Hi.

I’m helping a friend to control the radiators in his house using TRVs.

The goal is to have a system that requires no to very little maintenance and it needs to be aimple enough for a non technical person to use.

Key features:

  • App control - he needs to be able to control temperature in each room remotely.

  • Physical control - preferably through a physical thermostat panel in each room. The panel will only control the TRVs and will only need power. It will not control the heating through wiring.

  • Range - the house is quite big so any protocol used does need to be to cover the entire house.

My ideas so far includes using Sonoff TRVZB smart radiator valves for each radiator and as many Sonoff Zigbee bridges needed to cover the whole house. Maybe use NSPanel Pro for the physical thermostat.

Questions: Can i control multiple TRVs in a room using the eWeLink app? Can i use another thermostat as the controller in each room?

Any other ideas?

  • sembee2@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    You need boiler control if that is what supplies the heat if you want to save money.

    Given your requirements, an off the shelf solution would probably be better. Evohome is what I would recommend. I have had it for over seven years and it just works. App control of you want, but I don’t touch mine other than to turn it on in November and off in April.

    You can get a controller for each room, which will also double up as a thermostat for the room, telling the coordinator to call for heat.

  • olalof@alien.topOPBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Also: I don’t have a problem with the setup being complex. I run Home Assistant myself and am fairly technical. It’s just the end result that needs to be simple.

  • pinballgeek@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’d also take a look at the Fibaro TRV valves, but to get app control you are looking at some form of ZWave gateway.

  • phil-rob@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    About 8 years ago we installed a Honeywell evohome solution in our home (and later at work)

    It radically improved comfort and slashed our heating bills.

    After setup the only maintenance is changing the batteries in the valves at each radiator

    The schedule can be managed remotely if the user needs assistance but once setup it just works.