I know they’ve been discussed at length before but cannot locate the exact discussion I’ve read before…

Looking at a smart heating control system for our new (old) house. Had decided on Drayton Wiser but local heating company suggesting the Honeywell EvoHome is worth considering too. Significant cost difference between them as we’re looking at 10 radiator thermostats – approx. £500 for Drayton, £850 for Honeywell, plus the wiring up of the control to the boiler cos there’s no current backplate. Combi boiler.

Anyone gone through this decision recently and/or can provide real STW feedback on their experiences.

Thanks,
Ally

Following with interest – we are planning to move this year and a smart TRV / controller is high on my list of house mods…

Got the Honeywell Evohome installed along with a new boiler a year ago. Had priced up the Evohome in the previous house, but then moved, and whilst we intended to have it installed at some point, we had our hand forced by the boiler packing up and needing replacement, so it seemed sensible to have it all done at once. (Wasn’t aware of the Drayton system).
So far, we’re happy with it on the whole. It occasionally seems to lose touch with a TRV (always one of the same two) and one TRV has needed new batteries (one of the two just mentioned), which I think I’ll have them look at when they come to service the boiler soon.
Seemed to take a bit of setting up, but that might be down to it being a rather complex and piecemeal system. (Oil fired combi boiler doing heating and hot water to one sink and shower, with the option to do hot water in the tank at the other end of the house, oil fired Aga doing the honours at that end normally). The house is long and narrow (only one room deep), and at the minute, poorly insulated and drafty – but improving.
We have 11 zones set up, one of which is hot water and only one of which has more than one radiator.
It probably hasn’t saved us much money, but it has certainly made the house a nicer place to be as we can actually turn the heating on and heat the rooms we want, not the whole house or all of upstairs etc. The kids’ bedrooms are set to warm up for bedtime at 7, but our room stays off until nearer 10, the spare room doesn’t come on at all etc.
Just looking at the app now, my wife is working at home today and the dining room is set to 18°c (actual temp 17°c) and every other room is set to 12°c, with temps ranging from 12-14.5°c. Downstairs will all start warming up nicely for when the kids come in from school and are using other rooms. I think we can set each zone, for each day, so it works nicely around our working and school hours, yet it’s very easy to override it if you have a day off when you’d normally be at work or whatever.

Overall, recommended. (I even quite like the noise the valves make as they wind themselves up and down).

I heard an interesting bit on R4 today about the Hive. Basically it is same as installing a listening and data gathering device in your house, which when combined with the other social media stuff on phones etc (through same IP identifier etc), was sending huge data (the suggestion was conversation level) to Google…

I recently installed a Drayton Wise system in a new build, I only have two wireless thermostats and two radiator valves at the moment, but will upgrade all radiators in time.

So far I am really pleased with it, the new build wiring a bit to cock, but I got that sorted and it has been great since.

We are having underfloor heating in and the evohome needed an additional wiring centre with made it so damn expensive for us which pushed me down the Drayton route.

Set up was a bit annoying and took me a few attempts, but then I called customer services and they walked me through it. Basically with Android you have to use your phone to set it up, but can’t accept the email verification on the same device or it messes things up. So you have to logon on your PC / other phone to approve the email.

easy now to add additional radiator valves and programme using the app.

I would recommend it!

The honey well looks really good in use, but be aware, apparently it only works with a router transmitting on 2.4ghz not 5.

OP – EvoHome is £715 for controller and 10 rads.

But yes more expensive. I’m currently looking too. Biggest difference I can see is that the Drayton controller only alters temp, you can’t set the system up from it.

Can the Drayton do weather/geofencing and auto start to get to required temp?

Happy with evohome but I don’t have all the TRVs, house has a 3-zone setup (one per floor) so I use the controller as a thermostat downstairs, and the most basic evohome thermostats on the other two floors for sending temperature – can also make temporary adjustments on them too.

