A single-zone smart thermostat can either put the whole house’s heating on, or off. It can’t control individual rooms (well, not without automatic dampers – which are rarely fitted in residential homes). In my opinion, this is one of the many flaws of smart thermostats.
But what about smart radiator valves? Can these swoop in and save the day, giving smart, automatic and fine-grained control of your house’s heating after all?
Smart radiator valves can save you money, and are a good alternative to smart thermostats if you want room-by-room control of your house’s climate. However available products are currently limited, as are the number of integration options.
How Do Smart Radiator Valves Work?
Before I talk smart radiator valves, it’s worth quickly talking about the different types of radiator valves – especially since the terms used vary depending on where you live in the world. So a decade or so ago, most radiators just had the following:
This is a standard ‘T-joint’ for the pipe, meaning that any hot water being pumped from the boiler will pass around the radiator – meaning the radiator will always be on.
However as the world woke up to the eco-friendly shift, some countries started seeing more and more thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) being installed:
These monitor a room’s temperature, and will only allow hot water into the radiator (i.e. only allow the radiator to ‘turn on’) if the ambient temperature is low enough.
Setting the TRV to “4” or “5 means that the radiator will turn on much more frequently than a setting of “1” or “2”.
Smart radiator valves take this a step further, however. Instead of just allowing a crude “1-5” numbering system for whether a radiator should come on (in relative terms), a smart valve can track the exact temperature of a room, and only hot water to pass into the radiator when a pre-defined temperature is hit.
And since they are smart, you can naturally use an app, automation rules or voice control to open/close the valve – thus allowing the room to be heated or cooled as required.
Smart valves are battery powered, so you’ll have to periodically change the battery otherwise they’ll just fallback to functioning as a standard radiator valve.
Can Smart Valves Save You Money?
In general, yes.
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.
Of course, you can also do this with a thermostatic radiator valve, but a smart valve will also allow you to control things remotely, along with including it in automation routines. For example, you might have a SmartThings routine that detects when you’re coming home, and then carries out a range of actions including opening certain smart radiator valves as required.
The eqiva smart radiator valve claims that it can save you up to 30% on your heating bills, which would be higher than the 10-12% savings that Nest claim you’ll have with their Learning Thermostat.
In some ways this makes sense. A smart thermostat will control your whole house’s heating, turning the heating up or down for all rooms in your house. If you don’t have TRVs (which most houses don’t), you might find that certain rooms get too hot – quite literally burning away money. This is especially the case if someone in the house always likes the heating above 22°C…
(I totally didn’t look at my wife in a passive aggressive way while typing that last sentence…)
A smart valve can instead allow you to have fine-grained control of each room’s heating setup, potentially saving you much more money than with a smart thermostat.
Can You Integrate Smart Valves With A Smart Thermostat?
This 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!).
In this way, your smart thermostat could learn that people spend time in rooms A, B and C in the morning, then rooms D and E in the evening – and heat each room accordingly. A smart thermostat cannot do this without an expensive multi-zone setup.
So is this possible/feasible? Well… it depends on what smart thermostat you have.
The Nest Learning Thermostat has a support page on radiator valves, but it basically says to leave them at a standard/comfortable setting and then allow the Nest thermostat to control everything. In other words, it wouldn’t integrate with smart valves.
ecobee also doesn’t appear to support smart radiator valves, albeit they don’t explicitly mention this – they simply don’t talk about it. Plus their room sensors are meant to work in lieu of individual valves by sensing when people are in certain rooms.
As a result if you have a Nest or ecobee thermostat, your only real options are to integrate them with your smart home hub and then buy a compatible smart valve. I’ve seen some valves that have HomeKit support, meaning that you could setup some custom automation routines that combine your smart thermostat and smart radiator valves. Yes this isn’t direct integration, but it’s still a big step towards a truly smart (and automated) heating system.
The situation in the UK (and parts of Europe) is more promising, however. The Hive Active smart thermostat integrates with the Hive Smart Heating Thermostatic Radiator Valve, to deliver a seamless level of smart heating operability.
These Hive smart valves work without a smart thermostat, but if you have the Hive Active installed, you can also turn heating on in a single room (via the smart valve) without the rest of your house’s heating coming on. This is a pretty nice feature:
The Amazon reviews for the Hive valves are mixed, however, with 27% giving it a 1/5 rating and saying that they didn’t work properly. Installation issues seems to be the main issue (along with the odd software bug) – once they are installed and setup, however, many people say that they work really well alongside their Hive Active smart thermostat.
