Unfortunately, this deal has expired 23 November 2022.
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Posted 18 November 2022
Drayton Wiser Smart Thermostat for combi boiler - Bundle kit - £230.49 on Amazon
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Chaoscontrol
Joined in 2017
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141
About this deal
This deal is expired. Here are some options that might interest you:
I was tracking this as wanted to buy it for my new house. It was £316 which was normal price. Best all time was £273 which honestly was a great price and was waiting for it. Instead it dropped to an all new best.
For those unaware, it's probably the best smart TRV system in available in the UK atm. Honeywell Evohome is the only direct competitor, and it's visually outdated, plus it's way more expensive without providing anything else.
Drayton is British made, from Schneider Electric.
Don't compare it to systems like Tado, Tuya and the like. All those run on WiFi and the cloud, while Drayton runs on its own network, Zigbee. The main difference is that can still work if you lose access to the internet, plus the speed of response is way over WiFi, where it's common to wait 2-5 seconds for a reaction.
If you don't need 5 TRVs, you can also get the basic Kit with 2 TRVs which dropped to a great price too: smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/…ZQ1
Edit: expired sooner since deal units have been sold. There is still the 2-channel kit with a discount.
For those unaware, it's probably the best smart TRV system in available in the UK atm. Honeywell Evohome is the only direct competitor, and it's visually outdated, plus it's way more expensive without providing anything else.
Drayton is British made, from Schneider Electric.
Don't compare it to systems like Tado, Tuya and the like. All those run on WiFi and the cloud, while Drayton runs on its own network, Zigbee. The main difference is that can still work if you lose access to the internet, plus the speed of response is way over WiFi, where it's common to wait 2-5 seconds for a reaction.
If you don't need 5 TRVs, you can also get the basic Kit with 2 TRVs which dropped to a great price too: smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/…ZQ1
Edit: expired sooner since deal units have been sold. There is still the 2-channel kit with a discount.
More details at Community Updates
Edited by Chaoscontrol, 23 November 2022
140 Comments
sorted by1) Only one account per system. You have to share you password and username with the other people who want to control the system.
2) Plastic screw-in adapters. The old TRV4s that this replaces had some serrations where they met the valve, so if you screw them tightly they can't rotate when changing the setting. The bottom side of the adapter has these serrations, but it's pointless because the controller body itself can rotate against the adapter thread at the top. I don't know how I solve this, maybe some thread locking compound? This wouldn't matter so much if they just added simple buttons for + and - at the top but instead they had this stupid idea to mimic the rotation of the manual thermostatic valves, so you twist against a spring to change the heat setting for the room, and it springs back to center. Twisting too hard in the - (minus) direction you are unscrewing the body. This is probably the most irritating aspect of the system.
3) It's a shame that the hub itself doesn't seem to have a temperature sensor. It would have been nice to have it in place of a room thermostat and save a fair bit of money on an extra battery operated thermostat.
4) Not sure what I did but I did manage to lose all my pairings at some point when I got locked out of the hub access point. I had to start from scratch when I hit the setup button again. It would have been nice if it remembered what I did before and allowed me to just change one part. I think this was my fault because I didn't get the hub connected to my wifi network first time round and assumed I'd be able to talk to it from the app indefinitely when I'd installed the system as a plumber instead of as a home user. I re-installed as a home user and things worked better.
5) Factory-reset of devices so they can be re-paired is a bit long-winded.
6) It would have been nice to have a schedule for the house, then setup what/how rooms deviate from that. Instead they are all individual. You copy-paste a schedule for one day to other days for a room. You can then copy the entire room schedule to other rooms. I would have preferred some concept of mon-fri setting and a w/e setting but they are just individual days and need to be programmed individually. A web interface would have made this process so much more comfortable. I really hate this modern trend for only providing an app.
7 ) There is no kill switch for the boiler (that I could find). I wanted to just switch it off when everyone had gone to bed, but I had to adjust all the rooms away from the schedule.
I may change my opinion about the above once I get to know the system better. I still like the price, and this mostly does what I want, so I don't regret the purchase (at least at this price). (edited)
1) Geofencing ridiculous and doesn't work.
2) setup was OK, but twice the hub disconnected from mesh for no reason.
3) two trvs did not want to connect
4) one room is freezing (apparently it is the only room that has the trv on the return and not on the flow). The trv is biderectional. Apparently Drayton does not support trv being on return as it messes up their algorithm.
5) moments are useless. They only alter for a moment and do not have a duration. I wanted to use them to ovveride schedules on studies when sometimes we do not work from home but we are working from the office.
6) their eco prediction is useless
7) the last straw. I woke up yesterday and the house was freezing. All trvs called for heat but didn't actuate and turned on the valve. Called support immediately. They said disable eco and they would look into it. They said oh but we don't get good signal from two trvs and. I said none opened etc. Oh change batteries. I said it is only 7 days old the system. They said oh maybe you don't have the right adapters. I told them which ones I have. Then they said reset and recalibrate each valve. I did. And they said they would look into it with tech support.
Put them on again. Woke up again today, house freezing. Same story. All called for heat. None opened. Emailed them. Called them. No reply.
That was the last straw.
Yes is cheaper from tado (and has some features eg opentherm, zigbee valves) but it is unreliable.
It is going back on the weekend and I am installing tado.
Second best is toolstation £38 each atm.
Yeah I also need 1 extra and I'm waiting to see if there's any other drop. (edited)
He confirmed that you can pair up to 4 TRV's per thermostat, if you want the thermostat to be the main detection of temperature in a space i.e. oddly shaped/long rooms.
You have to install the controller hub in all instances, this replaces your programmer usually situated under/near you boiler, this is the brain and stores your schedule and communicates with the smart TRV's to open/close the pin and allow water through the valve, or not.
You don't have to have a thermostat in rooms, as the TRV's all have a built in thermostat built in. However, their engineer admitted honestly that the TRV's have an algorithm built in which allows for a 2.5°C variation from the true temperature, so if your TRV is going to be situated behind a sofa or furniture, he suggested implementing the/a smart thermostat on the wall in that room to determine a truer temperature.
Long story short my gas annual usage was really high so I started looking into it to figure out why. Conclusion I got to was that my thermostat was just on/off and not modulating one so boiler would run at full speed until room temperature was achieved and off. I decided I wanted modulating thermostat of which there are many in the market. I have vaillant boiler and I found out vaillant do not support third part thermostats for modulation. All these expensive internet controlled thermostats are only as good as £30 digital on/off thermostats. So anyone who owns vaillant or worster bosch boiler, unfortunately all third party thermostats are costing you more money then they should.
In 2018 government brought in new regulations so all new combi boiler installations had load or weather compensation devices controlling them. Unfortunately they left the loophole so if you had smart thermostat your installation will still comply with new regulations but that means in reality your system will be operating like old school tech with at least 2 mentioned brands. Both brands do not support open therm technology (or at least not that I'm aware of).
Please do your own research but I thought I'll give you food for thought as most plumbers are unaware of this too. (edited)
The other thing is that on the checkout screen (after you click buy now) it makes no mention of the Heat hubR. In fact they are a bit annoying about this, because it's in the description, but there's no picture of it. Except when you mouse-over the video it shows it albeit not very clearly. And in other black friday deals they refer just to 'room thermostat' and again it's ever so slightly ambiguous whether this includes the hubR. It would be nice if they just put a picture of it so we know exactly what we're getting.
Just found a video that explains this fairly well (with a timecode so you can skip to the important bit).
youtube.com/wat…09s (edited)
If the light is on then give the support line a ring . They answer quickly and are really helpful .. Bear in mind the wiser will sometimes call for heat even if all thermostats are at the set temperature . This is to ensure you rooms stay at the set temperature (instead of cooling then re-heating).
They will probably tell you to set up schedules though - why would you be trying to run it without ? . You can't actually turn TRV's to off - they are set to a temperature ( setting it to the minimum - which i think is about 6 degrees would keep it closed). (edited)
N =. Neutral. (Usually Blue)
L =. Live. (Usuall Brown)
Pin 1 = HW off
Pin 2 =. CH off
Pin 3 =. HW On
Pin 4 =. CH On
If you’ve put Live in Pin 3/4, then HW/CH would always be on as that Pin would always be Live, telling the boiler to fire.
If you’ve put the call for heat/water wire (check from your previous programmer, if you still have a pic of the wiring) in PIN 1/2, then HW/CH would be on when it’s supposed to be off.
If you’re boiler keeps running, I suspect you’ve done one of the above.
If the status light isn’t on in the hub, then you’ve probably put Live in 3 or 4.
If the status light is on, then you’ve probably put call for CH/HW in pin 1 or 2. (edited)
OP, you may want to correct the following form the deal description as its innacurate:
Tado doesn't use WiFi, it uses 6LoWPAN (868 Mhz), which is similar in principle to Zigbee. In fact i'd be surprised if any similar product uses WiFi, as in this sort of application power efficiency and resilient connectivity are more important then bandwidth and latency.
