I would not buy a new thermostat until checking out the Ecobee. Buy the Ecobee 3, and get a remote sensor if you want to adjust temps based on the bedroom at night :-).

I would not go for the Ecobee 4 since voice control of your thermostat is just a gimmick IMHO.

Big fan of the Honeywell T6 Zwave. I believe it handles 2 stage heating, I don't have 2 stage but I recall seeing that in settings. Can fully control w Zwave or can still run basic schedule and do some overrides with Zwave commands (which is what I do)

Same for ecobee, the 4 comes with it

You don’t need c wire or adapter for nest.

You don’t need c wire or adapter for nest.

I've had Wiser for 3-4 years now. It seemed to be the best value/tech combination.

Started with boiler controller and two room thermostats to control two zones (downstairs/upstairs) plus hot water. Added trvs over time till all rooms now covered.

Have saved 35-40% on gas bill in that time, and home is more comfortable.

Easy fitted as DIY too!

You can't turn on and off TRVs in your sleep though, or when you're out, or more likely - if you forget.

You set a schedule and it follows it perfectly, no human can be that reliable. It also uses specific temperatures not 1-5 which is nice. It brings weather compensation by default and Opentherm too with a bridge.

With costs this year, they'll pay for themselves fast.

I've just installed a Drayton Wiser with their smart TRVs. Seemed like a good product with good support. I doubt it'll save all that much money honestly and it wasn't that cheap as the TRVs are about £45 each, but it should give me a lot of control and feedback about how long rooms take to cool down or come up to temperature.

HOWEVER - OP should almost certainly get a smart thermostat from the boiler manufacturer.
Here's why:

You want your boiler to modulate its heating so that it tapers off the power as your house approaches the temperature you set, and you want it to use weather compensation to adjust the power based on the outside temperature.

To control this properly, your smart thermostat needs to be able to talk to the boiler. In some countries (e.g. Netherlands) all boilers support a protocol called OpenTherm. However in the UK, most boilers use a proprietary interface, instead. For example, Worcester Bosch uses EMS - and the boilers they are currently selling are apparently not compatible with Tado.

If your thermostat can't speak the same protocol, then it can only simulate it by turning the boiler on and off running at high temperature - which means the boiler will suffer a lot more wear and be less efficient than if it spent longer running at a lower temperature.

It's a bit of a minefield (I got caught by this to be honest - did my research too late) and the solution that'll likely give you the best result is honestly to buy your thermostat from the same boiler manufacturer. And don't get a Hive.

More: https://www.heatgeek.com/must-read-before-choosing-the-best-smart-thermostat/

I have evohome.

I feel you could do it manually to a degree (no pun intended) yes, I think ultimately it is cost saving, but also about comfort.

The manual TRVs I replaced had 5 settings which seems pretty imprecise so not sure how you'd say move from 21c to 20c to save a bit of money and still be comfortable.

I am no boiler expert so happy to be corrected here... but ALL the Evohome TRVs talk to the boiler, dumb TRVs don't, ie if all the rads show the heat is at target the boiler is shutdown.

I can imagine with your setup the boiler has to be heating all day (or whatever) even though your rooms are at the desired temps and your boiler could be idling. I believe some non-smart setups give you one thermostat that you put in a room to control the boiler (my old one did) but you're then tying boiler on/off to one room which you might not be using that day, and well that's a small step towards smart heating isn't it.

Out of the box my evohome came with the basic boiler control, essentially turns it on/off at the right times when heat demand exists, I swapped this out with a modulating control (since my boiler supports opentherm), this means rather than turning the boiler on/off, the rad TRVs can talk to the system, realise they're ONLY JUST below temp and ask for say 5% heating from the boiler rather than 0/100%. It means room temps stay steady and you don't have a fluctuating see/saw of temp in the room.

And there's also the obvious thing already mentioned, what you gonna get up at 6:30am every day to turn on your rads to low at the right time so the temps are good when you get up? What if it's less cold that day and the right time to turn on the rads would be 7:30m? You've just wasted 1 hour's worth of heating. And generally, we are all lazy, if you think you'll go round changing all the rad valves each day every day then sure, I know I'd soon not bother.

