Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

Remote Thermostats

Does what it says on the tin
steelman99
Lemon Pip
Posts: 86
Joined: September 5th, 2017, 7:51 pm
Has thanked: 3 times
Been thanked: 20 times

Remote Thermostats

#460385

Postby steelman99 » November 23rd, 2021, 7:28 pm

We presently have a honeywell wireless Thermostat on our boiler. It connects through the internet to our phones and its supposed to turn the heating to a lower setting when we are away and bring it back up when we are near home.
Recently its become unreliable to say the least - it controls the boiler ok , but the away from home bit it decides we are away when both in the house , or we can both be 50 miles or so away in the car when it suddnly decides we have arrived home and turns the heating back on.

looking to replace it with something more reliable , has anyone experiance of a system that detects when your away or home , or is it more to do with the phones GPS and every system is unreliable for this

Bminusrob
Lemon Slice
Posts: 386
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 6:45 pm
Has thanked: 77 times
Been thanked: 270 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460391

Postby Bminusrob » November 23rd, 2021, 7:59 pm

I use Hive. I have a two zone system, with Hive controllers, and individual Hive radiator valves on each of the 15 radiators. It works extremely well, both using the app, and using the controllers and radiator valves. The only downside I have found having had the system for a year is that you can only control one hot water circuit, so one controller controls hot water and radiators in the main house, and the other controller controls radiators in the annexe. The hot water in the annexe has an old fashioned controller/timer.

swill453
Lemon Half
Posts: 7962
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 6:11 pm
Has thanked: 984 times
Been thanked: 3643 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460398

Postby swill453 » November 23rd, 2021, 8:44 pm

I've got Hive, and I believe it has this proximity feature. However I don't use it as it would never do what I really want.

If I know I'm going out, I'll probably switch the heating off half an hour before I leave so as to not waste heat. I doubt it could be clever enough to work that out itself.

On returning home, how would it know if I'm going straight home, or if I'm going to stop at the pub along the road for a couple of hours first? Again I control it manually, switching it on remotely with the app about half an hour before I plan to be home.

Scott.

BullDog
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 2445
Joined: November 18th, 2021, 11:57 am
Has thanked: 1966 times
Been thanked: 1197 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460411

Postby BullDog » November 23rd, 2021, 9:43 pm

Obviously I can't comment on all the various brands out there, but geolocation is a common feature of modern smart heating controls. However, just beware before buying that at least one brand (Tado) that I know of requires a monthly paid subscription to enable that feature. I really don't like that. The cost of such things usually only goes in one direction. And if you stop paying every month, the feature no longer works. Worth investigating before purchase if a geolocation service is important to you.

scotview
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 1480
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 9:00 am
Has thanked: 602 times
Been thanked: 911 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460415

Postby scotview » November 23rd, 2021, 9:59 pm

We use a Heatmiser system. There are four seperate zone thermostats, 3 wired, one wireless.

The system doesn't recognise when you have left the building but if you are going away for say 4 days you can set a 4 day holiday period and it will set the stats to a frost protection setting.

If we go out for a day we can set all stats to say 14 degrees an when returning in the car we can decide on which stat(s) to set to their desired temperature for our return. This remote function is via a mobile app and it has proved to be pretty reliable.

The zoned system is also nice for local control eg for setting the en suite shower room to say 22 degrees 10 minutes before taking a shower.

With all this talk of heat pumps, it is worth noting that our gas boiler is only 15 kW for a reasonably sized house, since we only heat the rooms we need warm.

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460430

Postby Dod101 » November 23rd, 2021, 11:12 pm

steelman99 wrote:We presently have a honeywell wireless Thermostat on our boiler. It connects through the internet to our phones and its supposed to turn the heating to a lower setting when we are away and bring it back up when we are near home.
Recently its become unreliable to say the least - it controls the boiler ok , but the away from home bit it decides we are away when both in the house , or we can both be 50 miles or so away in the car when it suddnly decides we have arrived home and turns the heating back on.

looking to replace it with something more reliable , has anyone experiance of a system that detects when your away or home , or is it more to do with the phones GPS and every system is unreliable for this


Irrespective of the issue, you really need to get a grip on apostrophe's.

