The future of EvoHome Products?

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  • quinla01
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Oct 2019
    • 5

    The future of EvoHome Products?

    hought i'd kick off a new thread to gauge people's thoughts on the future of EvoHome. For complete transparency - I haven't had a great experience with my EvoHome system so having spent best part £900 on a system that doesn't work half the time my opinion may be slightly biased. Putting the reliability of my system to one side. I have several other concerns that to me, raise the question as to the future of EvoHome.

    1) Their customer service is notoriously poor. Drop them an email and you're lucky if you get a response withing 1 week. Even then it's a one liner. Usually fobbing you off.
    2) There's a complete lack of communication during outages / upgrades / maintenance windows.
    3) They seem to be constantly patching the system to keep it alive.
    4) There is zero interest in feature upgrades despite 100's of requests.
    5) There's hasn't been an app update in 11 months.
    6) If you go to the Honeywell Home website, without digging deep, there's no mention of EvoHome. They seem to focus on other products.

    All of this stinks of a product line that doesn't anticipate being around much longer. Is anyone familiar with their long term goals? Did I miss an acquisition or announcement maybe?

    Interested here what other think.
  • Stevedh
    Automated Home Guru
    • Mar 2017
    • 177

    #2
    Perhaps you should have posted this in the heating forum.
    My evohome installation mostly works fine and despite its shortcomings I'd much prefer to have it then not.
    That aside it would be nice if they supported and promoted it better.

    Comment

    • Treadstone
      Automated Home Jr Member
      • Oct 2020
      • 19

      #3
      The future for my Evohome products is being recycled into something more useful that does not require constant monitoring for all manner of issues. I have a goldfish that is smarter than this sytem. Evohome for me has been total waste of time and money with lots of sweating and shivering (mainly sweating) involved. I think if I were looking for a full time hobby Evohome could fit the bill but I was not. So today it is no longer part of my life and is making it's final journey to the recyling centre as I would not wish pass the pain onto someone else. I am happy for all that satisfied with their system while being grateful that there is not an Evohome controller under the hood of my car ... scary or what !

      Comment

      • therealfronty
        Automated Home Guru
        • May 2021
        • 140

        #4
        Interesting. I agree that it is lacking a bit in certain areas, the app leaves a lot to be desired and it would be great if it produced some decent reports of ambient temperature vs set point vs demand vs time, I know you can do all this with 3rd party tools but would be nice if it was built in. But I've only had it installed for about 5 months and so far I've been pretty happy with it. I'm sitting in my conservatory at the moment and the temperature is lovely whereas this time last year I'd be shivering (because the old roomstat in the living room would no longer be calling for heat). I haven't had a gas bill yet but keen to see how my consumption this winter compares to last, I have about 5 years of historical meter readings and have graphed each year so will be interesting to see how this winter shapes out. Even if I don't really save much in terms of gas consumption I can already feel that the house is more comfortable, and I especially like being able to shut down zones when they are not being used, such as the kids bedrooms during the working day when they are at school and I am holed up in my home office all toasty and warm (it used to drive me nuts heating 4 rooms upstairs that weren't being used).

        Comment

        • MajorDanby
          Automated Home Jr Member
          • Jan 2019
          • 44

          #5
          For me it works pretty much perfectly. With the HR92s dependent on location in the room you just have to accept that a certain set point doesn’t equal a certain temperature - adjust and move on.

          For me the app is also fine, simple and works. No it doesn’t given the n’th level of detail about how it’s controlling and hasn’t been updated in a while but it works and works well.

          I’ve had this system for 3 years now and I don’t regret buying it in the slightest.

          One quibble is that I would like them to more fully embrace smart features such as geofencing etc. However for me that’s a fairly simple solve with smartthings and ifttt.

          I am a very satisfied customer

          Edit: as to Honeywell’s seemingly ambivalence about the system. It’s complex - a lot of customers don’t like complex, but you need the complexity to get the externally granular level of zoning. Honeywell Home is not as complex, and no where near as good - it probably makes more money
          Last edited by MajorDanby; 23 October 2021, 10:52 PM.

          Comment

          • G4RHL
            Automated Home Legend
            • Jan 2015
            • 1580

            #6
            Whilst I agree with most of points 1 to 5 above I have found the Evohome system good and easy to use and. I have had it 7 years and no issues to complain about other than:
            1. I could not get it to run properly when first installed. The fault was mine for not reading the manual properly and also Honeywell not writing the manual clearly. Others have suffered the same for the same reason. Honeywell don’t listen though.
            2. Frequent reports of a lack of connection to my hot water sensor, but it never ever stopped operating as set up. This is a fault in the control panel as dpmandrake identified some time back. No longer an issue for me now since having a combi boiler installed last February. I don’t get faults appearing unless I take the panel of the power mount.
            3. The panel does not properly charge the backup batteries. There is a work around if you can be bothered but not a major issue.