Can’t You Just Use TRVs (Thermostatic Radiator Valves)?
This is the question I’ve been asking myself for a while, to be honest. My house only has TRVs and I certainly don’t feel the need to rush out and buy a bunch of smart radiator valves.
A TRV will have values 1-5 to indicate the temperatures they should come on at, along with 0 (and maybe a * option) to indicate it should stay off, or only come on occasionally. The numbers 1-5 vary depending on the make of TRV, but roughly speaking they mean:
- 1 – come on under 10-15°C
- 2 – come on under 15-17°C
- 3 – come on under 18-20°C (around 68°F)
- 4 – come on under 21-22°C (around 77°F)
- 5 – max (valve is always open)
This is what I have in my house and most of my rooms are set to “4”, with some set to “3” if a particular room tends to get a little too hot.
This works really well, and it’s a big step up compared to traditional radiator valves that are always open. The only things I lose with TRVs (compared to smart valves) are:
- The ability to smartly control the valves. But as we’ve seen, the current integration options are poor. If I could integrate smart valves into an ecobee thermostat, I think I’d run out and buy a full smart heating system. But right now that’s just not possible, so I don’t really see the benefit of having ‘smart’ radiator valves.
- 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.
In short, if I didn’t have TRVs then I probably would go out and buy smart radiator valves. But since I already have thermostatic valves, I don’t see the benefit of upgrading to smart thermostatic valves.
Recommended Smart Radiator Valves
Since most people around the world either have a Nest Learning Thermostat or an ecobee smart thermostat, but neither support smart radiator valves, it’s hard to recommend specific products to suit. Thankfully there are one or two good options for smart valves that can work standalone (i.e. without a smart thermostat) – although many are Europe or UK only. As a result, I’ll group my suggestions according to some example usecases:
You Live In Europe And Have The Hive Active Thermostat
In this case, the Hive Smart Thermostatic Valves do make sense here. Yes, their reviews are mixed – so I’d suggest to read them, know what is annoying most people (it mainly seems to be a buggy install process) and see whether there’s been some recent Hive updates that make this process less buggy and annoying.
If this is the case, the £42.50-each Hive valves are more expensive than standard TRVs (costing under £8) but the fine-grained control they’ll provide you are probably worth it on balance.
You Live In Europe And Don’t Want Hive
tado are probably the best option for you here. tado’s valves are fairly easy to install – you just unscrew your old TRV, and screw these on instead. You then install the tado app on your phone, and follow the instructions. They have a changeable battery which lasts for around a year.
Each 3-pack of tado valves costs up to £200 in the UK, although during sales these go down to £160 – i.e. just over £50 each. You can also buy individual tado valves for £75 each, but these also regularly go on sale for as little as £60.
You can also purchase add-on temperature sensors from tado, and use these to override the temperature readings from the main smart valve. This is a really neat feature, because it allows you to effectively ‘extend’ your tado valve into a whole-of-home smart heating system. For example, if you have a room without a radiator (maybe it has underfloor heating instead), you can use the tado valve to get a temperature reading from that room – then control the smart radiator valves accordingly.
Note: You will need to purchase the tado ‘starter kit’ for these smart valves to work, because this includes a tado hub that is required for proper cloud function. So if you have only purchased a tado add-on kit, you won’t be able to fully set-up your tado system (without also buying the starter kit and installing the tado hub).
You’re An Apple Fan And Use HomeKit
HomeKit is Apple’s smart platform (like Alexa is Amazon’s smart platform), and there was a time where Apple fans were out of luck for smart valves. But Eve Thermo have saved the day – whilst they aren’t too cheap (the Apple UK store lists them at £250 for a pack of four), they are a solid product that will save you money in years to come, and their Apple HomeKit support is really reliable.
They use Bluetooth, meaning that you don’t need to purchase an extra hub to control them.
You Have A SmartThings Hub
gen), plus mobile app.
Whilst some smart devices work ‘out the box’ as long as you have an Echo Dot, Google Nest speaker or Apple HomePod, some smart home enthusiasts rely on a proper smart home hub to manager their smart home. Samsung SmartThings used to be the most popular type of smart hub, and there are two main smart valves that work fine with this hub:
You Have A Nest/ecobee Thermostat, But No Smart Hub
This is trickier, because you probably won’t get great (or any) integration between your smart thermostat and your valves.
But in some ways this doesn’t matter – it just means that you have to manually manage some parts of your heating system. For example, you might know that the two back bedrooms get really hot as the day goes on, but your downstairs is cooler meaning that your smart thermostat comes on every day around 5-6pm.
In this case, you can use smart valves in just the two back bedrooms to turn off their radiators (or only have them come on at lower temperatures) at the same sort of time – e.g. 5pm. Then these rooms won’t overheat when your smart thermostat – reading the ambient temperature in your downstairs hallway or living room – kicks your heating system into action.
There’s quite a few smart valve choices in Europe’s Amazon stores, but much less in America’s Amazon store – so instead of trying to suggest a particular product which you might not be able to buy, I’d suggest to shop around retailers close to you and see what smart radiator valves they have for sale.
I had wet underfloor heating installed in a downstairs kitchen/diner extension but the installer connected the manifold to the ch circuit, instead of to the boiler. This means that the fitted hive thermostat turns the ch off long before the floor reaches its maximum permitted temperature (26 degrees C).
Re-routing pipework and electrical connections will be expensive. Could fitting Hive rad thermostats in the other rooms be a possible solution?
You might be better off asking a plumber who’s also clued up on technology, but my guess is that it would work (i.e. essentially you’d just leave your ch completely on, but then disable all the radiators).
You can get most of these benefits without the ‘intelligent’ controls. Our smart-TRVs are each separately set up and controlled by an Android app [iPhone also available], so there’s no ‘hub’. We have set …
– our working rooms warm between 9.00-17.00, but off at weekends [we work at home]
– living rooms warm 17.00-22.00,
– bedrooms warm 7.00-8.00 and 21.00-23.00.
Every rad. can have its own schedule, varying each day-of-week, and its own warm-v-cool temperatures.
This has saved us way more than 30% of energy use compared with the dumb radiator thermostat valves we had before.
Thanks for the comment, that’s all good to know Kim. Saving 30% energy is pretty great to be fair.
What smart -TRV’s do you have?
Thank you
Hi Kim
Very interesting Could you tell me what smart trvs you have set up . Thanks Paul
Hi Kim, which Smart TRVs were these please?
Nice article.
I have recently installed a Drayton wiser smart heating hub which is working nicely but I am thinking about having more control as my elderly mother likes to feel warm and it would be useful to keep the rest of the house at a lower temperature.
Your article summaries the different possible approaches, costs and challenges very well.
I am currently experimenting with a single smart radiator thermostat located in the kitchen and wondering whether balancing the existing TRVs is a sufficient solution vs the possibility of having smart TRVs in the hall or even a smart room thermostat in the hall.
I will be going forward some step at a time and won’t be rushing into any unnecessary cost.
Meanwhile I have had a smart meter installed and I am finding the combination of smart heating and smart meter is giving excellent control and feedback on the household energy usage.
Thanks, glad you found it helpful. I agree with you that moving forward with small steps at a time makes sense – no point in spending a small fortune on smart TRVs everywhere.
You really do need to put smart TRVs on all the radiators. Balancing the existing TRVs only means they are working efficiently when you turn the heat on. But…if you do not need the heat in a particular area then, of course, this is 100% inefficient.
A smart room stat isn’t the answer either because, again, it will turn all radiators on at the same time…whether you need them on or not.
If you want to keep mum warm then warm her room…only. Smart TRVs will allow you to do this. Even a 2kw electric heater would be more efficient in your mum’s room than turning on the heat to the whole house to keep her warm…if you don’t want to go down the Smart route.
Hi
I have two Hive Smart TRV but when I start them my boiler starts, then how I am saving energy?
Something I am missing
Do the linked radiators actually come on (heat up), even if you set that TRV to be off? If so, there’s probably something wrong and I agree you won’t save energy that way.
Hi, I’m in the states, specifically in New Jersey. My home has steam heat, baseboards on the first floor and old school radiators on the second floor. The radiators give off an insane amount of heat and worse, they are in smaller rooms. What are the best TRV’s to use Stateside?
I haven’t been able to find any real options for smart TRV’s sold in America, unfortunately. The only option I have heard of is to use Salus’s wireless valves, but I think this requires a unit on the boiler/HVAC unit too – so this isn’t really a perfect solution.
