TechReport (UK)

You will probably have heard a lot about so-called ‘Smart’ central heating control systems recently, even though you may not realise what they are.

British Gas have been heavily advertising their ‘Hive’ thermostat on TV and you may well have heard of the Google-owned ‘Nest’ system, or the German manufactured ‘Tadoo’ system.

Interestingly, none of the above systems are made by companies with a background in manufacturing central heating controls (albeit British Gas presumably know something about their use).

Whilst these systems have, perhaps inevitably, concentrated on adding ‘smarts’ to the main control unit for most central heating systems (the timer /thermostat), long-established manufacturers of central heating control equipment (valves, pumps, thermostats etc.) seem to have taken a slightly different approach, concentrating instead on making multi room (or multi ‘zone’) systems, for example the Heatmiser ‘Neo’ and the Honeywell ‘evohome’ systems.

Whilst all of these systems promise both cost-savings and improved control flexibility by the application of some degree of ‘intelligence’ in the control of a central heating system (remote control via an app, location sensing, weather monitoring etc.), in this case we are looking in detail at perhaps the most sophisticated of all of the current systems – Honeywell’s evohome.

As outlined above, the evohome system represents an attempt at giving the home owner a much finer degree of control over their heating system than most of the other highlighted systems.

The system is based around the following components.

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