            There is better control of the whole house. It just works and does as it is told if settings are changed in the app or in the panel. The app perhaps needs a refresh and it would be better if it displayed which zone is calling for heat. I don’t know of a system that is better than Evohome.

            Comment

            • CT1
              Automated Home Guru
              • Apr 2016
              • 189

              #7
              Had Evohome a few years now, it was and still is, the only product I know that gives total individual control of every room and HW, which is essential for my house. Being a KISS type of person, I do not need more features and graphs. The App works fine for me. There was a significant firmware update about a year ago and I don’t use any of the new features. Rather than more bells and whistles, I would prefer to see some of the basic issues sorted out like battery management etc. A reduced speed, quiet mode option for the radiator valves could be useful for bedrooms, luckily I very seldom need overnight heating.

              Individual room stats add to the cost but give much better control, so now it is only minor zones like utility room that use the radiator valve sensor.

              I did have a lot of HW comms faults, but since changing the sensor battery this year I have not had a problem. It may just be a coincidence, as there were problems from new and others have eliminated batteries as a cause of their problems. I did ensure contacts were spotlessly clean and properly tensioned.
              Last edited by CT1; 24 October 2021, 10:40 AM.

              Comment

              • G4RHL
                Automated Home Legend
                • Jan 2015
                • 1580

                #8
                Is there anything out there that does the same as Evohome? I am not that familiar with the market now but whenever I looked alternatives never quite did as much.

                Comment

                • Treadstone
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • Oct 2020
                  • 19

                  #9
                  Surley we need something that does more than Evohome & better ! that would get a +1 from me

                  Comment

                  • Jenks
                    Automated Home Jr Member
                    • Sep 2018
                    • 11

                    #10
                    I have had Evohome for about 5 years now and for my situation it has been fantastic. Yes there are some shortcomings with both Honeywell and the system, but my home is rather spread out with very different heat loss characteristics in different areas and Evohome maintains the correct temperatures at the right times in the right areas, brilliantly.
                    Once you have got it set as required, leave it alone and don't be tempted to "fiddle"

                    That said, I would not recommend it to anyone who wasn't going to take an interest in how it was intended to work

                    If I owned a well insulated box of a modern property, I would go for a Nest or Hive

                    With regard to updates to the app?? If it does what is required, what is the point??

                    Steve

                    Comment

                    • Treadstone
                      Automated Home Jr Member
                      • Oct 2020
                      • 19

                      #11
                      Originally posted by Jenks View Post

                      If I owned a well insulated box of a modern property, I would go for a Nest or Hive


                      Steve
                      An interesting viewpoint that Evohome may not be suited for a well insulated property !

                      Comment

                      • CT1
                        Automated Home Guru
                        • Apr 2016
                        • 189

                        #12
                        I have a well insulated box. My problem was that the sub-boxes (rooms) have different levels of solar gain and different times of occupation etc. This only works if each room can be controlled separately. EvoHome was the only system I could find that enabled this. I don’t need most of the smart features like weather compensation. Just want individual room settings and operation to be as simple as possible. Don’t need lots of statistic or graphs either, so app works fine for me.

                        Was hopeful of the new adjustable eco offset feature, but this has turned out to be a backward step for me. It is to much of a faff to adjust because you have to go into a different menu to change the offset setting before activating it and worse still, you now have to compensate for the offset when entering a manual setting while in eco mode.

                        At least we managed to stop hot water priority being forced at all times.

                        Comment

                        • Jenks
                          Automated Home Jr Member
                          • Sep 2018
                          • 11

                          #13
                          Just to be clear, I did not mean to be disparaging in my use of the word "box"
                          I was just thinking more of a compact modern design with modern insulation and draft free windows etc which is typical of a lot of the current new builds. As against probably a typically older property which may be a bit more rambling with various extra bits which have been added over the years and variable insulation characteristics

                          yes. Solar gain is something I have missed, as my house does not normally suffer from this!! But a few days ago, there was a cold north wind and some bright sun from the south which did have a distinct effect

                          Comment

                          • RedEarth
                            Automated Home Sr Member
                            • Jan 2021
                            • 71

                            #14
                            I invested in Evohome just under a year ago, mainly as a result of both myself and housemate now working from home (in the two northeast-facing, and therefore generally colder rooms), so wanted more control over the heating of the rooms being used, without wasting energy and money on the ones that weren't. For me, it does that job brilliantly out of the box.

                            Of course that's not the end of the story, I then discovered this forum, got interested in the inner workings of the system and since I already ran Domoticz, I started making use of the Evohome integration available in that to monitor the temperatures, and then later invested in an SSM which allowed local monitoring of the demand as well as the temperatures, avoiding the somewhat tempermental Evohome cloud API. So I'm really very happy with my combined solution of Evohome + SSM + Domoticz.

                            Comment

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