Smart Thermostat or Smart Radiator Thermostats?
I've recently moved into a new house in a rural location where we are not on mains natural gas but LPG. As LPG is much more expensive than natural gas, I am looking at ways I can heat my home efficiently, reducing the costs as much as possible. I am however, completely baffled by the simple choice of a Smart Thermostat or Smart Radiator Thermostats.
Currently we have two wired thermostats, one downstairs, the other upstairs. So two zones.
I'm going to be installing Home Assistant and like the idea of turning off heating when room are unoccupied which makes me think I need Smart Radiator Thermostats.
However, as we have a 5 bedroom house and it's only my wife and I living here most of the time, my concern is that if only one or two rooms were occupied, we'd probably be operating the boiler below it's lowest power rating which would then cause the boiler to either run very inefficiently or overheat and shutdown. That said, if this were a problem surely it would be widely reported so am I over thinking this?
So that makes me think I need Smart Thermostats. But then with two zones I can only control the overall temperature downstairs and upstairs and that wouldn't really give me any more control than I already have.
The only thing I could think of would be to create more zones, say a total of 4 that would allow me to turn off the heating in bedrooms during the day but keep them on in our offices etc. But as we already have two wired thermostats we can't really add more wired ones, so can we have a mix of wired and wireless?
What would be our best option?
Comments
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It’s possible to get carried away with this and many do just that. Creating more zoning can help or work against you. There’s no simple rule for that
I’d start with working out the capabilities of the boiler. Look up the specs and find out what it can modulate down to. Also whether it can be controlled, like by OpenTherm or some other BUS method. See if it can be weather compensated.
If you want to switch off a guest room, you can walk in and turn it off. I’m not a fan of the so-called smart TRVs, TBH.Getting Home Assistant going and acquiring some temperature data might help inform.
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@Peakoverload Hello. We've been using Tado in two family homes for three years. Ours is a 4 bed 1960s detached (16 rads). It took three months to work out what worked well. Our relly has 5 bed Edwardian Villa (11 rads) with a young family and has set up some home automation. Both homes use Tado TRVs everywhere to maximise the zones. Weve added a few room stats to improve the temperature measurement/comfort.
We heat the bedrooms evening and morning. The north wing (office / kitchen) is heated during the morning and afternoon, and the south wing (lounge) in the evening. Unused rooms are OFF. Our diaries vary, so the home/away is used a lot. We've reduced the hot water times to an hour in the morning. There is a boiling water tap in the kitchen that the solar PV keeps warm, so don't worry about a lack of hot water later in the day.
The key question to answer "what is the boiler make/model"? Look up the 'modulation' ratio in the technical spec. A modern 'modulating' boiler should operate efficiently with multiple zones. Other users report that Tado is more efficient for them with just one zone and TRVs set as 'Independent'. I suspect that's down to smaller homes and boilers that don't modulate.
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Thank you both for this. Very useful and helpful information. I will be definitely be looking into this further once I've found the modulation ratio. The boiler is only a year old, installed by the previous owner and understand that it is an efficient model (many older LPG boilers are really inefficient), so I'm hoping this will work in my favour.
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