[Closed] Wifi Home Heating Controllers

You can zone with Nest / Hive, but you need multiple receiver units so if you have more than about 2 zones it gets expensive and a faff to install.

Evohome very effective system, not desperately expensive either. However, it's primarily designed to work with its own radiator valves so setting it up for multiple BDR91 receivers for zoning is a bit of a faff.

You may need to do some experimentation, and taking the 45 minute installer course on the Honeywell website is worth doing before installing it.

Going EvoHome would be getting the main controller unit and then buying valves when we can afford it.

Or do you have to do all valves in one go for it to work ?

Looked into this a while ago - we have three CM927s (one for each zone), two of which have displays going bad, one enough to make it unreadable. Might need to revisit this once we need heat again.

The base Evohome unit will pair and control a BDR91, and has its own thermometer so it can act as a drop-in replacement for one of the themostats. Then I think you can get a basic wireless room thermostat like the DTS92 just to feed temperature info for the other zones back to the evohome unit. You then do all your control/programming of the zones from the evohome unit itself.

Not sure if you could then add radiator valves to switch off rooms you don't use, like a guest bedroom.

(someone please correct me if I'm wrong before I buy stuff that won't work).

Had all new central heating installed February this year. Due to my house being naturally colder downstairs than upstairs, I wanted to control floors individually to equalise the temp in the house. I made my final decision 10 months ago and the only equiv to Evohome I could find was Tado. However, their new TRV controllers were only due out that month or the next month. I couldn't find much info, specifically comparing it to Evohome. I wasn't absolutely certain it took control of the TRV's in the same way Evohome does. I ruled tado out mainly for the fact that Evohome had been out a long time and was proven, had the backing of a very large company Honeywell and I couldn't at the time find out exactly what the Tado TRV controllers did or rather how they interacted with the main controller.
The bit above about TRV's is not correct, here's a list of compatibility [url= https://theevohomeshop.co.uk/content/9-honeywell-evohome-hr92-radiator-valve-compatibility ]https://theevohomeshop.co.uk/content/9-honeywell-evohome-hr92-radiator-valve-compatibility[/url] what's more important is having TRV's with a nice smooth actuation as the HR92 will be twiddling the TRV knob quite a few times a day every day in winter. My heating engineer had quoted for none branded TRV's from his plumbers merchant, I supplied Drayton RT212 which I found online for £11 each incl lockshields. (normal rrp looked to be about £19). This was on advice from the evohomeshop guy, he basically said buy a quality brand TRV.

I just started out with the main controller unit for over the summer as I wouldn't need the full works until this autumn. However, evohomeshop did a buy 4 get one free offer on the HR92 so I bought some early.

FunkyDunc - Member
Going EvoHome would be getting the main controller unit and then buying valves when we can afford it.

Or do you have to do all valves in one go for it to work ?

As above, this is exactly what I did. I've still only got half the rads in the house on HR92's, basically the main rooms.

Also, from this week, you can now control Evohome online (from laptop etc), before it was just from app or main controller (or at individual HR92's)

simon_g - Member

The base Evohome unit will pair and control a BDR91, and has its own thermometer so it can act as a drop-in replacement for one of the themostats. Then I think you can get a basic wireless room thermostat like the DTS92 just to feed temperature info for the other zones back to the evohome unit. You then do all your control/programming of the zones from the evohome unit itself.

Not sure if you could then add radiator valves to switch off rooms you don't use, like a guest bedroom.

(someone please correct me if I'm wrong before I buy stuff that won't work).

I fear you aren't understanding how it all works. This is how you would use a DTS92 with Evohome

The DTS92 is a wireless digital room thermostat and is ideal for use where temperature control of an evohome controlled HCC80R underfloor heating zone is required or where an evohome HR92 Radiator Controller is not ideally located (under a curtain or behind a radiator cover) and a better temperature sensing location is required.

So, unless it's working [b]with[/b] a HR92, it's completely useless. Your system will only ever be one zone, no matter how many DTS92's you stick around the house, because you don't have control over any individual radiators, you may as well just buy only the main controller and stick it in the coldest place in the house (hallway?).
speak to evohomeshop first, I don't claim to be an expert.