FunkyDunc – nice price, where are you finding that? I’ve looked again and found it for £740 via theevohomeshop (£620 pack inc 8 rads, plus 2 extra rads at £60ea). Drayton is £509 for all the bits on Amazon.

weather/geofencing: I believe so. Definitely the geofencing, done via IFTTT. Weather – I’m confusing myself now as I know I read it somewhere but might’ve been for the Honeywell…

I’ve had a play with the iOS Honeywell app in demo mode. Nice. Wish Drayton had the same to give it a try but you don’t appear able to demo the app without registering a device.

I’m going towards evohome despite extra cost. Partly longer established, partly seems to have more positive recommendations, partly because the app seemed straightforard when I had a play, and partly I simply trust the local heating guy (school playground dads – our kids are in the same class).

WI fitted the Wiser in our house about 9 months ago. Nothing much to report, installation was easy, but the house already had a Drayton controller and no room thermostat. It’s just worked, not sure yet how much it saves, but it does seem more efficient. It does have an Eco and Confort mode which varies timings with changing weather and usage.
The App has just been updated to give a heat report on room temp history.
Edit… Meant to say the radiator valves aren’t silent, which can a problem in the bedroom early morning, but they all may be like that 🤔

Drayton wiser here – room stat and rad stats slowly spreading thorough the house..

Got it all set up so certain rooms on at certain times etc… Bloody brilliant. Eg, can just heat the office all day I’m working at home without heating the rest of the house.

I heard an interesting bit on R4 today about the Hive. Basically it is same as installing a listening and data gathering device in your house, which when combined with the other social media stuff on phones etc (through same IP identifier etc), was sending huge data (the suggestion was conversation level) to Google…

Yeah I listened to that as well. It was Nest she was talking about, but I’m sure Hive is just the same. I did think that she came across as a bit Tin Hat brigade and seemed in able to talk without using convoluted language that sort of meant nothing. I was left thinking at the end of it – so what – I don’t feel google has a handle on my hopes and imaginations in the way she is inferring.

where are you finding that?

https://www.jtmplumbing.co.uk/central-heating-controls-valves-c436/honeywell-evohome-smart-system-c417/honeywell-evohome-pack-4-inc-1-x-base-pack-2-x-multi-zone-kit-p18922

+ add 2 valves

Honeywell are currently firefighting attacks from Russian hackers, Chinese technology thieves and or alien Botnets. Well, that’s the sensationalist speculation, but what’s for sure is there are regular outages at the moment with the app. Honeywell sent an email out saying it is planned maintenance from 22 Jan thru February, but it’s not very good planning to do it when North America, Europe and Russia are in the middle of winter. Which does suggest there is more too it.

The upside of Evohome is maturity, the downside of that is they are using old protocol stuff that possibly is not as secure as more uptodate systems.

As an aside, I would also consider Tado, which offers the same zone system as Honeywell and Drayton. The key USP of Tado is it’s designed around location/geofencing ie no need for IFTTT (which I’ve found to be pretty flaky on location/geofencing commands with android 8 or above don’t know about Apple).

Tado is now monthly £20 subscription which put me off!

Tado is now monthly £20 subscription which put me off!

While I agree it’s a dick move, it’s £2.99 a month not £20!

That’s to enable automatic geolocation control. Of course you can implement that yourself using IFTTT as per the other systems that don’t even include it as an option.

FunkyDunc – thanks for the link.

Take a look at Genius Home (Heat Genius) as well.
Looks the best to me based on what I’ve read. Just hoping they open up a local API to the hub so I can use the sensors for other automation activities.

Everything is uses other than the hub are off the shelf parts made by others, via a well supported set of standards. All local (though it supports IFTTT and other external access if desired).
I really don’t want a home heating system reliant on suppliers keeping their servers running, especially not at the price they are to buy & install.

Oops re Tado 😁

Heat Genius looks to do everything but at an extreme cost. An EvoHome setup for me will be less than £1k. Heat Genius will be 1.5k !

Seems high. Was only marginally more for me based on similar zoning.
I best double check!

Last summer we went from a 1960’s floor standing gas boiler on a 9 rad single pipe gravity system to a modern combi setup with evohome control and TRV’s.