Evohome is great, imho the best on the market but it is pricey unfortunately, especially post covid with all the electronic shortages, prices seem to have jumped quite a bit. A few years back I was able to pick up a single TRV for £45, they seem to be £65 now =/

Other solutions are decent though, but when I did research not all support modulating. So depending on what you want Evohome may not be the best choice for "value".

As for specifics on money saving I don't know, first house I fitted this almost as soon as I moved in. I absolutely feel I must be using gas much more efficiently now, but I couldn't tell you if it's offset the cost of the unit. So in that respect, once "for the cost" is introduced, maybe your boiler engineer is correct. I would be interested if anyone actually tracked specific savings accurately and has figures.

I have Evohome. I like the flexibility to control single radiators. Heat the room you're in instead of the whole house. Just wish they did a silent solenoid TRV for the bedroom.

I wouldn't go back to a single thermostat setup no matter how smart it was - it would still switch everything on, or everything off. It's like having a single light switch for all the lights in your house.

If I was buying now I'd research multi zone smart hearing controls as when i got Evohome it was pretty much the only one on the market. There's more choice now.

Installed Nest at first but it failed after a half a year. Switched to Tado after that and went all out with the smart valves on each radiator too. Very happy after the first year. The app works great, data is better than with Nest.

For me, I imagine my biggest saving will be turning the heating on/off remotely when my daily schedule changes. Going out after work would mean I could delay the heating coming on etc

Agreed on EvoHome, it’s awesome. Way more sensible than a whole home single smart thermostat imo.

Only downside for me is the thermostats on the radiators are a bit noisy. Also recommend getting a load of rechargeable AA batteries so you’re not having to buy new every time they run out.

Pretty much this…

I have the nest and I turned off all the smart features. I hated it at first because it makes it own schedule and does all this shit on its own. Now that I have changed all the smart settings. I have full control and it’s nice to use from my phone lol

funny, but seriously, ecobee is the bee’s knees, especially if you own a 2-story. the ability to monitor the temp of the sensors upstairs instead of downstairs is game changing.

I'm an ecobee fan also

Or driving home from a trip/vacay and turning it on about an hour our so your house isn't a heater in the dead of summer. Or vice versa for winter. Plus I made a schedule from the app, which was much simpler than on the actual thermostat.

Yes. After we installed Nest in our house for the first time ever we realized what accurate humidity readings actually mean. Previous thermostat couldn’t get it right in 8 years.

Temperature and humidity management is much better, especially if whatever tech you use allows you to add additional sensors. Being able to control your thermostat remotely is also great - you can set your home to whatever temperature you want at any point you want. The self-learning feature is awesome too. I can’t say enough about how great smart thermostats are.

It should also be noted that many energy companies offer hefty rebates for smart thermostats. Check your locals energy company website for current rebates.

This is really the only reason I got one. Tired of being at work and realizing I forgot to turn down the heat or AC.

I honestly disabled the schedules feature on mine.

I like my Nest thermostat. I have programmed temps for night/day but it’s nice if I wake up early to be able to bring up the temp before getting out of bed. Also you can use your phone’s location to set home and away temps. Or if you forget to change the programming when you go on vacation, you can change it from anywhere. It’s also nice to be able to see a chart of my usage.

When I leave the house it will generally turn off. Sometimes I'll try to proactively turn it on so when I get home it's not too hot/cold. I'm sure the Nest works well for some, but as with most smart devices, it's only as good a solution as the problem it's trying to fix - which in my case, wasn't a very big problem to begin with.

For myself, I would say it doesn't save me much. My family has a fairly consistent schedule where someone is almost always home, so there aren't many opportunities for it to go into eco mode. I'd imagine if you have instances where your entire household is out for long periods of time it can be fairly effective. The only advantages of the Nest for my family are being able to easily adjust the temperature when I'm out of the house or if it's late at night and I'm lying in bed. However, it is pretty good about going into eco mode in the rare instances when my entire family is out for an extended period.

The Nest is probably the least useful of the smart devices I own. I don't regret purchasing it, but it hasn't been as useful as say the Rachio sprinkler or even smart light switches. I'm sure it's effectiveness is dependent on your household's schedules though.

Saves me a ton because every time my wife sets it to a crazy high/low temp I get an alert and discretely set it back to a sane value.

In the end the Nest thermostat can't save you energy if you run the AC all the time. Here are some ways you can save energy. This advice is geared towards summer months.

