Until the invention of the smart thermostat, you probably only really thought about your thermostat when engaged in a battle of hotter/colder with the other inhabitants of your home, who clearly don’t care about bills/comfort.
HONEYWELL Micronik 200 Specification Data. Temperature Controller Honeywell evohome Installation Manual (52 pages). 130°C (HI range) with optional high or low limit control and outside air temperature compensation reset of the main setpoint. Evohome is a sophisticated heating system that ensures you can create and individually control up to 12 heating zones in domestic properties. Evohome will also control domestic hot water. Evohome is suitable for any home with a hydronic (wet) central heating system. Zoning solutions can be designed for even the simplest of property layouts. Evohome is ideal when looking to control temperatures in larger properties such as: luxury apartments; large family homes; homes with business use.
Now, thanks to connected thermostats you can control different rooms independently, ensuring that everyone gets a temperature they’re comfortable with, and that the bill-payer gets to save some pennies because only the rooms that are being used get heated.
One such thermostat is the Honeywell Evohome. At the time of writing, this thermostat is already a few years old, but is considered one of the best in the industry on account of its zonal controls, easy installation, and user-friendly interface.
- Best smart thermostat: heating your home using tech
But the question is, now that there are younger, swankier models ram-packed with features on the market, can this simple, solid solution keep up?
Price and availability
The Honeywell Evohome is available in the UK, US and Australia. As it's a UK company the prices for other regions can depend on the supplier so we'll be providing approximate rates here.
Pricing is a little complicated (and not cheap) due to the modular nature of the kit. The control panel will set you back £229.99 (about $330, AU$220) not including installation, which in the UK will cost about £100.
On top of this you'll need a valve for each radiator. These will cost £59 (about $85, AU$100) if bought individually, or there are packs where you can buy a larger number at a discounted rate. It's definitely worth looking for a pack that best suits your needs.
Installation
Installation of the Evohome system is a little more involved than with some other smart thermostats available due to the fact that each radiator in your house needs to be fitted with an individual thermostat.
This means you’ll need radiators with TRV valves to start with, or be prepared to stump up the money to change your current valves to TRV valves. TRV valves are the type that enable you to adjust the temperature of the radiator.
Most modern central heating systems will have TRV valves, but bathroom radiators often don’t. This was the case in our house, and we were told by the installer that what would happen was that the bathroom radiator would simply turn on any time one of the other radiators was on, which we figured wasn’t too big a problem.
If you don’t need to change valves, the installation of the individual thermostats is unbelievably easy. The TRV valves just pop off and the Evohome valves slide on. The installer even shows you how to do it yourself so that you can change the battery on the thermostat when it eventually runs out.
The main control panel just needs to plug into a wall socket and then connect to your Wi-Fi network, so can go anywhere you’d like it. It can be used as a temperature sensor or simply as a control panel. Pairing the thermostats and the control panel was also very simple – the entire installation took about half an hour for a two-bedroom apartment.
The only bit of the installation that was a bit tricky was the rewiring needed to connect the boiler to the wireless signal receiver. This makes your previous thermostat redundant, so you’re left with the option of having a redundant thermostat sitting on your wall, or getting it removed and repairing the resulting hole.
This isn’t technically part of the installation, but it’s worth remembering when calculating the cost, as you don’t have this issue with a direct thermostat replacement like the Nest Learning Thermostat.
Design
All of the individual components of the Evohome setup are made of the same white plastic, which is disappointing when some of the competition have clearly put a lot of thought into their designs.
It’s not that the design is unpleasant; it’s just clearly been designed to be functional rather than fashionable. It does mean that it’ll probably be able to fit in with a wide range of interior design styles, but for our taste the range could do with a bit of an image upgrade.
The main control terminal sits on a white dock that’s also a charging platform. That’s right, the terminal has a battery on board so that you can move around the house while setting temperatures. You need to make sure you return it to the dock though, as the battery life isn’t long enough to leave it off the dock overnight, and it’s the unit keeping your entire heating system running.
The terminal houses a backlit resistive touchscreen that allows you full control of the heating system. We’ll get into the full spectrum of the features a little later on.
One gripe we had was that the screen is always on; it has an ‘idle screen’ that you can set to display either a digital or traditional clock face, with the option to show current settings, but there’s no option for turning the screen off entirely, which forced us to move the terminal to the study as the constant white light was an annoyance.
The individual thermostats come with their own screens that are adjustable, so they can point up towards you, saving you from having to crouch down every time you want to see what the temperature is currently set to.
There is a twist-dial on the thermostats, so you can override the current settings from the radiator without having to use the control terminal or your phone. You won’t get as sophisticated a level of control, but to bump the temperature up or down a couple of degrees it’s perfect.
In contrast to the hardware, the app is beautifully designed. It’s very clearly laid out, with color coding for temperatures allowing you to identify at a glance the temperature for each room of your house.
Performance
The Honeywell Evohome allows you to set schedules for each individual thermostat, so if you know that your bedroom is only used at night, you can set it to be cold during the day, heat up half an hour before you head to bed, and then cool down to your preferred sleeping temperature through the night.
The Evohome can even work out how long it takes to heat a room to a particular temperature, and turn on the radiator the appropriate amount of time before a scheduled window so the room is exactly the right temperature when you walk through the door.
Having zonal controls means you can have totally independent schedules for each room, so people using different rooms can have the heating set to their specific demands.
This was something of a revelation when we got it to work. The apartment we were testing the Evohome in is one of those properties where every room is a different temperature, and what this means is that we always heat to the right level for the living room, but then go through to a cold bedroom. Not so with the Evohome – it was the first time since we moved in that the bedroom had been warmer than the living room.