House is a 4 bed 60’s detached with reasonable insulation. Gas bills have basically halved. Obviously a chunk of that will be boiler efficiency and not storing hot water, but bring able to heat the house exactly as and when we need is a significant benefit.

We chose evohome as it was the most mature product and does exactly what we need, with very good aftersales from the evohome shop. Not fussed about geo-caching, we’re always zipping all over the place, the system would get giddy. Also, we wanted a local controller rather than an app and dependency on an internet connection.

Honeywell evohome ordered – thanks again for the link FunkyDunc, saved us a bit.

Gone for this over Drayton/others based on:
– reputation/maturity of product;
– having the local controller;
– recommendation from a trusted local installer;
– and a negative report from a work colleague about their Drayton was enough to sway me away from it.

£200 more than the Drayton but we feel worth it for us. I’ve already played with the app in demo mode and it all seems easy enough to use.

As I’ve already said, you might find the app doesn’t work 100% until end of Feb. This might be “communication with the system lost” messages, requirements to log back into the app which then doesn’t log in and/or changes made via the app or laptop not being actioned, type stuff.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/04/honeywell_remote_service_down/

Sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead but I wondered How experience on these smart trv units is panning out longer term.

One plumber I spoke To thinks they’re a gimmick being too noisy and having batteries that need replacing frequently another tells me they’re running a Drayton wiser set up and think it is great.

Ours has been in nearly a year now.

It’s very difficult for us to know if it’s saving money has we moved in to the house and fitted it so don’t know what the heating costs would have been before.

Overall it’s much more flexible.

However – quite regularly the heating just doesn’t work ie the controller is calling for heat but all radiators are cold. The connection will be fine etc. All a bit random and no reasoning, then all of a sudden it starts working again. Always appears to happen in an evening between 7-9pm

The TRV temp control is random. I’ve monitored the temp in rooms using thermostat and the temp can be out by 2-3 degrees depending on how cold it is outside the house (even after calibrating the TRV). Buying room thermostats has solved this, but it makes an expensive system even more expensive.

The noise of the Trv’s doesn’t bother the family but I am a light sleeper and it does sometimes wake me up.

Do I regret changing? No is Evohome perfect, no

It’s not a gimmick either, gives you great control and flexibility

We gave up on the TRV’s.

Tado system here. They definitely saved us money, they never came on properly!
Can’t say for other brands but assume as do others on net/forums that the thermostat in the trv is too close to the radiator and so switches off too quickly as it’s detecting the set temperature before the room had actually reached that.
Seems to be more of an issue for vertical valves vs horizontal. All ours are vertical.
Using the temperature offset in the app made no difference as the main thermostat would switch heating off before the rooms with smart trv’s reached temperature.
We just put the traditional trv’s back on and turned them down.
Kids and missus complained they were noisy in operation too when they did bother to come on. Can’t say I noticed.
I could I guess have to put smart thermostats in each room And slaved the valves to its temperature reading but then a simple set up would have become expensive and ott for our needs in what is a small home really and ultimately I wanted to just replace the old ‘dumb’ parts of the current system. When the time comes to redo the house I’ll look into options again and reconsider the trv’s but the Tado one at least are a no from me.
I wouldn’t say gimmick just poorly executed at least in our case.

We’re 18 months into Evohome use, only issue was one TRV packing up but replaced under warranty, not had to change a single battery yet.

The system just works, not had any problem with the controller or app either.

Only downside is a bit of noise from the TRVs when activating. In the day its an unobtrusive motor whirr but at night it’s more noticeable. The one in our bedroom wakes me on the odd occasion, but that’s partly my fault for having the TRV installed nearest where my head is. No one else notices.

