Hi Fatcat, I see you have a Vaillant boiler. Are you using Vaillant controls with it ?
No. I’m still in the last century using a basic on/off thermostat and a boiler mounted time clock.
The main reason is my wife is not good with technology. We used to have a sophisticated (for the time) 4 time zone per day thermostat, but she kept pressing the wrong buttons and screwing up the time zones. She is quite happy switching the boiler on/off using the clock on the front of the boiler. And I sort of do my own weather compensation, controlling flow temperature manually, which is easily done with the Vaillant.
I have considered fitting an ebus gateway to the boiler and using a room controller that does load compensation and weather compensation, but I suspect that will remove the option to switch on and off using the boiler clock.
Are you thinking of buying a vaillant boiler and controller?
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I updated my boiler to a Vaillant eco tec a couple of years ago and use a Hive thermostat and radiator valves in selected rooms very simple cooperate and good control of room temperatures. I control mine via the Apple HomeKit app which gives either voice control or via phone and tablet this also controls most of the house lights as required or you can use the Room Thermostat manually with timer functions if so desired.
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We use a Vaillant SensoComfort controller with our heat pump. It also works with their gas boilers, and has weather compensation and other whizzy stuff. We have an external weather sensor and don’t use an internal thermostat at all.
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Thanks all – After a few more quotes and some deliberation on whether to keep the old Potterton, we’ve decided to go with a new Vaillant heat only boiler. The installer did some initial gas pressure tests with the existing boiler at full load so we may not need a new gas pipe. We’ve also decided to keep the boiler in the existing location too so that saves a bit of buggering around with the loft.
Control wise, I looked at the Hive controls, but although they now support OpenTherm, Vaillant are eBus so would need an additional (not UK approved) board into the boiler to support Open Therm.
To make the most of the new boiler, I’ve specified the Vaillant SensoComfort Wireless (VR720F) for the main house zone along with the VR92F remote control for the conservatory zone.
I’ve run in an additional cable for the eBUS connection between the new VR71 wiring centre which will go in the airing cupboard and the boiler location, ready for the installers who arrive mid next week.
Like your setup, Nigel, we’ll have the weather compensation sensor but will run with room temperature modulation mode active to allow the internal thermostat in the SensoComfort to be used as well. Quite a few things to tweak on these controls as we get used to the new system.
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