Affordable intelligent central heating controls

vitaminC

I want to save energy and money by introducing some kind of clever central heating control in my house. At the moment, my boiler is controlled by a standard programme, a single thermostat in the hallway and TRVs on most of the radiators. I don't like the idea of heating rooms not being used and going around the house turning TRVs on/off is a pain.

So first, I looked at Honeywell hometronic, which is great because it's wireless central control over the boiler for each room, but installation+VAT is going to be around £3000. Assuming I cut my gas use by 30%, it wouldn't pay off for at least 15 years.

Then I looked at programmable TRVs, such as Honeywell Rondostat, with which you can program times and temperature of each radiator. Only £40 each. I think they are basically the same as traditional TRVs, except the turning of the valve is done by a battery-powered programme rather than by hand.

But since TRVs don't turn off boilers as such, presumably the boiler would still be on the whole time that it's programmed to (provided the thermostat doesn't switch it off), although I presume it's a little more energy efficient, because the heat in the circulating water won't be dissipated by radiators.

So I like the idea of a system that can turn off the boiler, but don't want to spend £3K for it. Does anyone know of a more affordable solution?

gavinp

We have replaced our old thermostat with a programmable one and this allows much finer control:

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/17585/Plumbing/Central-Heating-Controls/Horstmann-DRT2-Room-Thermostat

We leave the heating on all the time on the programmer and use the thermostat to control the heating as it has a relay within it so if the house is above the target temperature, the boiler never cuts in - unlike when we had an old dial thermostat where the boiler would start and stop much more regularly.

We set the temperature at nightime (11pm - 6am) to six degrees below the normal setting so it only ever comes on if the temperature outside drops well below zero.

The thermostat takes 2 x AA batteries and was easy to connect up.

Thanks

Gavin

EliteHeat

Hmmm, I think you might have not read the OP's request fully. Just a wild guess.

gavinp

Whoops apologies - yes you are right!

It sounds like the OP is wanting to be able to turn individual radiators on and off - rather than the whole system.

Sorry about that,

Thanks

Gavin

DVardysShadow

vitaminC wrote: »

Then I looked at programmable TRVs, such as Honeywell Rondostat, with which you can program times and temperature of each radiator. Only £40 each. I think they are basically the same as traditional TRVs, except the turning of the valve is done by a battery-powered programme rather than by hand.

But since TRVs don't turn off boilers as such, presumably the boiler would still be on the whole time that it's programmed to (provided the thermostat doesn't switch it off), although I presume it's a little more energy efficient, because the heat in the circulating water won't be dissipated by radiators.

So I like the idea of a system that can turn off the boiler, but don't want to spend £3K for it. Does anyone know of a more affordable solution?

Use Rondostats. You know what times you are programming them to. Adjust the main programmer to cover from earliest on to latest off.

Or spend hideous amounts of money to save tiny amounts of gas.

keystone

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Or spend hideous amounts of money to save tiny amounts of gas.

LoL - or just don't be so lazy and go round turning the TRVs down individually when needed.

Cheers