Intelligent central heating controls?

kitenski

With some recent press about Nest intelligent thermostats being sold in the USA only, I did a little digging and stumbled across a firm in Bristol which seems to sell something pretty clever.

They are called Datatherm Intelligent Central Heating systems, and appear to be have been around for a fair bit.

The two areas that caught my eye include the following as we always have an issue at home with the temp dropping 1 degree before kicking in again.

Traditional thermostat may allow the temperature to rise above the required temperature by some 1-3 degrees before turning off the heating and the same below when turning back on.

Not only is this a waste of heat and fuel but it makes you feel uncomfortable as well, Dataterm accurately controls the heating to within 0.3°C by increments of 0.1°C saving you from hot and cold shifts in temperature and reducing your fuel usage.

Optimisation
Dataterm works out what time to turn on for each set-point by using complex calculations and stored data relating to you heating system and building characteristics. You tell it what time you want it to be up to the desired temperature by and NOT the time to turn on, so if you get up at 7 am and you want it to be 21 degrees simply enter this into the plan, Dataterm has a window of opportunity to turn the heat on several hours before 7 am to achieve the desired temperature. Depending on the heating system, the characteristics of the property and the internal temperature it could be

15 minutes to 5 hours of pre-heat or what we call optimisation.So on really cold winter days the heating will turn on earlier and milder days much later or not at all! Optimisation alone can save 15% of fuel burn.

Just wondering if anyone has any real world experiences of their products?

Thanks,

Greg