Honeywell Evohome

mavisangelica

Well, finally took the plunge and got the Honeywell Evohome system installed last week.

First impressions are good and it is what I expected. Time will tell and I won’t get a true picture until the winter.

As we had just moved into the area we picked an installer from the list of approved installers on the website. The first person we had out to quote made all the right noises but never got back to us with the quote (despite a reminder). The second tried to talk us out of the system due to the cost or that it may not be compatible with our existing boiler. However we decided to go with this installer - we also got the boiler and whole system serviced, etc. I did get the impression that he had fitted very few (or none) Evohome systems by a comment that he made but I have no complaints about the installation and would definitely use him again.

House is a 2 bedroom bungalow. We got a thermostat on each radiator (6, one in each room) and the control unit. We also got the Internet Gateway. What I hadn’t realised until he had gone was that the control unit could be used as a room thermostat as the hall had been incorrectly bound to the control unit. I only realised when the hall was showing at a much higher temp. I was going to get him out again but instead, after a bit of investigation, just went into the installer menu and there was the option to change it.

The controller is easy to use. The screensaver is defaulted to a clock but it can be changed to 4 rooms and their current and set temp. There is an option to change the room order (so you can see your selected 4 rooms) but it had me beat, until I worked out that you have to press all the rooms in the order that you want. You can put a different schedule in for each day and each room if you want or you can ‘copy & paste’ a setting to a different room. I also set some ‘dummy breaks’ in the schedule (ie have the same temp for most of the day but broken down into smaller ‘chunks’) so that if the temp was boosted then it wouldn’t stay up all day. The system is supposed to be intelligent so you only need to set the temp to what you want it at that time. So if you get up at 6am, you set the temp to, say, 19 degrees at 6am and the heating will come on before so that it reaches 19 degrees by 6am.

The radiator thermostats take ordinary batteries (can’t remember whether they are AA or AAA) and are supposed to last 2 years. You can turn the temp up or down on the thermostat just by turning the dial although this will only apply until the next scheduled change on the schedule.

Pros:-
Each room is independently controlled so, for instance, I can keep the bathroom at a reasonable temperature during the night. (We normally have the heating off at night.)
There is an overall off selection so next summer I will probably use that.

Cons:-
Very expensive.
Poor user instructions.
The radiator thermostats only (I think) show the programmed temp and not the actual room temp.

Remote App:-
The remote app is quite basic, you do not have the facility to programme, only to view and change the temp at that time, but you do have access to the quick action such as ‘away’ or ‘off’. So if you went away and forgot to turn the heating down then you can do that. It also has your local weather on the front screen so you could turn you heating on early on your way home.
I also like the ability to turn the heating on/up in the bathroom or kitchen without getting out of bed