Smart Thermostat Installation in Crawley and Surrey

What a smart thermostat actually does

A smart thermostat connects your heating to your wifi. You can then control the heating, and the hot water if you have a cylinder, from your phone, tablet or computer, wherever you are. No more coming home to a cold house, and no more paying to heat an empty one.

• Remote control from an app
• Schedules that follow your week, rather than one fixed timer
• Geofencing, which turns the heating down when everyone has gone out and back up as you head home
• Learning, on some models, which adapts to your routine over time
• Voice control, since many work with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri
• Energy reports, showing when the heating runs and for how long
• Holiday mode, which holds a low temperature while you are away
• Multi-zone control, so different parts of the house can heat independently

Hive, Nest, Tado or Wiser: which smart thermostat suits your home?

We supply and fit all the major brands, or fit one you have already bought. The right choice depends on your home and how you want to use it.

• Hive. Developed by British Gas. A simple app that works with Alexa and Google Home, which makes it a good first smart thermostat. It handles hot water too, and Hive radiator valves add room-by-room control.
• Google Nest. The learning thermostat. It picks up your schedule on its own and fits neatly into a Google Home setup, with extra temperature sensors available.
• Tado. Strong on geofencing and multi-zone control, with smart radiator valves, wireless temperature sensors and open window detection. A good fit for larger homes.
• Drayton Wiser. Good value for a multi-room system. It works with most boilers and with heat pumps.
• Honeywell Home. A long-established heating controls brand, with the T6 smart thermostat and the evohome multi-zone system.

We also fit and service other smart heating controls, including those from Worcester Bosch, Vaillant, Netatmo and EPH Controls.

Smart radiator valves and room-by-room heating

Smart radiator valves fit onto your radiators in place of the standard thermostatic heads. Each room then gets its own temperature and its own schedule, all controlled from your phone. You stop heating empty bedrooms, and you no longer turn the whole house up just to warm the living room.

Some detect when a room is occupied, and many switch off when they sense a window has been left open. They suit larger homes, families on different schedules, home offices and spare rooms that do not need heating every day.

An example room-by-room setup

For a typical three-bedroom semi, a sensible starting point looks like this:

• Living room: 21 degrees, evenings and weekends
• Kitchen: 19 degrees, mornings and evenings
• Main bedroom: 18 degrees, overnight only
• Children’s bedroom: 20 degrees, evenings
• Bathroom: 22 degrees, mornings only
• Spare room: 15 degrees, enough to keep it from getting cold and damp

You pay to heat the rooms you are using, at the temperature each one actually needs.

Will a smart thermostat work with your boiler?

Usually, yes. Most smart thermostats work with most combi, system and regular boilers. We check your existing wiring and controls as part of the installation. If your boiler is very old or unusual, we tell you and recommend what will work with it.

Hot water is the other question. With a system or regular boiler and a hot water cylinder, a smart thermostat can schedule the hot water as well as the heating. A combi heats water on demand, so there is no hot water schedule to set.

Smart thermostat installation: what is involved

A single smart thermostat usually takes one to two hours to fit. A whole-house setup with smart radiator valves takes longer, typically around half a day.

• We check the existing wiring before anything is connected
• We connect the app to your wifi and pair every device
• We show you how it all works before we leave

Some smart thermostats are sold as DIY kits. Wiring one wrongly can damage the boiler’s controls or create a safety risk, and having an engineer fit it means the rest of your heating gets looked over at the same time. If yours keeps dropping offline, our guide to Hive signal boosters explains the usual cause and the fix.