New boiler being fitted on Wed, the company are offering to fit Valiant VSmart or Nest controls, so i can control the heating from my phone (can they do ‘owt else?), for £200.

I live on my own at the moment, but looking to get a lodger. I travel a fair bit for work, so the ability to turn it right down for a couple of days, then turn it up in time for me getting home is attractive. Obviously seeing what the heating is doing while I’m away might be handy too!

But, £200. a lot of money when I’ve just dropped over £2k on a boiler.

Is it worth it? the ‘smart’ nature of them appeals, but not sure how easy they are to live with.

what do you reckon?

The OH works shifts, I work varied hours and away from and at home. We got a cheap offer instal of Hive in our last house and since we’ve moved into rental have really missed it. As soon as our house purchase goes through, it’s one of the first things we’ll sort out. The flexibility was great for us, without normal working patterns and turning it on on the way back home from a cold winters ride was a lovely thing. Never worked it out, but because we had more control I am sure it was more cost efficient. Obviously need to have it for a while to recoup the costs. Hive app was really easy to use, though in the 18 months we had it, BG did have a few short lived server issues which meant it lost connection. Just meant you had to control it on the wall panel. Think that probably happened 4 times, but generally only half an hour. Not enough to get cross.

I have the Netatmo that I got on a deal for £100 and it’s made a big difference for me, bit I’ve come from time clock only and no thermostat.
I’m using the same if not slightly less gas to keep my house steady and comfortable rather than big swings in temp. I was away the other weekend, no heating needed but had it on frost guard and then two hours away from home I remotely turned it on and returned to a warm home.
I was a bit doubtful but now a convert.

Seems to me that it may be an idea for you OP but I can’t see the point if you have any sort of regular house activity, ie if you have kids at school.

All you (the OP) need, in my view, is the ability to switch the heating on and off remotely.

i got the honeywell lyric. its brilliant

My mum has had a Tado for 2.5 years – it is excellent and the newer ones are even more configurable. When she comes to visit me for Christmas she’ll simply walk out of the house. When she gets back after Christmas the house will be warm for her without any energy being wasted in the meantime keeping an empty house warm.

I live on my own at the moment, but looking to get a lodger. I travel a fair bit for work

In those circumstances I’d say it was a no-brainer.

It’s not really £200 though is it, you would have to buy some sort of thermostat/timer, so call it £100.

AFAIK – I’m going to get one when the damn extension is finished, they device checks the weather, so if it’s -10 the heating will come on earlier to compensate, as well as all the remote gubbins.

I’ve got the Tado and it is very good. I have had some intermittent connectivity problems that may have been caused by interference but I think I may have fixed that using a longer Ethernet cable. I am a fan but I dont use the GPS function.

We don’t use the GPS function either as there is a chance that the OH will go within range whilst working and set the heating off!! We didn’t bother trying to get it to ‘learn’ our life pattern like you can with Nest as it is too all over the place.

Don’t think of it as 200 for smart heating but more as 200 for the base platform for a smarter home. This will enable all sorts of connected devices as they come on line from:

Door Locks (not that I’d trust them)
Sprinkler systems
Leak Detectors
Door Sensors
Light Bulbs
Smart Plugs
Indoor & Outdoor dimmable lights
Cameras
Health indicators
Alarm systems
etc.

Whether it’s worth it is up to you 🙂

It’s not really £200 though is it, you would have to buy some sort of thermostat/timer, so call it £100.

A basic digital timer / thermostat is £20.

I am considering getting Hive also so this thread is of interest to me also – £200 from BG at the moment.

Ultimately all I need is the ability to adjust the thermostat remotely – is it possible just to replace the standard thermostat with one that can be changed remotely? The existing timer could then just be left permanently on.

interesting, thanks all.

the £200 is the quoted price from the boiler installers, coming tomorrow! it’s a new boiler, so i presume all the necessary gubbins would be included.

are they easy to self-install at a later date?

The £200 price from British Gas includes all the hardware and fitting so I would guess it’s the same deal for you.

V smart would be a better choice as it will work with the boiler better as the software has been built to allow full communication between the two. It will also have the benefit of having the same warranty as the boiler be that 5 or 7 or 10 years.

Any opinions on the Worcester-Bosch Wave – prolly going to get a whole new heating and hot water system installed in the new year and one option is Worcester Bosch and the installer seems very keen on the Wave.

do you think nest wouldn’t work ok then? i quite like the idea of integrating more into it, specificlly cameras in my garage..

