Heating - Boiler/Tank - Dumb vs Smart heating

PaDE

PaDE

PaDE

Associate
Joined
20 Mar 2015
Posts
264
Not sure what we want here. Final bits of our refurb and we need to sort the heating out.

So looking for some suggestions where there is a plethora of options to choose from.

We currently have an old programmer in the kitchen and an old thermostat in the hallway.

We have our condenser boiler in our annex loft (garage conversion)

We have a water tank in the main loft along with an emergen heater in a cupboard top of the stairs.

The bells and whistles of smart cloud based heating systems don’t really sell it to us. So quite happy with integrating some dumb system into HomeSeer if any of that functionality is required.

The thing is, on the heating side of life I know nothing. I suppose a like for like swap out (dumb system) would be the easiest way to go. Difference being the programmer would have to be relocated to make way for a new kitchen unit.

I’d be interested to hear of anyone else’s setups where they have tanks, emergens and a boiler (not Combi)

Thanks
 
Any bog standard RF thermostat will do the trick for you.

Like you i cant see the point of any of the fancy internet smart stuff either.
 
recently installed nest on my dumb oil boiler ( have hot water tank and an immersion which never gets switched on) have to say very impressed with the nest and how it controls the heating the house feels warmer but we appear to be using less oil to heat the house as it takes into consideration the outside temperature and it will also start a pre heat so by the time you want it to be say 20c in your living room its been on for an hour already and has hit that temperature whereas an old timer would only just be coming on. I like the history section which shows you exactly how long your heating was on for and if the boiler had to work longer due to outside weather conditions. also the away feature is very handy its currently linked to both my phone and the wife's so if we are both out the house it will default to eco setting and the heating wont come on saving us oil.
 
SPG said:
Any bog standard RF thermostat will do the trick for you.

Like you i cant see the point of any of the fancy internet smart stuff either.
Click to expand...

Internet lets it know the weather and compensate accordingly. You can also control it from away from home, turn off heating when you forget and turn on heating on your way home. Not really ‘fancy’ just provides extra functionality.
 
Another vote on Nest. Wife has never been happier, home has never been more comfortable and bills are lower. Weather compensation works well as does Eco mode when nobody is around. Easy to use and most importantly has WAF.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

After a lot of humming and 'arring I've choosen Tado because I like the HomeSeer integration plus the granular control with the rads. If we don't get on then we can always swap it out.

Should be fitted sometime next week or the week after at the latest :-)
 
Simon said:
Internet lets it know the weather and compensate accordingly. You can also control it from away from home, turn off heating when you forget and turn on heating on your way home. Not really ‘fancy’ just provides extra functionality.
Click to expand...

I'm still not sure I see the advantage of this. I know that I'm perfectly comfortable when the thermostat is set at 20deg C and so I leave the thermostat set at exactly that. Never touch it. The house is always perfect and I never think that I'm hot or cold. When it's freezing outside the house is still 20deg C and when it's boiling outside the house is still 20deg C (except where it's so hot that it goes above this, quite rare).

The only way that I can see a Nest being of benefit is when you're out of the house for long periods of time regularly and it can let the house cool down a lot and then heat it up when you're going to be in. I don't believe that this is the case for most people. And for us, our days are pretty random so there would be times when the house is too cold. Not ideal.

If we're going to be out for a long time (like a day or more) then I put the thermostat on holiday mode which reduces it down to 15deg C or so for as long as I specify and then it returns to 20deg C as normal.
 
Well no. Nest is for people who want to reduce their heating bills by not having it always on.

The weather compensation is to do with warm up time. Say you want 21c at 8am. The boiler will start earlier if it’s colder outside
 
It also adjusts the temperature of the flow, compensated for weather conditions if you connect it with OpenTherm.

So if the room is 17c, stat at 18c it'll heat the rads to a higher temperature if the outside temperature is lower.

Any new installation since April 2018 (I think) is meant to include at least basic outside temperature compensation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom