Smart thermostats

harvest99

I am getting confused. I have read all the stuff about Hive, Honeywell, Nest etc and viewed the youtube videos on how to replace my old thermostat with one of these products. I am still confused.
I have a gas boiler with a separate hot water tank in the loft. The boiler is in the kitchen with a timer on the kitchen wall that we set so the heating/hot water comes on for a couple of hours in the morning and on again in the evening. The thermostat is in the dining room, its an old type where you turn a dial to set the temperature.
What I want is something that if I am away for the evening or a couple of days I can remotely switch off the heating or turn the temperature down. I might want to switch it on in the day occasionally remotely. I understand how these smart thermostats allow me to change the temperature remotely via a wifi connection but what I can't understand is how to override the timer in the kitchen. What if during the day and the timer has switched the boiler off and I want to switch it on remotely or I want the heating to come on one morning earlier than the timer has it set for. Could I leave the timer control in the kitchen on all the time and programme the new smart thermostat in the dining room to come on and off in the same way the timer does at the moment but override it on occasions to suit my requirements? Is this how these smart thermostats work?

matelodave

What sort of boiler have you got, what make & model of timer, what make of thermostat and have you any motorised valves in your system. Has your hot water tank got a thermostat on it (not the immersion heater) but a separate one fitted around 2/3rds of the way up the tank.

In a lot of cases you can just turn the heating on permanently and use the smart stat to control the times and temperature.

However a lot of older systems require the hot water to be on to enable the heating to operate so you'd have hot water on 24hours a day unless you can control it independently of the heating.

ianto11

Hi,

What type of timer controller do you have ? I have a Tado smart stat and extension kit. If you have something like a Danfoss ( I had a Danfoss FP715 ) the "extension kit" part directly replaces this, no rewiring.
You unclip the top of the controller from the backplate, as if you were changing the backup batteries, and clip the extension kit in it's place. The smart stat then communicates with the extension kit and you set up your CH and HW schedule via the app or web interface.
The only downside I find is that that you can't access the schedules via the smart thermostat.
It also uses location based control, so if you leave the property it reduces the set point temp a few degrees

HTH

harvest99

Thanks for the responses. The boiler, control and thermostat were installed when the house was built in 1988. The boiler model is Ideal Elan, the control has British Gas UP1 stamped on it, the thermostat has Landis & Gyr stamped on it. The hot water has an immersion heater wired in the top and a separate thermostat around a third of the way up.
The control allows me to have hot water only in the summer and hot water and heating in the winter. My requirements are the ability to switch it to hot water only in the spring. During the winter I would like to have a schedule set up which I can override remotely when required to change the temperature (I could reduce it to something like 5 degrees C to in effect switch it off).
I don't want that follows me via my iphone and switches it down when I am not around as my daughter is often in the house when I am not.
Wiring the new set up is not a problem as my son in law is an electrician.

matelodave

If you can control the hot water and heating independently then you'd get rid of the the existing programmer and stat and replace the programmer with the smart controller unit which would then control the heating and hot water with the appropriate app.

See Ian's post above.

ianto11

harvest99 wrote: »

Thanks for the responses. The boiler, control and thermostat were installed when the house was built in 1988. The boiler model is Ideal Elan, the control has British Gas UP1 stamped on it, the thermostat has Landis & Gyr stamped on it. The hot water has an immersion heater wired in the top and a separate thermostat around a third of the way up.
The control allows me to have hot water only in the summer and hot water and heating in the winter. My requirements are the ability to switch it to hot water only in the spring. During the winter I would like to have a schedule set up which I can override remotely when required to change the temperature (I could reduce it to something like 5 degrees C to in effect switch it off).
I don't want that follows me via my iphone and switches it down when I am not around as my daughter is often in the house when I am not.
Wiring the new set up is not a problem as my son in law is an electrician.

The controller you have looks like it would accept the extension kit without any wiring, just plug and play, you can then put the wireless stat wherever is most suitable, whole job 5mins
The app on the Tado system does exactly as your controller, sets independent time blocks for both CH and HW, and also allows switching either off completely. It also allows you to set location based control on or off on each of these time blocks should you wish
You can however add additional users to the system ( I have 3 on mine ) this means that if location is enabled, any user in the property keeps the heating on as normal, minute there's no users, heating reduces.
Again HTH

harvest99

Thanks so much, this is very helpful.
Just checking I have this right. If I replace my programmer with the Tado extension I can remove or disconnect the old thermostat and replace it with the Tado smart thermostat anywhere I want without wiring. The reason I ask is because my current thermostat is not placed correctly and if I can place its replacement elsewhere this would be a bonus. Looking at the Tado website it appears the smart thermostat works on batteries so no wiring looks viable to me.

ianto11

That's correct, smart stat is wireless. I initially left it "mobile" and took it to different rooms to see what suited as far as best control.