Dod

Dod101
The full Lemon
Posts: 16629
Joined: October 10th, 2017, 11:33 am
Has thanked: 4343 times
Been thanked: 7534 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460437

Postby Dod101 » November 23rd, 2021, 11:58 pm

I deliberately added a ' to apostrophe's' just to make the point.

Dod

AF62
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3499
Joined: November 27th, 2016, 8:45 am
Has thanked: 131 times
Been thanked: 1277 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460498

Postby AF62 » November 24th, 2021, 9:42 am

swill453 wrote:I've got Hive, and I believe it has this proximity feature. However I don't use it as it would never do what I really want.


Hive's geolocation feature only sends you a notification that you have left home and the heating is still on; it doesn't actually change the heating.

You can use IFTTT - 'If This Then That' (https://ifttt.com/) with Hive and create an IFTTT to automate the change of temperature, but my experience of geolocation in IFTTT (and similar services that use the phone) is they can be a bit 'hit or miss'.

Personally my preference is not to use geolocation, but to use a series of timed temperatures and timed boost settings, both positive boosts (increasing the temperature) and negative boosts (decreasing the temperature), to achieve what I want.

However at the end of the day if the heating is on for a period whilst I am out and before I return, how much has it actually cost? Only the heat lost during that time as the house would need to be brought up to a satisfactory temperature on my return anyway, so likely to be a few pence.

Hallucigenia
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 2618
Joined: November 5th, 2016, 3:03 am
Has thanked: 166 times
Been thanked: 1718 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460771

Postby Hallucigenia » November 25th, 2021, 10:08 am

steelman99 wrote:We presently have a honeywell wireless Thermostat on our boiler. It connects through the internet to our phones and its supposed to turn the heating to a lower setting when we are away and bring it back up when we are near home.
Recently its become unreliable to say the least - it controls the boiler ok , but the away from home bit it decides we are away when both in the house , or we can both be 50 miles or so away in the car when it suddnly decides we have arrived home and turns the heating back on.

looking to replace it with something more reliable , has anyone experiance of a system that detects when your away or home , or is it more to do with the phones GPS and every system is unreliable for this


Obvious question - have you somehow managed to reset the location of "home" so the phone thinks home is somewhere else?

And just generally - I can imagine these kinds of systems are not very reliable if mobile coverage is patchy around home, the phone would be trying to contact the boiler but a lack of signal would prevent it from doing anything. I've just got a Hive this week so am still learning my way round it, but I've had to increase the "turn back on, I'm coming home" radius so that it kicks in before I enter a local signal blackspot.

swill453 wrote:If I know I'm going out, I'll probably switch the heating off half an hour before I leave so as to not waste heat. I doubt it could be clever enough to work that out itself.

On returning home, how would it know if I'm going straight home, or if I'm going to stop at the pub along the road for a couple of hours first? Again I control it manually, switching it on remotely with the app about half an hour before I plan to be home.


These things are never going to be perfect mind-readers, they're just giving you a lot more control compared to traditional systems. But according to my plumber, apparently Nest has a lot of Google-clever-learning-AI, so it will do things like learn that on Tuesdays you go to the pub quiz and so won't be in the house, or that you leave for work every weekday at 7.54 and switch off in anticipation. I don't know how much of that is just plumber hearsay, but it sounds plausible.

In my case with the Hive, I've set my "switch off" distance to be beyond the corner shop, as I'm fine with the heating staying on if I've just popped out for a pint of milk, I'm more interested in it switching off if I'm away for the weekend.

[as an aside if you're interested in Hive, their online shop has 20-25% off their heating stuff til Monday]
Last edited by csearle on November 25th, 2021, 7:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Nest->Hive

swill453
Lemon Half
Posts: 7962
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 6:11 pm
Has thanked: 984 times
Been thanked: 3643 times

Re: Remote Thermostats

#460807

Postby swill453 » November 25th, 2021, 12:14 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:In my case with the Nest, I've set my "switch off" distance to be beyond the corner shop, as I'm fine with the heating staying on if I've just popped out for a pint of milk, I'm more interested in it switching off if I'm away for the weekend.

To be honest I don't think I'd ever get to the point where I'd trust it enough to not fire up the app just to check it's doing the right thing in those circumstances.

And if I doing that, it takes exactly the same amount of effort to check it as it does to switch it off manually.

Scott.


Return to “Building and DIY”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Caesium, Google [Bot] and 7 guests