Total newbie: would like a multi zone heating system, please advise

[Franco]

Good morning

I have recently retired, and my heating requirements have somehow changed. I am in a three bed semidetached, with a Bosch/Worcester combi boiler (38Cdi). Which works great. This has been going with a Honeywell wall thermostat, which allows weekly schedules but not multi-zone (CM927)

I would like to have all house on a fixed temperature, e.g. 18C. But during the day my lounge and study room at e.g. 23C, and at night only my bedroom at 23C.

What do you advice to do? Already have individual radiator TRVs installed, but being a total novice, would need something fairly 8ntuitive to use, and with a quality installer in the Sheffield area.

Any advice very welcome

Franco

[sxturbo]

Having seen the huge price increases on the Honeywell Evo home products I can no longer advise it. More so having had it installed for 2 years it's now giving me no end of trouble, and I seem to have entered into a major software glitch which no amount of factory resetting seems to fix.

Honeywell are also slow and incumbent.

If I don't all again I'm going for the Drayton wiser kit, very well priced and Drayton have been bringing regular updates to it

[toscal]

hi Franco and welcome to the forums
There are other options to consider. Shelly apart from offering a wide variety of WiFi enabled devices now offer a WiFi enabled TRV. . These could be added gradually as time and budget allows. Four of these valves could work out cheaper than 4 EVOhome valves.
The Shelly valves use rechargeable batteries, so a mobile phone powerbank would be able to charge the valve in situ. In theory you wouldn't need anything else other than the valves, as a standard room thermostat could still be used to keep overall control. But temperature monitoring and control (of your boiler) is also possible using a Shelly 1 module with the temperature addon.

[Franco]

Thanks Toscal
As I said, am a total newcomer to these concepts. Tell me if I have understood:

I keep the existing thermostat, and set it at 24C. Then I turn all existing TRVs down to minimal settings, except the two wifi-enabled ones (one in bedroom and one in sitting rm). These will be activated by app on wifi, so that all the heat will be channelled on that single radiator at the right times. All other rooms in the while would be on minimal settings.

Or did I get it wrong?

Thanks
Franco

[G4RHL]

I have had Evohome for nearly 8 years. It works fine. The only issues were two. One was of my doing when I first set it up not reading the manual properly. The other was the DMW sensor losing contact from time to time, but ever at a time that deprived me of hot water. It is a known issue and I just ignored it. Now I have a combi boiler and now need for the DMW sensor. It is not really a complicate system. It works. Has done for the past 8 years. I am not sure about the others and I suspect all prices will be going up. If I was installing afresh I would still consider it

[CT1]

Had EvoHome for several years. EvoHome was the only system that provided full independent zone control. We had previously tried a combination of one room thermostat and radiator thermostats in each room (both simple and programmable TRVs) but this still resulted in rooms being too hot or too cold. EvoHome was far better. It can take time to get set up and programmed to your requirements and then works best if you just leave it alone. I would not class it as simple, other members of the household don’t want anything to do with setting any of the programmable features. We have ignored the things like weather compensation etc that came with the latest update and don’t let EvoHome start heating rooms in advance of the set time (optimisation). This keeps things simpler and easier for other members of the household to understand but does give the occasional temporary overshoot in temperature.

If you can set it up and not need to make frequent changes, it usually requires nothing more than the occasional battery change and gives far better zone control and comfort levels than anything else we found. There currently appears to be a problem in buying devices. Hopefully this is just the general problem all manufacturers are having with component supply chains and not an indication that Resideo are thinking of withdrawing EvoHome.

[G4RHL]

I concur, weather compensation and optimisation are unnecessary. Just set it up and don't keep playing with it!

[Franco]

Thanks
Anybody in South Yorkshire can recommend an Evo installer? There avere some on the Honeywell Evo website, but have no idea who’s good. And no, I would not be able to do myself.
Thanks for your advise
Franco

[G4RHL]

Hopefully somebody here can make a recommendation for you. Those on the Honeywell site aren't all up to the task. I found the same with recommended Intergas installers. Honeywell may have selected proper qualified people now though. It is a while since I last checked. Years ago. I ended up doing it myself. It did not work, I called a recommended installer, I was advising him about the system. It did not work due to my mistake!

[Franco]

In these cases, nothing is better than a recommendation from somebody local who had it installed - and was happy with the work.