Can an 'intelligent' heating system be retrofitted to a house with oil-fired boiler?

Gareth_Davies_2

Our oil boiler is still going strong at the age of 38. All our radiators originally had thermostats fitted, but some have broken and some don't seem to work properly in any case. I'm aware that many people now use automatic/wireless/intelligent heating systems, with room thermostats (seems better to me than TRVs) and all-round electronic control. Would a system of this sort be retrofittable in our house, and/or would we need a new boiler? And would such a system, in the long run, save energy and/or money?

Any advice gratefully received.

matelodave

It's not hard to fit wireless thermostatically controlled valves to the rads and a control centre to control the boiler, pump and any other motorised valves to a convention heating system, be it gas, oil or even electric.


Whether it saves you money or not is a different matter - a decent control system could cost £1000 or more which, if it saves £100 a year, would take 10 years to pay back.


Only you can decide if you want to spend that amount of money.


I've got individual programmable wireless stats in each of my rooms (eight in all) which control the zone valves on my underfloor heating. They are OK but there's no central control so they have to be tweaked individually. Once set up they do control the room temperatures and fire the heatpump when necessary but they are a pain if we want to turn them all down (say if we go away on holiday). And there's the bi-annual battery changing in each stat or valve to consider as well.


I'd guess that they added around £800 to the cost of the heating system when it was installed five years ago. Centralised remote control was in it's relative infancy then and the costs were horrendous- even now to upgrade it would probably cost around £2000


I can't say if it saves a lot because the whole system was installed in one go and each item, heatpump, underfloor & controls all contribute to the cost/savings.

Gareth_Davies_2

Thanks very much for such a comprehensive and helpful reply. Much appreciated.

macman

However 'intelligent' the software and sensors in such a control system are, the ultimate job that they do is to send (or not send) a signal to the boiler ignition electronics calling for heat. In that respect, they are no different, or more complex, than the most basic room 'stat or timer.
The complexity is in how they make that decision.

Gareth_Davies_2

That's a vital point - thank you. I was hoping that room thermostats somehow wirelessly connected to the radiators themselves (am I understanding this properly?) would be more accurate than the standard TRVs, which are, of course, part of the radiator themselves and might not get a proper idea of what the temperature is in the room as a whole. For such a system to work, I'm assuming that some rads will be turned off/down by their individual valves depending on the temperature of the rooms they are in, even when the boiler is running because rads in other rooms are calling for heat. (As I write this I'm now realising for the first time how little I know about this whole subject.)

matelodave

Have a look at all the bumf here http://www.honeywelluk.com/search/evohome


It's probably not the only system out there but there's load of info to help you understand how a system can be built - start here http://connectedproducts.honeywelluk.com/assets/downloads/evohome-faqs.pdf

Gareth_Davies_2

Many thanks!

Cardew

It is fairly cheap to have a remote(wireless) thermostat that you can move from room to room.


Like all room thermostats the drawback is that when that room has reached the set temperature, the CH is off and there is no heating to any other rooms(e.g. bedrooms)

Gareth_Davies_2

Oh. That is certainly a drawback. I had thought maybe the room thermostats actually controlled the radiators in the rooms they were in, rather than the boiler itself. I've downloaded the Evohome brochure that matelodave pointed me to - I hope I'll be a bit more clued up after reading it!

reeac

I'm sure that the answer is yes and Honeywell et al would be delighted to sell you the hardware ....the question is whether you would appreciate the result. In this digital age it's easy to overdo the application of electronics. Do you really need every room's temperature controlled to 1 degree C? Remember that the rooms are connected to varying extents by thermal conduction and air flow anyway. It reminds me of the Smart Meter situation where the energy firms think that everyone wants to know their hour by hour energy consumption, CO2 emissions, account balance etc. Do they really? The phrase "life's too short" springs to mind. Back to heating, our 18 year old oil fired system with one room stat. and TRVs works fine for us ....and I would have forgone the TRVs if I'd had the opportunity. Our room stat is mains powered so no multiple battery changes every 6 months.

Cardew

Don't want to get at cross-purposes.


The full automated systems can control each TRV so you can select the heating of all the rooms. The downside is that they are very expensive.


I was talking about a single portable wireless thermostat that you can move from room to room.