FunkyDunc, if you go to the controller, long press on ‘settings’, it comes up with a system config warning message, press the green tick, press ‘system summary’. This will show which TRVs are open and by what percentage they are open. So you can see what the system is doing (or should be doing). Apol if you knew that already

I’m also Evohome. Think I’ve had mine just over 3 years, with all main rooms on smart trvs, minor rooms on normal trvs. I’ve changed the batteries no more than once and I think one or two trvs might still be on the original batteries. It basically depends on how often the radiator is being used as to how quickly the batteries are used, but a well used room will be 18-24 months (I think the manual said approx (2yrs). Also the original batteries were no doubt cheapies, I’ve replaced with Duracell so hopefully might get more life.
The TRVs are audible and if it cycles to fully open then it’s about 10 secs of whirring noise.
I’ve had no problems with mine it’s all worked faultlessly, I guess sometimes I’ve questioned it’s decision making in optimisation mode (where it reaches a temp by a set time, rather than turning on at set time). Only other issue is that I have a room with radiator at one end and big window and door at the other. It wasn’t heating the whole room up properly so needed an extra thermostat, so I just put the controller near the window, activated it’s thermostat and bound it to the trv at other end of room. otherwise I would have had to do what others say above and buy an extra thermostat. It’s been fine in all other rooms probably because the rads are under the windows (coldest place in room).

Other thing to mention…

As you don’t waste heating rooms they can be ‘cold’ when you go in to them. Eg our bedroom might be as cold as 14d in the daytime. Heating may come on at 10pm to warm it up for going to bed for 30mins. The room temp may get up to 19d but the bed may still be cold.

Previously the heating would have been on all evening meaning the bed etc would be warm too. Doesn’t bother me but Mrs FD complains about it.

10 months of Evohome use here and no complaints or issues. 9 zones on TRVs with the bathroom and downstairs toilet on normal valves.

Costs/savings: like FunkyDunc we fitted it soon after moving into a new (old) house, so have no previous costs to compare it to. Only indication is the monthly D/Ds with our enegy supplier when we first moved in were outrageously huge – I guess the previous owners used a lot more energy than us heating the house. Evohome was a BIG initial expense but we feel worth it for the comfort alone while being as efficient as possible with use of gas. Pretty certain we’d not have the house as comfortable if we had a less efficient way of heating it only when we need it.

Comfort: brilliant. Took a few tweaks to get it working how we want it. Played around with optimisation settings. Occasionally it doesn’t compensate fully for weather conditions and doesn’t get rooms up to temp in time if it’s particularly windy, but not often.

App: works well and intuitive. Very occasionally flaky connection, 2 or 3 times in the past 10 months.

TRV noise: I too am a light sleeper and occasionally the bedroom one wakes me, but tweaked settings to avoid them coming on as early – means bedroom isn’t fully up to temp when getting out of bed, but timed so it’s OK  post-shower.

TRV reliability: zero issues, all still on original batteries too.

Overall, no regrets after 10 months. Would buy again if we moved.

Spooky. Batteries just died in the Kitchen trv. They are definitely the original Philips batteries that came with the trv, so definitely 3 years on original batteries in the kitchen. So, out of curiosity have been round and checked, 1 bedroom is still on original batteries and still showing 2 bars of strength on screen (out of 3).
TBH if they only lasted 12 months it wouldn’t be a big deal, it’s a 20sec max job to change the batteries once you know how (Evohome HR92) and the trv/controller just auto sync back together.

I’m a big fan of my Tado system and would happily recommend it, with the caveat that the company seem to pull the odd dick move. I started out with just a thermostat and over time have picked up a TRV for every rad in the house – and then added in extra thermostats to provided better temperature monitoring (no matter what the various companies say you’re always going to struggle monitoring the true temp in a room via a TRV that is mounted on a radiator).

Batteries aren’t a problem. Get at least a year out of them I reckon.

Noise; I quite like the gentle whirring! I find it reassuring to hear the rad valves shut when I fire up the wood burner. The one in my bedroom is about 3 feet from my head and you’d have to have some serious sleep issues for it to wake you up.

Drayton Wiser here. Had some initial setup problems but after that it works fine.

I did have a problem with rooms overheating, but that was down to No1 son getting the app password and winding us up!😂