I have heatmeiser neostat and it has 4 zones + hot water.

I binned Hive to get it and the stats are hard wired into the wall and connect to Wi-Fi.

I am a bit concerned about ongoing support for the app, but in terms of functionality its great, It has at least the same functionality as HIVE across the zones.

Havent explored all the functionality but looks like I can set it to come on as I come home and it has self learning functions.

I would recommend it over HIVE certainly

Simon-g is your central heating pipework on a number of different circuits (eg for different floors) with actuation values at the boiler?

So, unless it's working with a HR92, it's completely useless. Your system will only ever be one zone, no matter how many DTS92's you stick around the house, because you don't have control over any individual radiators, you may as well just buy only the main controller and stick it in the coldest place in the house (hallway?).
speak to evohomeshop first, I don't claim to be an expert.

Don't have mine anymore but that's not strictly true. When you add a zone to the evohome controller, you define both the control method and the sensor. So in your case, you'd add the zone and define the actuator as the BDR91 linked to the motorised valve. Then for the sensor you'd either use the controller, or pair another wireless sensor.

HR92s simply have the two combined, and you can choose to override that if you want to anyway. It's an incredible system. I'm not affiliated with Honeywell but I did write some software to interface with it, and the usual installation barely touches the surface of its capability.

I will have a look at Heatmeiser

I am not sure if we will truly benefit from EvoHome in our current house, a 3 bed semi, but more thinking as an investment for if we move to a bigger house.

Having just said that, just looked at the Honeywell Lyric that would do wireless control equivalent of our existing CM927 for £120 as opposed to £200 for the EvoHome....

How do the EvoHome valves work? ie each room is a different size, so how does it know when it has heated the centre of the room to 20 deg? Do you in essence have to calibrate each valve to the individual room?

Fair enough flaperon, I didn't appreciate that simon_g must have motorised valves at various points, controlling different floors, groups of rads etc.

Funky, as well as Tado possibly having similar total control like Evohome, there was also one called Heat Genius. Again, would need researching fully to understand if it was as comprehensive as Evohome.

Can anyone with the electronic trv's e.g. Evohome tell me if they are very noisy, they are presumably a motorised unit? I am extremely sensitive to noise....

peanut - Member
Can anyone with the electronic trv's e.g. Evohome tell me if they are very noisy, they are presumably a motorised unit? I am extremely sensitive to noise....

Evohome is occasional very low level whirring noise, upto 15secs if going from fully off to fully open. I'd say you wouldn't hear it if in next room with door open.

Simon-g is your central heating pipework on a number of different circuits (eg for different floors) with actuation values at the boiler?

Yes, currently have three CM927s (one for each floor), each linked to a separate BDR91 in the boiler cupboard, each of which controls a motorized zone valve that looks [url= https://theevohomeshop.co.uk/17-motorised-zone-valves ]like this[/url].

So each thermostat needs programming or turning up/down individually, like three separate CH systems run from the same boiler.

I understand if I was sticking TRVs everywhere I'd just leave the zone valves open all the time and control would be at the radiators instead. The cost of those things really adds up though.

My hope is I can go in three phases:

- buy the basic Evohome controller, and replace the downstairs CM927 - reset the BDR91 and pair it to the Evohome controller. Then juggle the others about so I have the good CM927 on the middle floor, and the one with the slightly duff display on the top floor, and the knackered one can go in the bin.

- buy two wireless thermostats (only picked the DTS92 because it's cheaper), reset the other two BDR91s and have those paired to the Evohome too. The DTS92 would only be feeding temperature info back to the controller so it knows when to call for heat for that floor. At that point I have no more or less control than I have now, but it's all done from one controller (or my phone)

- (one day, maybe) add a couple of TRVs for rooms I don't want to heat all the time - eg. to decide I want a fire that evening and stop that room being heated during the day. Not sure if I can combine the zone heating method with the TRVs though.

Good point on evohomeshop, think I'll run this plan past them before I order stuff.

I have spoken to evohomeshop and they explained that because of where some of our radiators are ie behind the sofa etc, not only would we need the valves, we would need room thermostats too.... works out quite expensive!