Hi,
First post from me, so be gentle
We've got an old oil fired boiler in our house (worcester), and the programmer is playing up, so it needs binning and replacing with something new. While looking for replacement programmers and adding a stat (we don't currently have any room stats), I found progressively more 'cool' (and expensive) bits of kit - from wireless programmable stats, to CMZone, and then onto EvoTouch and the HouseHeat type systems... If I'm going to replace it, I may as well do it 'properly'
We currently have:
Kitchen (2 rads)
Front Room (1 rad)
Study (1 rad)
Bedroom (2 rads)
Bathroom (1 rad)
Bedroom 2 (1 rad)
All rooms have manual TRVs, there's no zoning or anything via valve currently. The house is also very old, with a modern extension - the old part isn't well insulated, with the new part being much warmer. At the moment in the winter there's massive temp differences between the two, and the old parts get a lot colder overnight while the heating is off.
The second bedroom and the study are only used occasionally, so really I'd need to divvy the house up into 3 zones - living (kitchen, front room), upstairs (main bedroom, bathroom) and unused rooms (spare bedroom, study).
For CMZone, I can get the 'installer kit' for about £500, which comes with 6 rad stats. From what I can tell, this would give me control of 2 zones, if I wanted to add another zone I'd need to purchase another controller for about £70.
With EvoTouch, the documentation seems to be a bit sparse - but from what I can tell, if I installed the electronic rad valves on every rad, I could control everything from a single unit, and it would effectively turn every room into it's own zone - I'd end up with 6 rooms that I could control the temp of independently. Pricewise it's about £250 for the controller, and then HR80 stats for every rad I wanted to control, so about £750 in total (Possibly it'd be cheaper to buy the CMZone kit and flog the unwanted bits?)
With the HouseHeat / Conrad system, I'd need valves for every room (FHT 80BTF?) at about £60 each, additional valves where we have 2 rads in a room (2 x £30), a boiler controller (£84), and a central controller (FHZ1000 - £80). So all in, I'm looking at about £600. This would give me similar functionality to the EvoTouch, with temp control of every room. If I wanted to link it up to the PC in the future, I could do this with a PC controller at about £100, but then I'd lose the central controller functionality.
None of the above systems will control the timed hot water on my worcester boiler - there's a small local tank of hot water that is kept warm when the hot water is on via the timer - so I'll still need a separate controller for timed hot water.
Is my thinking reasonably accurate so far?
One of the main considerations is that it has to be easy to use - I get it in the neck when I install something technical (like freesat ) and the 'boss' can't work it - the first time I'm not home and the house is cold when it should be warm I'd get an unhappy phone call and I'd never hear the end of it From the look of things, EvoTouch appears to be the most user friendly..
Any comments / feedback / advice?
Cheers
Jon
First post from me, so be gentle
We've got an old oil fired boiler in our house (worcester), and the programmer is playing up, so it needs binning and replacing with something new. While looking for replacement programmers and adding a stat (we don't currently have any room stats), I found progressively more 'cool' (and expensive) bits of kit - from wireless programmable stats, to CMZone, and then onto EvoTouch and the HouseHeat type systems... If I'm going to replace it, I may as well do it 'properly'
We currently have:
Kitchen (2 rads)
Front Room (1 rad)
Study (1 rad)
Bedroom (2 rads)
Bathroom (1 rad)
Bedroom 2 (1 rad)
All rooms have manual TRVs, there's no zoning or anything via valve currently. The house is also very old, with a modern extension - the old part isn't well insulated, with the new part being much warmer. At the moment in the winter there's massive temp differences between the two, and the old parts get a lot colder overnight while the heating is off.
The second bedroom and the study are only used occasionally, so really I'd need to divvy the house up into 3 zones - living (kitchen, front room), upstairs (main bedroom, bathroom) and unused rooms (spare bedroom, study).
For CMZone, I can get the 'installer kit' for about £500, which comes with 6 rad stats. From what I can tell, this would give me control of 2 zones, if I wanted to add another zone I'd need to purchase another controller for about £70.
With EvoTouch, the documentation seems to be a bit sparse - but from what I can tell, if I installed the electronic rad valves on every rad, I could control everything from a single unit, and it would effectively turn every room into it's own zone - I'd end up with 6 rooms that I could control the temp of independently. Pricewise it's about £250 for the controller, and then HR80 stats for every rad I wanted to control, so about £750 in total (Possibly it'd be cheaper to buy the CMZone kit and flog the unwanted bits?)
With the HouseHeat / Conrad system, I'd need valves for every room (FHT 80BTF?) at about £60 each, additional valves where we have 2 rads in a room (2 x £30), a boiler controller (£84), and a central controller (FHZ1000 - £80). So all in, I'm looking at about £600. This would give me similar functionality to the EvoTouch, with temp control of every room. If I wanted to link it up to the PC in the future, I could do this with a PC controller at about £100, but then I'd lose the central controller functionality.
None of the above systems will control the timed hot water on my worcester boiler - there's a small local tank of hot water that is kept warm when the hot water is on via the timer - so I'll still need a separate controller for timed hot water.
Is my thinking reasonably accurate so far?
One of the main considerations is that it has to be easy to use - I get it in the neck when I install something technical (like freesat ) and the 'boss' can't work it - the first time I'm not home and the house is cold when it should be warm I'd get an unhappy phone call and I'd never hear the end of it From the look of things, EvoTouch appears to be the most user friendly..
Any comments / feedback / advice?
Cheers
Jon
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