Honeywell : EVOHOME

Sounds fantastic, price depending. For example it's pointless heating our downstairs rooms in the morning (apart from the kitchen), but we also don't want to have to go around turning off the radiators downstairs at lunchtime.

As always with these things though, payback on the investment could be a long time, though with energy prices always rising ahead of inflation, maybe now is the time for this kind of technology to make a real difference to people's heating bills.
 
Conrad do a pretty cheap system like this, my parents have it and it works well. You can connect it to your PC too.

edit - Yeah just checked, the Conrad system doesn't have as nice a gui, or marketing!
 
Seems abit over the top for most uk average homes

I was going to get the british gas hive, but I only have my heating on for 4-5 hours on an evening so not much point, especially with summer a few months away
 
The way it works with TRVs is very clever, rather than taking an all radiators on / all off approach. But it's very expensive.

No doubt a good toy but if you're retrofitting there are probably other things you can invest in that will give you a better return - insulation, more efficient boiler, better hot water cylinder etc.
 
It seems great on paper but in principle I'm not sure it works.

I'm currently sat in my lounge with the heating on in all rooms of the house, which seems a waste but later I'll be going to bed so want a warm bedroom and bathroom.
Same for the morning, when I come downstairs I like it warm.
 
SDK^ said:
It seems great on paper but in principle I'm not sure it works.

I'm currently sat in my lounge with the heating on in all rooms of the house, which seems a waste but later I'll be going to bed so want a warm bedroom and bathroom.
Same for the morning, when I come downstairs I like it warm.
Click to expand...

You can set individual times and temperatures for each zone, so you set it to heat the bedrooms and bathroom before you go to bed and the ones you want warm in the morning.

I do this with our current zoned system and it only takes 10-15 minutes to get the bedrooms/bathrooms up to temperature before going to bed. I keep it set at 18c overnight and back to 20c in the morning for 15 mins so the rooms are warm for getting out of bed, they are then not heated until the following night. Changing our system to 2 zone a couple of years ago knocked around 5-7% off our gas usage.
 
SDK^ said:
It seems great on paper but in principle I'm not sure it works.

I'm currently sat in my lounge with the heating on in all rooms of the house, which seems a waste but later I'll be going to bed so want a warm bedroom and bathroom.
Same for the morning, when I come downstairs I like it warm.
Click to expand...

Sort of right, it depends on the size of house. At my parents they have the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen on in the morning, then just the two offices during the day (unless it's really cold then the kitchen will kick in), and then early evening the lounge, then later on the bedrooms and bathrooms kick in too. It saves them a reasonable amount, especially as oil has gotten so darn expensive.

I wont be doing the same in mine however as it's an old lodge house, apparently they didn't require as many or as big rooms back in the olden days!
 
Wouldn't bother, I put the heating on timer in the evenings and it keeps the house warm enough, why would I need it to pop on random times of the day? I'm at work during the day.
 
I like the idea of this particularly as I'm on kerosene heating oil which is not cheap. If you use curtains and doors to isolate rooms I would imagine there is the possibility to make some good savings. The ability to time the use of zone heating is elegant. If I thought I was going to be in my current house long enough I think I'd give it a go.
 
pitchfork said:
Wouldn't bother, I put the heating on timer in the evenings and it keeps the house warm enough, why would I need it to pop on random times of the day? I'm at work during the day.
Click to expand...

So when you put the heating on in the evenings I guess you're heating the whole house even though the chances are you only sitting in the living room.

This system would allow you to turn off the heating in your kitchen after a certain time in the evening (after dinner time) and only heat the bedroom/bathroom later in the evening when you move from your living room to bedrooms.

The point of this system is you only heat the rooms you use at the times you use them.

HEADRAT
 
It does look like a very good system, but very pricey compared to alternatives.

I've opted (Couldnt wait anyway) to go for the Hive wireless thermostat with Danfoss Living Eco TRVs instead which works out quite a bit cheaper. £200 including installation + ~£30 per radiator. With the Danfoss TRVs you can set schedules and manually adjust the temperature if required. You also set the temperature by real temperature rather than a 1-5 setting.

Realistically how often are you going to adjust a radiator in each room?
 
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HEADRAT said:
So when you put the heating on in the evenings I guess you're heating the whole house even though the chances are you only sitting in the living room.

This system would allow you to turn off the heating in your kitchen after a certain time in the evening (after dinner time) and only heat the bedroom/bathroom later in the evening when you move from your living room to bedrooms.

The point of this system is you only heat the rooms you use at the times you use them.

HEADRAT
Click to expand...
You can do that anyway, just plumb in multiple zones and use a dual channel programmer? People have been doing that since the 90's
 
Burned_Alive said:
It does look like a very good system, but very pricey compared to alternatives.

I've opted (Couldnt wait anyway) to go for the Hive wireless thermostat with Danfoss Living Eco TRVs instead which works out quite a bit cheaper. £200 including installation + ~£30 per radiator. With the Danfoss TRVs you can set schedules and manually adjust the temperature if required. You also set the temperature by real temperature rather than a 1-5 setting.

Realistically how often are you going to adjust a radiator in each room?
Click to expand...

My sister has the Hive system and it works well.

The main benefit of the Honeywell system over normal programmable radiator valves is that if one of the rooms drops below the target temperature it is able to fire the boiler to heat the individual room, on a system with a main stat if this has reached the desired temperature in that zone/room the boiler will not fire again until that area drops down even if other rooms have dropped below the target temperature.

What currently happens in this case with our system is we then raise the temperature on the thermostat to get the one room up to temp it is then heating the whole downstairs or upstairs again. You also rarely remember to turn it back down once the room is up to temperature so it stays 1 or 2c higher until the end of the timed period when the controls reset the temperature.

It will be interesting to see the costs saving, if any, once people start to get the system fitted. Our current gas usage is very high so an additional 10% saving would have the cost paid back in around 5 years which would be reduced with any future increase in gas prices.
 
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