Since moving into the new Home Gadget HQ we've been planning all of the automation we want to add, in fact let's be honest we were planning this for months before the move (and if I'm really honest for years before). Our old HQ was something of a test bed for lots of different tech with the aim of finding the "perfect" solution should we move somewhere a little bigger. As that somewhere bigger happens the first thing you realise is that each place is different and has it's own unique requirements in terms of automation, you can use lots of what you planned but will also need to find new solutions. If you've already decided on the platforms you're using that process is much easier than if starting from scratch.
That said all of the learning's, developments, trial, error, tears and shouting at little black and white boxes over the years has been worth it so we are up and running with our core and integrated systems very quickly, now it's just a case of getting everything exactly as we want it and installing things as we go and doing the fine tuning (sounds easy).
A key part of home automation these days is the heating system and that's the part we don't have in place right now, hence need a solution. Get this right and everyone will be happy and you should save on energy costs, happy days!.
Get it wrong and there will be lots of moaning about being "too hot / too cold" as well as mutterings about not being able to control the system easily, you could also have an expensive unsupported system on your hands. Lets be honest there is a high chance the latter is going to happen at some point due to how quickly technology moves on these days. The former should be able to be avoided if you pick the right system for your needs, that is a minefield at best as there are so many systems out there all wanting your hard earned dollars. You need good advice when choosing your system and the best advice generally comes from people actually using the systems, those who have made their choice and paid their money (rather than those that have been given a system and asked to write about how good it is!).
Some systems only work if there is internet connection, call me old fashioned here but I don't want to come home to a freezing cold house because my internet connection was down, the servers of the mfr have had an issue or they have been bought out / gone bust and the system is no longer supported (anyone that's been around automation for a while will know all of those things can and do happen).
Let's just pause here for a moment and consider the issues........Bloody hell, actually the list of things that could go wrong is huge, maybe we should just stick with doing it the old fashioned way, central timer connected to the boiler and some TRV's, it's worked for years and will continue to do so. Actually this is a valid point, and for many properties this will be the perfect set up, as the saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it!". If you've got something that works and is efficient there is probably very little to be gained by adding bells and whistles. That said of course there will be lot's of people that could benefit from changing their heating system and making it "smart" or at least "smarter" for so many reasons and that's the journey we are on.
Requirements for a heating system are always going to be specific to the individual property, in the UK systems are mostly made up of radiators, underfloor heating and hot water either in a tank or supplied on demand by a combi boiler. All of these can be piped up in many different configurations all of which need to be factored into your system design. In other countries heating and cooling are quite often controlled by AC and various other systems, which have their own needs when integrating into a home automation system.
In our system we have radiators, underfloor heating (wet) and a hot water tank, so it's key that any system we install can manage all of those as a single integrated system (it's amazing how many could not manage this set up). Whilst there are TRV's in every room the whole thing is currently driven by an appalling excuse for a controller that's a 24 hour programmer that runs the same programme 7 days a week. Noah probably had something more advanced on the Ark! (a pile of fire wood and some matches would be more controllable and energy efficient). Quite how such a thing can still be in use is beyond me as it's as inefficient as it's possible to get, no wonder the previous owners said they spent so much on gas.
Ring the museum, they might want this!.
Hours of reading later we were down to two systems, Tado and Evohome.
Tado feels more like a "tech" company, lovely looking apps with more graphs about your heating system than you could wish for and "apple" looking hardware. Honeywell who are the makers of Evohome have been making heating systems for years (domestic and industrial) and certainly feel more like a traditional hardware company with their "tech" solutions in terms of hardware and apps looking much more basic than other parties (not a graph in sight).
Three rounds of rock, paper, scissors later we made our decision, Evohome here we come.
That said all of the learning's, developments, trial, error, tears and shouting at little black and white boxes over the years has been worth it so we are up and running with our core and integrated systems very quickly, now it's just a case of getting everything exactly as we want it and installing things as we go and doing the fine tuning (sounds easy).
A key part of home automation these days is the heating system and that's the part we don't have in place right now, hence need a solution. Get this right and everyone will be happy and you should save on energy costs, happy days!.
Get it wrong and there will be lots of moaning about being "too hot / too cold" as well as mutterings about not being able to control the system easily, you could also have an expensive unsupported system on your hands. Lets be honest there is a high chance the latter is going to happen at some point due to how quickly technology moves on these days. The former should be able to be avoided if you pick the right system for your needs, that is a minefield at best as there are so many systems out there all wanting your hard earned dollars. You need good advice when choosing your system and the best advice generally comes from people actually using the systems, those who have made their choice and paid their money (rather than those that have been given a system and asked to write about how good it is!).
