British Gas remote heating control & Home Monitoring

rabbitmumu

Hi all

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask these questions, but has anyone got the remote heating control from British Gas ? Any comments and feedback we need to know?

The other thing is about the Home Monitoring system. How is it different to say if I buy an alarm system from B&Q ?

Many thanks

scroogeboy

I know it's a long time since you asked but I've only just noticed your post

Am sitting in a rather cold house because the text messaging failed to work (again)

We used to have a simple rotary control on the boiler with no thermostat. Cold? Get up and switch it on. Hot? Switch it off

We now have the British Gas control unit

Plus points
Can control the heating when you're away from the house. But texting is unreliable so a smartphone or computer is needed, but the smartphone app is pretty unsophisticated

Minus points
I haven't had a 7 day control unit before but the one supplied is pretty dreadful imho. The programming of it manually is pretty difficult. But the worst bit is the insensitivity of the thermostat. Set it to 18 and it will keeping heating till 19 - have even experienced it still on at 19.4. And the temperature continues to rise as the radiators pump out heat so you can end up more than 1.5 degrees over what you wanted. But the thing is unpredictable so it may switch itself off much sooner. The overall effect is to have the heating higher (and so more wasteful) than you want. And the energy companies keep telling us that 1 degree matters!

I suppose that if you already have a digital thermostat control which is not much good , then internet control would be a big plus

The best bit is the internet based programming. But even this is less than perfect. It has a very old-fashioned concept of morning/day/evening/night - not as flexible as many people need these days

Overall - wish I hadn't got it. Gas use has gone up considerably and the system can be frustrating. Am feeling pretty fed up as you can tell!

zara-may

I've just seen this thread, and totally agree with what Scroogeboy says.

Since we had the remote control heating, out energy tracker shows that gas usage has gone up 42%! :eek:

The insensitive thermostat is so frustrating - like Scroogeboy we also wish we had never had it installled. I really don't understand why it has won awards and all the techsites are praising it - have they actually tried living with it?