features like auto-balancing on the radiators with the smart TRVs.

Anyway, I decided against Hive very early on - it does not allow any modulation, your boiler is either on or off. With Tado (and the set-up I have), it will alter the power output of your boiler, and the flow temperature according to the demand on the system (how many radiators are calling for heat, what is the return temperature, etc.). I believe Tado also allows for weather compensation, which will work out how hot your radiators need to be to heat up your house based on the external temperature (as well as return temp, no. of radiators calling for heat, etc.), so if you only need a little boost, it will run your radiators at a lower temperature and allow your boiler to run in it's most efficient condensing mode. 

Of course all of this only works if you have a boiler that is capable of accepting the new smart thermostat. Hive does have it's place, and that's for old boilers that have no modulation. If you have a reasonably modern boiler, I'd go with either Tado, or potentially the manufacturers unit. I would hesitate to recommend the Worcester Bosch unit I have as it was a nightmare sourcing the TRVs - they seem to be out of stock across the UK at the moment, and as a result are quite pricey. 

On the subject of TRVs, you should consider where they are located. In the UK, we tend to have the on the flow side of the radiator, mounted vertically. This means that the heat of the pipe below them and the radiator alongside them has a significant effect on the temperature of the sensor and they will heat up to temperature and shut down before the room heats up. They will then quickly cool down and your system will fire up again. No amount of compensation will fix this fully. The ideal location is on the return side and mounted horizontally (as you often see in Europe). I have had to wedge some insulation between some of my TRVs and the radiators as a result of this problem. At some point I will get somebody round to drain the system, flip the valves 90 degrees and refill. I wish I'd realised this when we got it all installed as it would have been very easy to do at that stage!!

Well, that was a much longer reply than I had intended and barely even scratches the surface - hope it's of some use!!

Thanks, interesting points.

I ended up getting a Tado wired thermostat, seemed the easiest to install as it's just a straight swap for the previous one which was 230v switched. Well, easy apart from power supply for the internet bridge, adding a spur looked like a quick and easy job but turned out to be quite awkward, lots of fiddling about with magnets on string and even an avalanche probe to get a cable through some existing trunking 🤣

My boiler has connections for an 'EMS bus' according to the installation manual so might be worth trying to switch to this. Unfortunately it's a very long cable run from the boiler to thermostat, so trying to connect serial comms over the existing T&E for the required distance might be asking too much. Not really up for pulling a new cable through, if I'd gone for the version of the thermostat with a wireless hub it wouldn't be an issue but it's probably too late now unless I try to exchange it. I'll maybe give it a try with the existing cabling, you never know it might be fine. I've not managed to find any info on max transmission distances etc for EMS though have found a couple of slightly different electrical specifications, can try a bit more searching though.

Most of the radiators don't have TRVs so I'm currently draining down the system as we speak to fit them over the weekend (good timing on your post there!) With the TRVs on the return side do I then need to balance the radiators from the feed side or is this unnecessary as the smart valve controllers will just sort it all out?

I'm not 100% sure about balancing aspect as I'm just an armchair amateur, but I believe it all works exactly the same when it comes to balancing with things mounted the other way around (it doesn't affect pressures or flow, so the lockshield valve does exactly the same the opposite way round).

If you don't move the TRVs to the return side, you'll get a big advantage from horizontal mounting on the flow side (which is what I will end up doing as it's a nice easy option), and you won't confuse all the British plumbers who won't be used to the alternative installation (if you look online you'll find nearly all discussions say mount them on the flow side, but you rarely see any justification for this)!! It's also a lot easier to do as all you're doing is disconnecting the valve and reconnecting having turned it 90 degrees.

I've just been trying (and failing) to find an article I read a while ago that suggested that the ideal set up is to have the flow coming in at the top of the radiator, with the TRV mounted so that it protrudes horizontally and forwards from the flow side, with the return coming out of the opposite bottom corner. It then worked backwards step by step to end up at the standard UK set-up working through all the advantages/disadvantages along the way. The following briefly touches on it, but doesn't go into the depth of the article I read! Be warned, this is all a bit of  a rabbit hole!!

Finally, the only caveat I'd add to any of this is to consider how vulnerable your valves are. I have two that I will be leaving as they are as they are in positions that would be quite likely to be accidentally kicked due to their location if I were to flip them, so I'll put up with their inaccuracy and if they're really bad, go back to stuffing insulation down their side!

https://www.flocontrol.ltd.uk/trv-orientation-does-it-matter/