You may be getting confused with complaints about Tado hosting the schedules in the cloud, which is one of the downsides. If you lose internet connectivity, there is no local schedule with Tado unless you use HomeKit.
The other issue with Tado is there are no repeaters/extenders, you can only have one bridge and all the TRV's/Stats need to be within wireless range of that. They've been suggesting both these issues are high up on their development list, but to date neither has been addressed.
I'm unsure if Drayton offers repeaters/extenders? Zigbee nodes can operate as a mesh, but its unlikely the TRV's would do that as they are battery operated, usually its mains powered nodes that will form a mesh to extend range whilst battery powered nodes simply connect to the strongest signal from any node in the mesh. As an example, Hue mains lights (which also use Zigbee) form a mesh and act as repeaters, but I believe the battery powered sensors do not. (edited)
Yeah Drayton smart plugs are Zigbee routers. Although I guess being Zigbee any router can be used, or that's what I'm hoping.
TRVs are not, as you say, since they're battery powered.
So much so that I'm moving within 6 months or so, so I may as well buy this.
"Drayton by Schneider Electric Wiser Multi-Zone Smart Thermostat and 2 Smart Radiator Thermostat Kit- Combination Boilers Only-Heating control, Wiser Smart Heating Radiator Thermostat Multipack, White"
** Edit - Ignore above comment, my mistake ** (edited)
Aside from that, any radiators to create the zones you want. I'll be installing 6, leaving radiator and hall without any.
Two channel and more models the OpenTherm doesn't work (yet) on them
(Side note, still haven’t installed the thing - does anyone know what if any adaptors I need to get it working with a Worcester-Bosch Greenstar 28i please? ) (edited)
Got Nest, can’t say it’s programmed at all and we use it manually for heat when it feels chilly.
Small 2/3 bed end terrace, 2-storey.
Neither of us living here work to specific routines I.e we could be upstairs or downstairs during the day or out completely. Again, if cold we just turn the Nest up until the boiler turns on.
In the evening we’ll more than likely both be downstairs for a few hours, heating on, and head upstairs after into the warm rooms same as downstairs, based on their manually set them stat levels.
Is it just that when you have an east and west wing with large open areas that these actually help out? Thinking as it’s a small house that the heat just gets about anyway.
So heating the lounge only vs heating the entire house has to make a difference. Plus having thermostats everywhere makes the boiler heat only where it's needed. Plus all the smart functions, but that's depending on what you want to do obv.
I checked and they run on Zigbee, so that's good at least. Not sure about all the other features.
thesmartthermostatshop.co.uk/our…on/
Included in this kit is 1 x Smart Room Thermostat, 1 x Heat Hub
Installed Wiser system last January. Not gone down the route of TRVs yet but can see the advantages of them (upstairs bedrooms not needing heat during the day for instance).
Even without the TRVs it’s saved me £ over the previous “dumb” system. App is easy to use and whilst I’ve not needed to use them the Wiser support is meant to be top notch.
From reading the description it seems the heat hub is 2-channel so this wouldn't work? And even then if I could get it to work, I would have to somehow combine the wiring from the 2 receivers to the one unit heat hub?
TIA
Torn between this and Tado. Want the smart geofencing (will pickup an old bridge to get it for free if I go Tado) as I have it with Nest and it works really well with our erratic popping in and out of the house. Also like the temp display on the Tado TRV's and aesthetically they look better.
But put off by Tado's insistence of sticking schedules in the cloud. And the mess they've made with Open Therms support.
Can anyone that runs this and uses Geofencing confirm how well it works in practice? We have multiple iOS devices. So if I understand it correctly its purely dumb geofencing. I.E if any of us steps within that geographic area the heating will fire up based on the schedule. IF we all leave it the heating turns off?
The problem we have is we live very close to town. And also our main downstairs living area is very large open plan space. Nest's geofencing seems smart enough to track when we're heading home and give the heating enough time to bring the temp up. Dumb geofencing probably wont do that :/
Turned postman away today with the set I'd already bought at over £100 more (with extra TRV's).
PS - I bought and have returned a Honeywell EvoHome kit as it was pants. My boiler guy has this kit himself and rates it very highly.
Only problem is the starter kit arrives tomorrow, but the additional TRVs are due Jan. Wondering if I can just canecel those and grab them from Toolstation with BLC discount for similar price.