OK. I have a fully smart Drayton Wiser system in my house. What does this mean? Well I have a smart TRV on every radiator in the house, except the bathroom. I do have a room thermostat, but only because I was not able to buy the Drayton kit without it. The room stat just sits on a shelf permanently off…but I can press it to find the relative humidity of the room. I use the app to control each and every room in the house. Currently I am saving about 60% (yes, you read it right) of my heating cost. Having the app and the displays allows a great deal more involvement with the system and an awareness of where you are wasting heat. We heat our bedroom and bathroom…but not the other unused bedrooms (though, these are aired daily by just leaving the doors open). We also only heat the living room we are using…and are sparingly heating other areas where we do not linger. My house is in effect zoned…every room being a zone. There is very little need nowadays to turn the whole house on or off at the same time. We heat the bedroom for when we get up or go to bed…and the living room/s when they are being used…but rarely all at the same time. So…my system has paid for itself in less than 1 year. Thanks.
Awesome, thanks for sharing your experience Ciaran. The key thing is your last sentence really (that your system has paid for itself in less than 1 year). It probably wouldn’t pay for us in our house due to our usage and layout, but if it works for you, then that’s awesome.
Hi
Great article. I have a nest system and smartthings hub. I bought yhe netamo valve. But do you need the netatmo hub or can you connect it to the smartthings hub and then wider network?
Thanks
Hi, I hope your new Netatmo valves work out well. From what I’ve read (e.g. here), it sounds compatible. Netatmo products have good API support too, so this should help third party hubs from allowing support for it.
Do Smart TRVs successfully regulate temperature in cases where (normal, mechanical) TRVs intermittently fail to keep the temperature? This is a very old house in Germany, which has been subdivided into apartments, but there’s one single boiler in the basement (not accessible most of the time). There are classic mechanical TRVs on every radiator (Heimeier Thermostatic K or similar). But particularly in the bedroom the temperature won’t reliably stay at the set point (so, if the radiator is set to 3, sometimes the room will heat up to approximately 20°, but at other times in the middle of the night the temperature in the room may fall below 17°). It’s clear that this system has a real problem with air getting into the pipes (no amount of purging will keep the system silent; there’s always a sound of trickling water).
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?
thanks!
My hunch is that a smart TRV would also have the same issues as a mechanical TRV (or if anything, potentially more issues if you compare a really high quality mechanical TRV to a budget smart TRV), but I’m not 100% sure sorry.
Just my opinion but without doubt the single most cost effective energy saving device that individual householders can do is to fit TRV on all your radiators. If you add to this wearing several thin layers of appropriate clothing you should make significant savings. What makes me laugh is people who live north of 50 degrees choose clothing suitable for living in Southern California and then complain they are cold and turn up the heating and then complain their energy costs are too high. I think the clue to the local average temperature is in that latitude figure.
I am now pondering the benefit of smart TRVs now I know of their existence. But there do seem to be several downsides to their smartness. Particularly battery life. It does seem the technology is changing rapidly though. Is there anyone testing their VFM? I shall take a look at Which? But whatever you do fit TRVs.
Thanks for the comment Bill. I agree, TRVs are probably one of the simplest ways of saving money right now.
No mention of the Eve Thermo smart thermostatic valves that work in the Apple ecosystem / Home and with voice control (Siri). I am gradually fitting them everywhere, for room by room temperature management by schedule.
Thanks for the comment Dr Trevor J. Hutley. I briefly mentioned Eve Thermo at the end of the article, but I have called them out more clearly. I’m glad to hear that the Eve Thermo valves are working out well for you.
Nice article. I’m having a new boiler fitted and considering smart thermostat and smart trvs. I work at home all day in one room and would like this room at certain temp, downstairs rooms at different temp and bedrooms lower temp or off in the day. Evening work room off, bedroom on low and main rooms warm. Is this possible? Is the hive plus Trv on all radiators the answer?
Hi Helen, thanks for the comment. Yes what you describe should broadly be possible, in that you certainly will be able to have radiator-by-radiator control (with smart TRVs). So controlling rooms in different ways would work fine. The Hive TRVs do allow you to set target temperatures, so it should work well.
I’ve used smart valves in apartments on electric radiators and building controlled heating (centralised), and they have not only saved me money (around 50 euros a month last winter, over 7 months) but massively increased my comfort level. To know exactly how warm or cold your room will be is worth a lot, I would say!
I’m looking now for something similar in an individual house, so thanks for the article
Wow, 50 euros a month over winter is a great saving for sure. Thanks for sharing your insight ?
Thanks for this, very interesting. I noticed Aqara have ‘just’ launched their “Smart Radiator Thermostat E1” – On Amazon for £55. It’s Zigbee, so you will need a hub or dongle, but looks promising. I have a Home Assistant install, with most of my connected devices on Zigbee.