Nest cameras seem to work well – put one in at my brothers house so he could keep an eye on it while he is away.

I’ve been pondering the same thing. But what I really want is a doorbell that would ping my phone when I’m up the other end of the garden in the workshop.

So I can see the “You missed your eagerly awaited delivery” card within milliseconds of the van shooting off.

What sensibly priced thing will do this?

I’d be asking why over 2k on a boiler first!

seemed to be the going rate in bristol… valiant something or other 29kw thingy. all my quotes were coming in at that much, there or thereabouts, with the better rated installers in town 🙁

Well if that’s what the general price was coming back at then at least you’re safe in the knowledge it was fair. Some good margins for the plumber there tho. As for the nest stuff I like the idea of it but tend to just keep my house ticking at 17/18 degrees and turn it up when desired, but not half an hour before as it generally warms up in 5 mins. Reckon I’d forget to do it half the time.

Is there a cheaper alternative that includes a thermostat and remote control from a phone?

But what I really want is a doorbell that would ping my phone when I’m up the other end of the garden in the workshop.

So my video intercom connected to our home automation system does this. It’s more useless than I expected it to be.

– the notification is internet connected rather than local network so:
– i get a notification that someone’s at the door whereever I am in the world (even if someone is home)
– sometimes it’s near instant. Sometimes it comes through some time later.

Loads to choose from though –

Amazon search for iPhone doorbell

In answer to to the self install…. yes not too bad. Can’t remember the details but for the reasonably competent it’s not a big job.

There should be instructions on the interweb I would guess (no looked).

Check it doesn’t tie you into a supplier

Nest cameras seem to work well –

I’d get one, but the cloud storage fee is exorbitant considering the real cost of storing the data in the cloud is about $0.01 per month.

fitted a Honeywell Lyric T6r yesterday
simple installation, and up and running within an hour

Optimised start function enabled and the heating started 20 mins later this morning than it would have done on the old controls…so I’m counting that as a saving in the bank

Just enabled geofencing on the families phones now.

The miser in me likes

Got Hive and like it, although to be fair, as we both work regular hours, it’s a bit of a gimmick. It IS nice to be able to come home to a warm house though, no matter when or where you’ve been – we get updates that say how much more or less energy we’ve used compared to other Hive users in our area, which is quite cool. You can get lightbulbs to hook into it as well – again, nice but not sure how much practical use that would be.

Not sure why people are saying you need a timer. The Hive, Nest, Tado etc are basically a fully programmable switch that will fire up the CH based on house temperature, time of day, occupants location and ambient external temperature.

if you can afford to burn twenty tenners go ahead.. otherwise i ve removed more than i ve installed in the real world.. great gimmick for 48 hours then you ll stop using it and you might as well have paid 15 quid for something..

Have the nest here, we both work shifts and in and out random times so a set programme doesn’t suit us. We use it lots

It also gives me the ability to turn heating down when mrs b at home when I’m on nights. 😉

John..look at ‘ring’ for the doorbell..
I nearly bought one in the Amazon sale.

However, it was at the time my network was playing silly buggers, and couldn’t bare something as simple as a doorbell giving me grief, so didn’t buy in the end!

DrP

jeffl – Member
Not sure why people are saying you need a timer.

I think you’re the one who’s misunderstanding,
They were saying that the cost of Hive/Nest/Tado etc wouldn’t be £200, because you would otherwise have to buy a timer, which might cost £100 and therefore the actual additional cost of Hive/Nest/Tado etc would be more like £100. Someone else disputed the cost of a basic timer. No one was suggesting you needed a timer with Hive/Nest/Tado. Capiche?

I’ve been thinking about getting one.

At the moment, we have a timer on the boiler, plus a thermostat. The timer is set for a compromise of weekday/weekend activity. If we’re in during the day and the house is chilly I have to get to the back of the understairs cupboard and use the fiddly little pins around the timer to change the times.

Even the digital thermostat we had at our old house was better – it had two different sets of times for weekdays/weekends and a ‘boost’ mode, which would fire up the heating for an hour.

I have a two channel timer – channel 1 does the hot water on it’s own time schedule, channel 2 does the heating.

With the Lyric now installed I have now effectively disabled my heating timer, by setting it to ‘constant mode’, and therefore making channel 2 redundant as a timer.

The heating is now entirely controlled by the thermostat which has a 24 temperature/timed schedule set

I still need the timer as it stands as it’s controlling the hot water schedule, which suddenly feels antiquated that I have to go into the airing cupboard if I ever have adjust the hot water cycle.
Truly a 1st world problem!