If you keep a regular schedule, especially if everyone in the house has a regular job, then the Nest can self-teach what you normally do and anticipate your needs. Like say you are in the habit of getting home and going "off, that's hot" and turning on the AC. After a week of this, Nest will generate a schedule which turns on the AC just a little before you come home. This auto-programming is pretty great, in my opinion, but it can frustrate the hell out of people who feel like the machine is overriding their wishes.

In the event of the above, Nest is much easier to manually program than a typical thermostat, and you can program it via the web. This means you can say "Hey, I like my room cool, but at 3am once I'm asleep, ease up on the AC."

Nest also lets you set up away triggers. A combination of your phone and the sensors in the thermostat themselves can anticipate when you are normally out of the house and auto-throw the nest into Eco mode when you're away. No point cranking up the AC while you're gone, after all.

If you are in fall/spring with crazy low-high temperatures, Nest works well with hot/cool mode, where you can say "don't let the house get colder than 65 but don't let it get warmer than 75, everything else is fine". If you actually like temps in that range (not everyone does) you can save a lot of energy.

Log into your settings page on nest.com and mess around with stuff.

>Or does it have to do with the fact that the home is always at a consistent temperature so when you come home, the AC isn't working as hard?

It's a common belief, but it's wrong. HVAC systems don't care about working 'hard', and they're far more efficient when they do. The most efficient way to run your system is to have it off when you're not home and have a system like Nest or Ecobee that knows when you return home and learns how long it takes to heat/cool the house so it can start the process the proper amount of time before you get there. 95% of this can be done with a simple $25 thermostat, but it takes effort on the part of the home owner. The real benefit of smart thermostats is that it's really easy; there are a ton of people out there with programmable thermostats that never really use or refine the settings.

So you can't really claim that a smart thermostat will save you substantially more than a properly setup programmable, but they are saving money for people that didn't bother to set theirs up. Then there's added benefits like vacation settings and phone access for when you come home early/late.

Savings come from not using your hvac system as much. A smart thermostat can help you if you are using some kind of smart schedule.

However, if you're only turning your hvac system on when you want to use it, then you're already kind of at the bare minimum usage.

I was cooling the downstairs for the dog and letting the upstairs get hot. Turns out he ran upstairs anyway, so I stopped. I don't think he minds the heat, he has a thin coat and gets cold pretty easily.

Ultimately set my upstairs for a max temperature of 85 during the day and the downstairs to go into eco mode or not based on my phone's gps.

I love my nest thermostat..i love the convenience of being able to monitor my house temperature wherever i am but i had to turn off the away assist and learning options because i would leave my house for the day and the thermostat would go into away mode and not turn on. On a 90 degree day the houses temperature would go up to 80 degrees and then when we got home it would take a ridiculously long time to get the temp back down to 70.

I’ve only ever used the nest thermostats. It’s always worked well for me

I like the ecobee and Honeywell smart bc they are cheap and work. Currently have an ecobee and the app is great since we don’t use a schedule

I agree with ecobee. It should be compatible with underfloor heating. You can set schedules so that it cools at night and starts warming in the morning, though you will probably have to use trial and error to figure out the ideal time for it to start heating. If you have times nobody is home, you can schedule it to heat less during those times as well.

The new ecobee Premium is really nice. (Or any of the other models for a bit less cash.) I've had an ecobee for almost six years. You can keep it really simple or take a deep dive into a wide array of settings, control, and automation options.

To your point, in my house we let the heat drop at night (blankets don't cost anything to use!) and then I have a "morning" schedule that starts the heat about half an hour before it's time for everyone to get up for school and warms up the house for that first groggy hour. Then it goes into the regular "home" or "away" schedules for the day.

Technically this can be achieved with just about any smart thermostat, but I think the ecobee is the best piece of thermostat industrial design and app out there right now. (Side note: I work for a commercial thermostat manufacturer. Ours aren't as nice.)

Best feature I have found with it is the room sensors. having it know that I am not upstairs most of the day really helps with it not running as hard to cool that part of the house.

Meanwhile my piece of shit Google nest ran the ac so long yesterday evening it was 69 degrees in my house at 5pm, smack in the middle of peak pricing despite said Google nest being set to 75. I hate it so much.

