Essential for every room for accurate running. Simple aesthetic/controls. Competitive price. Easily configured. trusted company. Tamper proof!
I’m not sure about rating this as “amazing” (5 stars) but “better than expected” (4) didn’t seem a fit either..it’s a central heating thermostat..can’t we just give a star rating without these associated comments??
Anyway, I got a smart central heating system right at the start of this whole energy crisis/cost of living nightmare, I can’t get a heat pump(!) likely my building is too old and energy inefficient to work with this anyway smart heating seemed like something doable/affordable
I’ve not spent the time scouring my bills/data to find out how much this has saved, very hard to appreciate with the way things are bouncing around but I feel it must have helped not least because I have a pretty unique set up here, I have 3 rooms and a hall in my little flat and I rent two as tiny self contained spaces/short term holiday lets. Previously all the rooms had to follow a general trend: if I was in for the weekend and guests were out sight seeing etc as is typical I was heating their rooms also, if someone was cold at night, all the rooms had to be warmer. This system allows me to set each room up individually, I can say keep one space warmer at night, turn any of them off for most of the day, the boiler still runs keeping any warm that are occupied. It does it by shutting or opening battery controlled valves on the radiators in each as required. I think in a conventional sole occupant house this would not be as useful/this level of control would be excessive.
What I always mention reviewing this item is to get any kind of accuracy with this set up (which is vital in my circumstances of course) you need one of these stats for every room, I bought the system believing the radiator valves were sufficient and only one stat was needed for “the most important/main room” my finding was despite the valves apparently being adjusted to allow for being close to the radiators when sensing the room’s temperature it just didn’t work, you got a sort of boom/bust situation. The heating would run, the area by the rad was of course much warmer than the room the valve shut the radiator believing the space was at temperature and it could be 8 degrees off..eventually the radiator would cool, the valve would realise the room was freezing..it would run the boiler/open and so on, essentially the room was never sufficiently warm. I think this is a common criticism of thermostatic valves, I’ve never bothered with them until now/my engineer doesn’t like them. Trv’s might be different in a modern/efficient house -can’t say, maybe try it out? I used my old stats display/with it disconnected as a room thermometer(it’s battery powered) to tell me what was happening in statless areas.
The solution for me is a stat like this in each room, it is away from the heat source, in the coolest area and thus accurately reflects the temperature and runs the boiler reliably. This does make the system a much greater outlay than expected, even for 3 rooms I’d say this has cost £600? Assuming you need to replace valve bodies, that’s just components, I fitted myself. My old basic room stat was £50.
So it’s clearly going to need to be working for some time to pay for itself. I do think this wiser system is a good option though, cheaper than comparable smart systems, backed by a trusted name/Drayton, I’ve not really had any problems with the app control (one 5 min instance of it going awol/leaving me without control was quickly sorted by calling support/off and on reset was all have kept old stat just in case it really wigs out)
That’s the general stuff, as a specific component, I did think about appearance, this is important to me, these controls are visible here, my home is quite “retro” I liked it wasn’t like some iridescent or metallic, it actually had corners, the display wasn’t huge, the branding is barely visible, it’s relatively small, doesn’t irritate with its “ikea” look and will fit in with most homes from this century. I find it very handy I can lock the controls on these from the app in guest rooms to prevent people just turning them up to ridiculous levels/not understanding what they’re doing that could be a disaster unchecked. The display is again simple not irritating/busy actual temp/target temp/boiler running and very handily room humidity is also reflected-this gives a welcome reminder when the room needs airing. I wish they would include humidity in the app display so I could see when guests aren’t venting their space and remind them, I feel this could be a very useful feature to a landlord living remotely to keep their property from say contracting mould.
The unit is simple to mount on the wall or there’s a stand, the batteries are easy to fit and it’s easy to add to the system like the other devices.
I bought this one from eBay as new/unused and it’s been perfect, worked fine and saved me £30/40.
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Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