I have a Nest Thermostat located in the main living area. It’s a large space, so takes a while to heat, and two small bedrooms upstairs, both on TRVs.
At the moment, it’s impossible to set specific heats in the bedrooms for specific times (cooler while we sleep, warmer otherwise). Am looking to utilise Smart TRVs, in conjunction with Node-Red to do this (helps with Home/Away and holidays), but need to figure out how I override the nest thermostat downstairs to trigger the boiler! Is there a multiple ‘Zone’ Mode I could enable? Clearly need to delve further into this soon!
The Aqara smart thermostats do look interesting for sure, thanks for the comment and mention of them.
I don’t currently own the Aqara thermostats (but it’s on my ever-growing TODO list, lol!), but your comment is approved now – so hopefully other HA + Aqara owners can chime in re: your question.
Did you have any luck with this? I have a nest system and am looking at smart trvs and options seem limited, did I understand this article correctly in that I could get the smart things hub and control smart TRVs like the netamo that way, being cautious to not set them conflicting with the best stat?
I have had Netatmo thermostat and valves on all my radiators for quite a few years. I have schedules for different times of day.
But one advantage you didn’t highlight is that if you want to run heat in one room you can boost it via the app for as long as needed without affecting rest of house. This is useful to us due to different working hours of household members.
It really does make for smarter heating
Hi Gwen, many thanks for the comment – that’s definitely a good point. Yes, being able to have room-by-room control is an increasingly important benefit, and it’s not something that smart thermostats can deliver either (i.e. since they control a whole zone, which is usually the whole house).
Hi. I inherited a Nest smart thermostat when I bought my house. It is old and the heat link is dying (today, for instance, no heat), so I am looking at what to replace it with.
As far as I can see, Nest don’t do smart TRVs, only zoning, which wouldn’t allow for different temperatures in every room (for instance, two rooms are used during the day for working, they are on different floors and couldn’t really be a zone, I’m assuming). I could add a different smart TRV system, but it wouldn’t talk to the Nest, so would only work if Nest had already turned the boiler on. Is that right?
So I am thinking it’s better to have a different system entirely if I want more control. Based on Which reviews I am looking at Worcester Bosch for the best combination of smart thermostat and smart TRVs. Am I understanding this all correctly?
Hi Naomi, yes you understand all that correctly. Smart thermostats operate per zone, which in many houses is basically “the whole house”. You won’t get room-by-room control of them.
Smart TRVs are the answer here, yes. In order to pull everything together (make them work together), you have two options:
The second option is easiest, but it might not stay as up to date as the first option (i.e. whose to say that Worcester Bosch will keep the system working nicely together in 5 or 10 years time?).
I hope that gives a bit more guidance. The option from Worcester Bosch could work well, just maybe check to see what their plans are for future support of the system. If it’s covered under the warranty too, then that is promising.
Many thanks. I did go with Worcester Bosch. Three weeks later, still trying to get it all working. They joyfully advertised that my brand new Worcester Bosch boiler was compatible with their system, which it is, but their wireless key isn’t. So now I have to have the thermostat controller hard-wired to the boiler (which is in the attic room and not a sensible place for a controller, so the engineer is going to try to run a cable through the floor). Haven’t even got as far as really setting things up on the app yet, though the early stages went okay. Lucky it’s warm this week as the engineer isn’t coming until next Wednesday.
Ugh, sorry to hear that! Here’s hoping it somehow gets resolved soon..!
I have underfloor heating with the valves for each room mounted on a common manifold per floor. I need smart valves with remote thermostats – so far I have not found anyone offering this.
Ooo, that’s an interesting use case for sure. Unfortunately I also haven’t heard of anyone offering this either. I will ‘keep an ear out’ though, and let you know if I hear of anything. Underfloor heating is becoming more popular all the time, so you would think that it’s just a matter of time before such a product is rolled out.
Tado now supports this use case with an external temperature sensor that you can set to override the temperature sensing from the smart valve itself. https://www.tado.com/all-en/wireless-temperature-sensor
You should add this to your article, I think a lot of people would like to know this because Tado doesn’t advertise it for this use case, but their documents make it clear it can be used like this.
Thanks a lot Vector, that’s great to know – I have just updated the article to reflect this. It’s definitely a neat feature from Tado – too many smart systems only use add-on sensors for minimal extra control, but it’s really nice that Tado allows you to override the main temperature readings.
Neo Heatmiser?