My AC runs maybe 2-3 hours a day so no need and they cost way too much. You can get a cheaper model that does the exact same thing for a fraction of the cost.

my $20 programmable thermostat does the same thing with TOD pricing.

80-82 🥵 are you my dad

Honeywell has a wireless stat that is Redlink for electric baseboard 120/240v.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwifoeDkwZbnAhVXBc0KHfnjCToQjhx6BAgBEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHoneywell-YTL9160AR1000-Econnect-Wireless%2Fdp%2FB008FM2N0K&psig=AOvVaw0AvMVaW4zGpjtcYCBv4Pi-&ust=1579758624358888

These are the stelpro's that I have.

https://www.stelpro.com/en-CA/4000-w-ki-thermostat-smart-home-z-wave

They support 120 or 240v and worked with my 2 wire electric baseboards. They are available in both zwave and zigbee although the smartthings hub supports both zigbee and zwave devices so you'll be set there.

Even as a standalone thermostat they work very well and will save you money because instead of a simple on/off they support 4 power levels and change the power level based on how much the temperature has to rise to hit the target temp. So in the morning when it has to raise the temp 5 deg c they come on at full power, but when it only has to raise a degree or so they run on low power.

​

Hope this helps :)

Casa has products for both 2 wire and 4 wire setups and they are wifi connected.

I'm late to this, but I just installed the maestro and am considering returning it. Its ambient temperature displayed isnt the actual ambient temperature measured at the thermostat. It has an internal algorithm which estimates the ambient temperature at the center of the room, which for me is a few degrees different from the actual temp. I contacted stelpro to see if theres a way to turn this off and just use the measured temp as the ambient, but was told no, it is what it is

As mentioned above, I use Stelpro z-wave thermostats and they are good. All of the programming I have for them I used to run through smartthings. I have been curious about the maestros as they look much more modern compared with the KIs. If you end up going that route, I don't think you need the "hub version" one. I think one of the companion thermostats will connect to smartthings on its own.

I like my Nest. Doesn't work with HomeKit natively but there is something really satisfying about its round dial design, even if I don't use it to control temperatures a lot of the times. I also think it's the best looking one. Ecobee is probably more versatile in terms of integration if you have iOS or mix of iOS and Android based household.

I like nest but mostly for aesthetics. Initially I wanted it for the self-learning features but now that I have it in homekit it just comes on and off as I arrive and leave my home.

If you plan to use that feature it almost doesn’t matter which manufacturers thermostat you use.

I’ve been very happy with our ecobee and it’s compatibility with a lot of services.

Ecobee all the way, but I avoid google as much as I can.

+1 for the Ecobee

Emerson Sensi. Reliable with easy app.

Looks like a pretty standard setup for cooling with electric heat:

• R - 24V supply power from the HVAC (It's bridged with RC since you don't have separate power for heat/cool)
• W - Heat, the thermostat will send 24V down this wire to indicate heating should turn on
• Y - AC Compressor, the thermostat will send 24V down this wire to indicate the compressor should run
• G - Fan, the thermostat will send 24V down this wire to turn on the air handler fan (either together with the heat/compressor, or alone if the fan is set to "on"
• C - 'Common', Neutral to complete the 24V circuit. This is needed for 'always on' power to support a digital/smart thermostat (instead of using just batteries, which not all support)

Basically, this is ready for anything you want. Someone suggested the Radio Thermostat, which I can definitely recommend. If you use the WiFi module, their app stands well on its own and there are no added fees. You get full remote control, scheduling and usage metrics. If you already have a Z-wave network, you can install a Z-Wave module instead. You won't get scheduling, etc. built-in, but you can have your Z-Wave hub/controller do the logic itself and command the thermostat as needed.

And, of course, you can get the more popular Nest/EcoBee thermostats if you like.

I like the Honeywell T6 Pro. It's z-wave so it's fully locally controlled.

You should be able to go with any. My preference and suggestion would be Ecobee.

I'd suggest the Radio Thermostats CT50 . It is locally controlled via WiFi or Zwave.

EDIT:

When I bought all 5 of mine, my utility co offered 50 bucks off a smart therm. Well they only cost 50 bucks. haha I got all new therms for free. Keep in mind this was a credit on my bill.