Some systems only work if there is internet connection, call me old fashioned here but I don't want to come home to a freezing cold house because my internet connection was down, the servers of the mfr have had an issue or they have been bought out / gone bust and the system is no longer supported (anyone that's been around automation for a while will know all of those things can and do happen).
Let's just pause here for a moment and consider the issues........Bloody hell, actually the list of things that could go wrong is huge, maybe we should just stick with doing it the old fashioned way, central timer connected to the boiler and some TRV's, it's worked for years and will continue to do so. Actually this is a valid point, and for many properties this will be the perfect set up, as the saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it!". If you've got something that works and is efficient there is probably very little to be gained by adding bells and whistles. That said of course there will be lot's of people that could benefit from changing their heating system and making it "smart" or at least "smarter" for so many reasons and that's the journey we are on.
Requirements for a heating system are always going to be specific to the individual property, in the UK systems are mostly made up of radiators, underfloor heating and hot water either in a tank or supplied on demand by a combi boiler. All of these can be piped up in many different configurations all of which need to be factored into your system design. In other countries heating and cooling are quite often controlled by AC and various other systems, which have their own needs when integrating into a home automation system.
In our system we have radiators, underfloor heating (wet) and a hot water tank, so it's key that any system we install can manage all of those as a single integrated system (it's amazing how many could not manage this set up). Whilst there are TRV's in every room the whole thing is currently driven by an appalling excuse for a controller that's a 24 hour programmer that runs the same programme 7 days a week. Noah probably had something more advanced on the Ark! (a pile of fire wood and some matches would be more controllable and energy efficient). Quite how such a thing can still be in use is beyond me as it's as inefficient as it's possible to get, no wonder the previous owners said they spent so much on gas.
Ring the museum, they might want this!.
In our old property we used Hive, this is an excellent system and was one step on from the previously mentioned boiler control and TRV's, what Hive added over a traditional set up was very easy and visual control of heating and hot water schedules (which lets be honest for most people you want to just set and forget) easy control for boosting heating, turning it on early when coming home at different times and some nice Alexa voice integration. The Alexa integration was basic and you had to say " Alexa ask Hive....." which would feel a bit long winded at times. All that said Hive was excellent, rock solid and never let us down, exactly what you want in a heating system and any home automation system. I'd strongly recommend Hive for heating control especially as British Gas push out regular updates for the app which is also very visually appealing. Had it not been for the fact it only supports 2 zones we'd have installed Hive without a second thought. With our system being more complicated we required something with more granular control if we are to make the system as efficient as possible, it does after all need to pay for itself.
Hours of reading later we were down to two systems, Tado and Evohome.
Tado feels more like a "tech" company, lovely looking apps with more graphs about your heating system than you could wish for and "apple" looking hardware. Honeywell who are the makers of Evohome have been making heating systems for years (domestic and industrial) and certainly feel more like a traditional hardware company with their "tech" solutions in terms of hardware and apps looking much more basic than other parties (not a graph in sight).
Three rounds of rock, paper, scissors later we made our decision, Evohome here we come.
Evohome control unit and TRV's.
Actually the decision was much more in depth than that, one of the key factors for us was Evohome will stand alone and work without the need for an internet connection, this should hopefully give it some longevity as it's not reliant on outside influences to do it's job. A stand alone system will hopefully continue to work long after the makers have moved onto something else and forgotten all about the "old" system....which these days is probably something they only released a year or two ago such is the pace of change and abandonment in the tech sector.
Internet connection does give evohome more functionality such as being able to change settings and programme schedules from your phone, however it's a heating system so once it's set up and fine tuned we should have little need to keep interacting with it (very few of you will have kept twiddling the buttons on your old 7 day timer on the wall, a modern heating system should be no different).
We'll cover off some of the other decision factors as we keep our diary of experiences using the system. Whilst we found quite a few good sources of information, we did not find anyone that was happy to answer some of the key questions we had such as how loud are the TRVs ?, of course everyone we spoke to was trying to sell us hardware hence it felt like their answers were always coloured towards getting the sale.
Hopefully our blog of the experience will answer some questions and help others make informed decisions as we will be unbiased in reporting what we find.
If there are any specific questions you'd like answering then leave them in the comments and we'll try and answer them in future posts.
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