I can’t believe no-one has mentioned TADO smart radiator valves. Single zone for the whole house, each room has its own schedule and settings, so rooms are only heated when we need them, different temperatures for each heating time block for each room if desired. Geofencing means they all go off when all holders of phones with the app installed leave the house and back on when we’re back inside the geofence. They were not that expensive to install.
Whoops you’re quite right, thanks! I always intended to circle back to this article and mention TADO – you’re right that these are great products. I have updated it now. While £50-70 each isn’t too cheap for them, when considering the price of gas right now, they will save people money fairly quickly.
I’m glad to hear they are working out well for you, and thanks for the comment (and reminder!).
Hi, can you please help? I have a Nest 3rd gen smart thermostat, and I have Worcester Bosch boiler. I need to buy smart TRVs. Which type is most suited to my situation? I understand I can’t control TRV with Nest Thermostat, and lots of smart TRV are sold with another hub. It’s very confusing for me. Can someone help with telling me which smart TRV as the best for my situation and how to control them, without affecting Nest thermostat?
Hi Oxana, it is a bit of a confusing situation. To be honest, because you (correctly) have understood that the smart TRVs won’t work with your thermostat, you can just look for any smart TRV you want – without worrying about your thermostat at all.
In terms of makes, Worcester Bosch actually sell a ‘EasyControl Smart TRV’ – which may or may not work with your boiler. This could be worth exploring.
Alternatively, Tado smart TRVs work well and don’t require a hub (I just updated the article to mention this). These are probably going to be the best standalone option for you.
I hope that helps, thanks,
Tristan
@Tristan, Just embarking on this journey. Had a new Worcester 8000 Life boiler fitted with a Nest learning room stat in the living room. Currently have a smart TRV (Zigbee) in the living room also and standard TRVs on every other rad in the house.
What I have done so far is set the TRV to the temp I want in the living room and set the Nest to 1 degree higher so that it runs to heat the rest of the house and the standard TRVs control the temp in the individual rooms.
Living room will come up to Nest setting at some point but seems to work OK. Getting some further smart TRVs for the rest of the house but the boiler is smart and reduces gas consumption based on the flow so as rads turn off if should use less gas to heat the other rooms? Still a work in progress..
Ah nice idea Christian, thanks for sharing it. I agree that your approach should work well, and end up using less gas overall. I hope it continues to work well for you – gas prices are crazy right now, and don’t show signs of coming down too quickly (unfortunately).
1 – come on under 10-15°C
2 – come on under 15-17°C
3 – come on under 18-20°C (around 68°C)
4 – come on under 21-22°C (around 77°C)
5 – max (valve is always open)
typo to be fixed 68F not 68C
Whoops, thanks for pointing that out Fred. That’s fixed now.
Just looking at the tado smart valves on amazon
The description says ‘Only works with a tado° Starter Kit (V2, V3, V3+), available separately’
Unless I’m mistaken that’s pretty much a hub. So is there an actual way to use the valves with just the tado app?
If a hub (tado starter kit in this instance) is needed you may want to amend your article (under the ‘You Live In Europe And Don’t Want Hive’ section)
Whoops, my mistake – many thanks for pointing this out Enzo. I have updated the article now. You’re quite right that a tado hub is required.
I am in the UK, is it possible to run ecobee over here if I got a friend to bring it over?
I am mainly in the Homekit system but do have some Alexas
I live in quite a new home, about 15 years.
If you had a chance I would love to read your review on the Aqara Radiator Thermostat 🙂
You can in theory install it, especially if you use 24v relay to 240v (or whatever is applicable for your exact electrical system). However some features, including Alexa integration, might not work outside of North America.
Yep I like the look of Aqara’s thermostat, if I get a chance I’ll review it for sure ?
Hi, I have a quick question. Do standard non-smart TRVs open and close based on ambient temp?
Hi, they do yes – although their number-based system (*, 0, 1-5) often makes it confusing. But yes, they do look at the ambient temp and ‘3’ is often approximately 20°C.
I have a high voltage Boss thermostat controlling the temperature on an UK heat pump system. The radiators are equipped with TRV’s – but I wanted to make the system smarter. I had two questions:
1) What is a good replacement option for the thermostat?
2) Would smart TRV’s help?
Thanks,
Paul
Hi Paul, that sounds an interesting set-up – I hope that your heat pump system is working well for you.
Unfortunately I wouldn’t know what the best smart options are here (I’d like a heat pump set-up, but am stuck with a gas boiler for now). Your comment is now live though, so hopefully someone else can reply back to your questions.