by ericmark »
Thu Sep 05, 2019 6:51 pm
I am not a plumber or central heating expert, however I did look at my mothers Worcester Bosch boiler with the idea of improving the control.
I seems Worcester Bosch have not signed up to OpenTherm, instead they do their own system think it's called Wave, and it seems Drayton LP10RF thermostat is designed to plug in instead of Wave so the remove you need the blanking plate to return boiler to standard before you start.
The problem with Wave is it only controlled one room, with Hive, Nest, EvoHome and Tado you can fit electronic TRV heads giving one better control, however as to if worth the money is another question.
So Hive TRV heads around £55 each, so to control say 4 rooms looking at around £300 what the first question has to be, is it worth it?
So let us look at the alternative, a programmable TRV head starts at £10, for a bluetooth version £15, for a wifi version £45, the wifi version can be controlled anywhere in the world and can use geofencing. This is without being connected to the wall thermostat.
Hive use a different method to the rest, it has a heat on demand function, and when the TRV head wants heat, it tells the wall thermostat to turn on the boiler, without the Hive wall thermostat the Hive TRV heads will still work, but clearly does not matter is they do open, unless boiler running they do nothing.
However I would say you start with TRV heads, and if still not doing what you want then try the wall thermostat that links to them.
As far as I am aware the unit is inside the sealed section of the boiler, so it would need a gas safe guy to return the boiler to originally spec. Yes I also think it's daft, however as a result many outlets will not supply parts to non gas safe people.
