Drayton Wiser - configuration advice needed

[rs1987]

Hi all

I'm going to fit a Drayton Wiser heating control system with smart TRVs for every room. Since I'm by no means clued up on smart heating systems, I'm hoping some of you more knowledgeable people can give me some advice on configuration.

I'm heating two floors. The boiler is a Vaillant Ecotec Plus 938.

Downstairs, I have the following rooms:

• A conservatory which acts as a dining room. The radiator here is undersized and even operating at maximum cannot bring the temperature up above about 16 degrees when it is zero outside. Mechanical TRV fitted
• The living room has a radiator stuck in an alcove. Mechanical TRV fitted
• An office, with the radiator stuck in one of these ridiculous radiator cabinets. Mechanical TRV fitted
• A hallway with a single radiator. No TRV fitted
• A bathroom with a towel radiator. No TRV fitted

Upstairs

• Three bedrooms with one radiator each and all with mechanical TRVs fitted
• One dressing room with one radiator and a mechanical TRV
• A bathroom with a towel radiator. No TRV fitted
• A single hallway radiator with a mechanical TRV

I will be putting smart Drayton TRVs on all radiators. In the office and the living room, I plan to add room thermostats as well. Drayton documentation and support (I called their technical help line) say that the room stat will override and control the radiator TRV and that this configuration is perfectly feasible (see https://wiser.draytoncontrols.co.uk/support-products --> Radiator Thermostat).

I wish to do this as the temperature inside the cabinet in the office and the temperature next to the radiator in the alcove will not read accurately due to the confined space, and so having a room thermostat should give much better control of the room temperature as far as I can tell. Am I correct in this supposition that using room thermostats in the office and living room in addition to the smart TRVs will improve the heating control in those rooms?

In the conservatory, I'm not quite sure what to do. Since the radiator is too small, if I set anything more than about a 12 degree target temperature, it will keep the boiler on pretty much permanently. I've bought a Dimplex CDE3ECC 3KW Oil Free Radiator. In an ideal world, what I would do is to use the Drayton smart plug to add this electric heater to the system to supplement the central heating radiator, but I don't believe that the Wiser system can control the smart plug based on temperature. It can control it based on schedule, so a solution would be to set a schedule for the plug that corresponds to the heating schedule for the conservatory in terms of time of operation (so that it switches on the heater at these times). The electric heater itself then has its own digital temperature regulation which I'd set to the same as the smart TRVs temperature setting. I theorize this should work?

In the hallway, there is a single radiator that is quite large that has been configured as a bypass radiator. I'd love to add a smart TRV to this radiator too. My understanding is that the Vaillant Ecotec has an automatic bypass valve and so a bypass radiator is not needed. There are two towel radiators in the bathrooms that can act as bypass radiators if necessary. Is adding a smart TRV to this hallway radiator feasible, or is it a bad idea? Should I just leave this one as a bypass and instead use a room thermostat here?

Upstairs, I'm not sure if it is better to put the room thermostat in the master bedroom (which is a large space) or in the hallway. I tend to prefer a cool bedroom. I suspect the hallway is the better place for the stat.

Thanks
/rs

[fezster]

Don't have time to reply to all your qs, but one thing I did notice with the wiser thermostats is that the room stat is usually a good degree lower than the radiator stat.

Obviously largely depends on where the stats are located, but something to keep in mind and maybe do some measurements at your proposed locations.

[rs1987]

Don't have time to reply to all your qs, but one thing I did notice with the wiser thermostats is that the room stat is usually a good degree lower than the radiator stat.

Obviously largely depends on where the stats are located, but something to keep in mind and maybe do some measurements at your proposed locations.

Indeed. And with two of the radiator stats either in a cabinet or in an alcove that is blocked at floor level, I suspect those ones will be several degrees hotter than the room stat. Hence why I want to use the room stat in conjunction with the radiator stat in these rooms.