Help with choosing smart thermostat

[southernlead]

Hello,

I am trying to identify components in my central heating setup as a precursor to installing a smart thermostat and TRVs (looking at Tado, but open to other suggestions). My issue is I don't really understand what I'm looking at in terms of the components around my boiler and thermostat, and how that would effect the type of smart thermostat I could install.

I have a Worcester system boiler which heats water for the central heating system and to fill an unvented hot water cylinder.

This appears to be the main Honeywell control unit with cables coming in from the boiler and mains.

Connected to that is a control box for programming hot water and heating...

Additionally there is a Drayton wireless box...

Which I presume connects wirelessly to the Drayton thermostat in the living room to activate/deactivate the main Honeywell control and call for hot water.

I don't fully understand how all these components interact to control the heating. And I definitely don't know which I would replace if I was going to by one of the Tado Smart Thermostat starter kits.

Any insight and help you can provide, gratefully received!

 

[gmartine]

Any current smart control system will work and we could easily identify what needs to be replaced with what but then you'd have to deal with understanding and identifying the correct way to wire it up and all that entails.

I'd give some serious consideration to employing an installer rather than trying to DIY. It looks like you have a well installed system and I think the going rate is about £40 ph so 2/3 hrs and it should be done and with that some piece of mind.

 

[DJKent]

Any current smart control system will work and we could easily identify what needs to be replaced with what but then you'd have to deal with understanding and identifying the correct way to wire it up and all that entails.

I'd give some serious consideration to employing an installer rather than trying to DIY. It looks like you have a well installed system and I think the going rate is about £40 ph so 2/3 hrs and it should be done and with that some piece of mind.

That sounds like good advice.

You wrote: "I don't fully understand how all these components interact to control the heating" - and it's a general engineering principle I guess to not do major work on something you don't understand the current setup of.

 

[southernlead]

Thanks everyone - I'm continuing to learn about the system.

Appreciate the point about not taking on the work myself. That said, I'm not sure I consider installing a Tado thermostat to be "major works". Tado seem to strongly encourage DIY on this, and I'm confident that I can get to a level of understanding where it's not going to be a problem. I'm not going to start until I'm confident.

I think in the normal case with my system it would be straight swap of the Honeywell programmer for the Tado receiver. The one odd thing might be the Drayton wireless receiver that is working alongside the programmer at the moment. I guess I could just ignore that and set it's manual override to be always on, but ideally I'd remove it from the system as it's just one more thing to go wrong.

However, it's wired down into the big junction box, and that is getting a little out of my comfort zone. My thinking right now is to install the Tado as a straight swap for the Honeywell receiver, and set the Drayton to Always On. If that proves successful, I'll come back to it later and either do a bit more learning on exactly how the Drayton is incorporated, or get a professional to come and remove it.

 

[gmartine]

It's up to you how you wish to proceed but there's no way of integrating your Drayton controls with the Tado receiver. Good luck.