A smart radiator valve can save you money because it allows you to control your house’s temperature room-by-room. If you have a room that gets particular hot (for example), you can install a smart valve and make it so that that specific radiator comes on less. When manually overridden you can select how long the Lyric T6R should follow the new command before returning to your schedule, which is a useful feature if you’re looking for a few hours of heat before leaving the house or going to sleep. Those with rooms that are often not in use If there are lots of empty bedrooms during the school day, for example, or if the living room doesn't get used until the evening, smart valves can let you make sure those rooms aren't heated when no one is around. This is the set up a lot of homes will have. You can manually set the thermostat temperature, and it will turn the boiler on and off to maintain the temperature of the room it's placed in.

More fine-grained control over when the valves open up. Right now I can just choose settings “1-5”, but this doesn’t allow me to say “This valve should be open under 18°C in the morning, and under 19°C in the evening”. This is something that I lose with my TRVs (compared to smart valves), but again – honestly – it’s not something I think would benefit me right now. Most of the rooms in my house are use evenly enough throughout the day, and most heat up (and cool down) consistently too – so I don’t need this level fine-grained control currently. Installation of the Evohome system is a little more involved than with some other smart thermostats available due to the fact that each radiator in your house needs to be fitted with an individual thermostat. Everything you can do from the touchscreen controller, you can also do from the smartphone app, either remotely or in your home, bar copying schedules between zones. Honeywell has designed the app so you can see all the different zones and related temperatures directly on the home screen. You can see how much you're heating Many smart heating apps allow you to monitor your energy use, making it easier to see where you could be saving money.You set the temperature in degrees celsius This is easier to use and more intuitive than the 0-5 scale on TRVs. If the Lyric T6R is currently following the schedule, you can manually override it by moving the temperature wheel at the bottom of the screen. Like what is being offered by Netatmo, an evohome wireless radiator also supports smart assistants such as Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Alexa, and more. On top of that, the functionalities can be extended thanks to IFTTT compatibility. If you use the boiler manufacturer's own smart TRVs you only have to deal with one manufacturer for all your heating system products

Live more sustainably - get our free Sustainability newsletter to make changes for you and the planet The system is suitable for both collective/district heating systems as well as traditional boilers. With traditional boilers, the thermostat controls your overall boiler, whilst the radiator valves allow zoning of the rooms. The Nest Learning Thermostat is among the best-known smart thermostats around, and for good reason. This product has shown how powerful smart heating can be. Now in its third generation, it remains one of the best smart thermostats you can buy. require a combined programmer and thermostat with an ‘advanced’ energy saving feature. Namely: weather compensation, load compensation or smart controls that combine automation and optimisation features. (Or you can fit a flue gas recovery unit.) New installations of a heat only or system boiler: It took one engineer around half an hour to connect the boiler control unit to our current central heating controls, however this could vary depending on your home's setup.Smart radiator valves are great if you want complete control and transparency over how much you're using your heating. Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRV’s) are found on individual radiators and can be used to adjust the temperature of each radiator. If you’re wondering what a smart radiator valve is (also known as a smart TRV), it’s the connected equivalent that allows the radiator settings to be controlled from a central app. This is useful for two reasons:

The Radbot looks like a standard TRV, and has a simple control dial that moves from 1 to 5 – these numbers correspond to a room temperature of between 15ºC and 24ºC. It would have been easier if Vestemi had put the temperatures on the dial, to be honest. But that’s our only criticism; otherwise, Radbots are brilliant. Comprehensive Research: Our team dedicates extensive time and effort to research and analyze products, so you can make informed decisions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmH4f0Gnzyk Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Hive Radiator Valve | Hive UK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmH4f0Gnzyk)

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There is a twist-dial on the thermostats, so you can override the current settings from the radiator without having to use the control terminal or your phone. You won’t get as sophisticated a level of control, but to bump the temperature up or down a couple of degrees it’s perfect. This product does require the Tuya Zigbee Gateway Hub to operate properly, once set up you can use with Alexa and Google Home via the Tuya smartlife skill. That being said, some users have shared experiences of using the product with other Zigbee hubs, but you cannot fully rely on this. Schedules can conveniently be copied between zones and days, so you don’t have to program every single change. We found that it took us a few weeks to get our schedules right, but we ended up only heating zones as we needed them. If you’ve been looking for a seamless way to potentially cut the costs in your home, you may want to consider upgrading to a smart thermostat.

However, if you don't own a smartphone or don't like using one, you're unlikely to get the full benefit out of a smart radiator valve. Ultimately, it depends what you want smart heating for to decide if it's worth getting. Smart radiator valves offer high levels of control, but that doesn't suit everyone. Smart radiator valve pros Is this a case where the system has to be secured so that it stays fully charged with water at a reliable pressure or no TRV (smart or otherwise) could possibly stay working? Or could a smart valve open up the radiator more than a mechanical TRV at those middle of the night times when “3” doesn’t produce the temperature it’s supposed to? With some kits, you need to install a boiler link or replace your timer control panel – this may cause issues if you already have a smart thermostatThis is where your heating system could truly become smart: a smart thermostat that truly learns your schedules and routines, combined with smart valves so that you can have room-by-room control of things. This is a smart heating system that would actually be useful (as you can tell, I’m not a fan of smart thermostats in a single zone!). The valves have a heat on-demand feature that will come in handy when the Hive thermostat is installed along with it. As designed, the valve will boost the thermostat as and when required in the room.