With the nights starting to draw in and the summer drizzling to an autumnal conclusion many of us will be tempted to fire up the central heating for the first time in the coming weeks.
For many that will mean digging out a dog-eared manual from the back of the kitchen drawer to try and find out how to work the controls, cycling through seemingly endless permutations to set timed events, store them, and then switch them live. It’s a fiddly annual ritual that a new generation of smart tech is set to banish for ever.
In recent years a growing number of companies have developed “smart heating controls” that are starting to find favour with specifiers and householders alike as prices drop and solutions become more reliable and intelligent.
In this NBS guide we take a look at some of the systems on offer to help you assess the benefits and choose the right solution to meet your needs…
Two years from launch and British Gas’s Hive Active Heating system
The system replaces your existing controllers with a shiny silver thermostat, a hub that plugs into your broadband router and a receiver unit that lets the thermostat and boiler communicate with each other.
It’s the hub that facilitates the functions contained within an Android or iOS app. These include the ability to turn your heating or hot water on or off, up or down (or receive reminders to do so based on geolocation), or set scheduled events. You can even tell Hive your holiday plans or tell it to kickstart the heating when temperatures dip. Whether you’re sat at work, on the bus or in your living room doesn’t matter but, thankfully, if your internet goes down your thermostat will still work.
The complete kit (including professional installation) currently retails at £249 and existing users can upgrade for £99. You don’t have to have British Gas as your energy supplier and the unit can integrate with most current heating systems.
Again, there’s a host of features that can easily be controlled via a smartphone app and a daily energy history function and monthly home report will summarize your energy use and make recommendations to help you save.
A new version of the device has just launched in the US (retailing at $249 USD) and is likely to land in the UK soon. It boasts a 40% bigger screen and 25% more pixels making it easier to tell the temperature from the far side of a room. A new ‘Farsight’ feature will also light up the display when you walk in the room and ‘Furnace Heads-Up’ acts as a diagnostic test for your heating system.
The current version retails at £249 including professional installation and should work with most UK systems.
Honeywell’s Evohome system
The Wireless Connected Pack costs around £250 with radiator zone kits available from around £80 each.
The unit can track your smartphone’s location and, pulling on a range of data including what the weather is like, and calculate your likely return home to ensure things are suitably toasty once you open the front door.
The second generation Tado, unlike the first, allows users to add a second zone to the system if they so choose. It costs £199 to buy or you can opt to rent the system for £7.99 per month (with 4 months free if you sign up by September 30 2015).
Heat Genius allows heating and hot water scheduling from afar and offers room-by-room ability to warm to a predetermined temperature. A ‘footprint’ mode turns heating on or off based on when you were last in a room based on data received from motion sensors, while smart plugs can be added and controlled to switch other electronic devices on or off remotely too. Prices vary according to system configuration
The Climote
The Netatmo