Soldato
I Installed Wiser this week.
Got the starter kit a couple of days ago and managed to work out the wiring. Like you I had to replace the faceplate as, although the terminals on the previous one were right, the faceplate itself was rectangular and recessed into the back of the old controller unlike the square one that the Wiser unit locates onto. Swapping the faceplate over was simple enough. Also had to disconnect the old thermostat which was a little unnerving as this was my first time mucking about with heating system wiring. Reverse engineered it all and worked out which two terminals I needed to bridge and there was no bang when I turned the power back on so I'll call that a win. The only other issue I had during setup was when adding the first TRV to the system. The instructions in the app say to put the batteries in the TRV then turn and hold it in the '+' position until the green light is flashing. I did this and it just sat there with all the lights on but no green no matter how long I held it. Eventually I worked out that you need to install the batteries, but then give it a chance to power up by itself before touching it. Once it settles down you can turn it to '+' and the green light will flash within a couple of seconds.
The intention was always to start with the basic kit with a view to adding TRVs onto all radiators once I was happy it'd do what I want. I managed to hold out for whole day before a box of TRVs was ordered and they turned up today. I've now got Wiser TRV heads on every radiator in the house bar one which doesn't have a valve on it (It's in the same room that the old 'dumb' room stat used to be in and where I now have the Wiser room stat). I'll probably install one at some point but it'll involve draining radiators etc so can wait for now. I've also noticed that of the 9 TRVs I've now installed, maybe 2 or 3 of them didn't seem to do anything during their 'calibration' whereas most of them whirred away for several seconds. I've not noticed any adverse issues with the ones that didn't make a noise but I'll need to keep an eye on them.
I still need to decide what I'm going to do with the configuration of the downstairs rooms. We've got three rooms (Living room, dining room and kitchen) that are all fairly open plan.They're seperate rooms but linked by quite wide arches with no doors between them and all have their own radiators, at the moment I have TRVs on the living room and kitchen rads with the room stat in the dining room which is in the middle. In the app I have it all configured as one room with the three devices assigned but im unsure of whether there's a chance I'll end up with temperature variation within that large space and whether I'll be better off configuring them as seperate rooms. We also have an open fireplace in the living room so the real test will be when it gets cold enough for us to start lighting a fire of an evening.
I'm also unsure of whether a room stat is really necessary in a system of this type. Surely once you have every radiator controlled by their own TRVs, each with the ability to call for heat that a room stat is then redundant.
The app itself seems easy enough to use although there is room for improvement. Rooms seem to be listed in the order in which they were created, there should be a way to easily reorder them to put the more significant rooms at the top. There seems to be no way to force a recalibration of the TRVs without removing them from the system and readding. I'd also like to see a way to copy schedules from one room to another. Finally, when you have a room with multiple devices, it'd be nice if you could see the temperatures of each device rather than just the 'room' temperature as well as name each device independently to allow immediate identification within the app.
Got the starter kit a couple of days ago and managed to work out the wiring. Like you I had to replace the faceplate as, although the terminals on the previous one were right, the faceplate itself was rectangular and recessed into the back of the old controller unlike the square one that the Wiser unit locates onto. Swapping the faceplate over was simple enough. Also had to disconnect the old thermostat which was a little unnerving as this was my first time mucking about with heating system wiring. Reverse engineered it all and worked out which two terminals I needed to bridge and there was no bang when I turned the power back on so I'll call that a win. The only other issue I had during setup was when adding the first TRV to the system. The instructions in the app say to put the batteries in the TRV then turn and hold it in the '+' position until the green light is flashing. I did this and it just sat there with all the lights on but no green no matter how long I held it. Eventually I worked out that you need to install the batteries, but then give it a chance to power up by itself before touching it. Once it settles down you can turn it to '+' and the green light will flash within a couple of seconds.
The intention was always to start with the basic kit with a view to adding TRVs onto all radiators once I was happy it'd do what I want. I managed to hold out for whole day before a box of TRVs was ordered and they turned up today. I've now got Wiser TRV heads on every radiator in the house bar one which doesn't have a valve on it (It's in the same room that the old 'dumb' room stat used to be in and where I now have the Wiser room stat). I'll probably install one at some point but it'll involve draining radiators etc so can wait for now. I've also noticed that of the 9 TRVs I've now installed, maybe 2 or 3 of them didn't seem to do anything during their 'calibration' whereas most of them whirred away for several seconds. I've not noticed any adverse issues with the ones that didn't make a noise but I'll need to keep an eye on them.
I still need to decide what I'm going to do with the configuration of the downstairs rooms. We've got three rooms (Living room, dining room and kitchen) that are all fairly open plan.They're seperate rooms but linked by quite wide arches with no doors between them and all have their own radiators, at the moment I have TRVs on the living room and kitchen rads with the room stat in the dining room which is in the middle. In the app I have it all configured as one room with the three devices assigned but im unsure of whether there's a chance I'll end up with temperature variation within that large space and whether I'll be better off configuring them as seperate rooms. We also have an open fireplace in the living room so the real test will be when it gets cold enough for us to start lighting a fire of an evening.
I'm also unsure of whether a room stat is really necessary in a system of this type. Surely once you have every radiator controlled by their own TRVs, each with the ability to call for heat that a room stat is then redundant.
The app itself seems easy enough to use although there is room for improvement. Rooms seem to be listed in the order in which they were created, there should be a way to easily reorder them to put the more significant rooms at the top. There seems to be no way to force a recalibration of the TRVs without removing them from the system and readding. I'd also like to see a way to copy schedules from one room to another. Finally, when you have a room with multiple devices, it'd be nice if you could see the temperatures of each device rather than just the 'room' temperature as well as name each device independently to allow immediate identification within the app.