And figuring out the temperatures that different rooms needed to be at to feel comfortable was something of an issue for the first few days. It’s definitely a more labor-intensive process to figure out the heating requirements of each room and the schedules, and we didn’t get it right for the first few days, leading to some cold evenings and hot nights.
While it is possible to just put your entire home at the same level constantly, that would be like doing the school run in a Porsche. You get Evohome to get unprecedented control – just be prepared to spend some time and effort exercising that control.
Once you’ve set up a schedule, it’s really easy to customize, override for short periods, even activate special settings. So if you’re up late you can do a custom override, or if you’re off sick a single button will activate ‘day off’ mode, which uses your schedule for Saturday on a weekday.
If you’re still wanting to save the pennies there’s an ‘economy’ mode that reduces all temperatures across the board by a few degrees, and if you’re off on holiday a simple push of a button turns all the heating down to 15 degrees.
Of course, one of the biggest draws of a smart heating setup is the ability to do all this from your phone, and the Evohome delivers in this department brilliantly. The app is so simple, it makes competitors like Tado look positively labyrinthine.
All of the features are easily accessible and temperature control is totally natural, effected by either tapping up or down arrows or by holding and sliding to a preferred temperature.
This simplicity runs through the entire Honeywell Evohome product. You truly get the feeling that anyone of any level of tech competency could pick it up, and that’s rare in the smart home market.
If you’re a serious smart home enthusiast you may find that the Evohome is slightly lacking in the smarts compared to some other thermostats on the market. It works with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, but only with Alexa and only in limited capacity. There’s a workaround using the free application IFTTT if you’ve got a Google Home smart speaker, but no integration with Apple HomeKit, Apple's smart home management software, and none coming either.
This is disappointing, especially as there are other smart thermostats from Honeywell, like the Lyric, that have all these integrations (but don’t have the zonal control of the Evohome). Hopefully there will be an Evohome 2 at some point down the line that combines the best of both.
The Evohome also doesn’t offer the more advanced features that we’re a fan of in other smart thermostats, like motion sensor-activated routines, geolocation-activated routines (turning your heating on if it registers, via your phone, that you’re on your way home), or learning routines and self-adjusting based on your routine to optimize your heating.
One of the major draws of Evohome is that it can control not only radiators, but, with additional kit, hot water and underfloor heating. Our installer found it hilarious that our flat was so small we only needed to have three radiators hooked up – the Evohome is designed for big houses with complex heating and hot water systems.
The layout of our flat has proved an interesting challenge for this smart thermostat, as there isn’t a radiator in the hallway or kitchen. Our old thermostat was in the hallway, so the house would always heat to the point where the hallway was warm from all angles.
Evohome’s zonal control has meant that the hallway has become neglected in the temperature department, and now we have to close all our doors in order to get rooms to stay the right temperature.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the thermometers aren’t entirely accurate. Depending on the size of the room you may get different actual temperature for the same temperature reading. This isn’t a massive problem, it just means you have to take each temperature measurement with a pinch of salt and adjust each room accordingly.
We liked
We were blown away by how simple the Honeywell Evohome was to set up and use. The app is brilliantly designed, and all of the features are genuinely useful. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything superfluous about the kit or the app.
Once you’ve got zonal control of the temperature in your home, you do wonder how you lived without it. Being able to have towels warming in the bathroom for your morning shower while keeping the bedroom cool until you wake up, and then having that room come up to temperature by the time you step out of the shower, is truly amazing.
You can control the temperature directly from the radiator thermostat, from the control terminal, from your phone, and even using your voice by asking Alexa. It’s truly remarkable how simple it is for something so versatile and useful.
We disliked
The design definitely leaves something to be desired, and if you’re hoping for the slick brushed metal smart home look, keep looking. Actually, if you’re a smart home enthusiast, probably best to keep looking.
It doesn’t have many of the ‘smart’ features that you’d expect from a smart thermostat like motion sensor control and geolocation. It doesn’t adapt or learn based on your routines, and isn’t capable of working with HomeKit or Google Assistant without an IFTTT workaround.
If you’re the sort of household that leaves all the doors open, you’re going to have a problem with temperature bleed between rooms, a particular problem if you’ve rooms or corridors without radiators.
Also, as each of the radiators is individually controlled, there is a small motor that makes a whirring noise when changing temperature. It wasn’t an issue for us, but for those that are very sensitive to noise, it’s worth considering.
Final verdict
The Honeywell Evohome is an interesting device. In so many ways it’s been left behind by its recent competitors, but it’s still the best we’ve seen in terms of simple, effective zonal control.
It isn’t perfect by any means, and really we wish that Honeywell had amalgamated the Evohome and the Lyric into one device so you got slick smart home tech and industry leading zonal control.
One thing that really sets the Evohome apart is how user-friendly it is. It’s a smart home thermostat for people who don’t like new and complicated technology – and that’s not us, yet we were still very impressed, which is saying something.
The Honeywell Evohome delivers brilliantly on its gambit: making zonal temperature control child’s play. If all you’re looking for is a system that allows you total control over the temperature of your house, even when you’re not there, get this one.
It’s so easy to use and set up, the app is brilliant, and we’ve only had one issue with the wireless connectivity the entire time we’ve been using it (as a side note, our Evohome emailed us to tell us the about the issue and reassure us that it had already been reported).
That said, if you want cutting edge smart thermostat features like AI-powered scheduling and geofencing, you’re better off trying something like the Nest learning thermostat, Hive thermostat, or if zonal control is important to you, Tado.
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Evohome /unvent cyl / boiler
Thursday 10th March 2016
So I've decided to go down the unvented cylinder route with system boiler and Honeywell Evohome. My choices are as follows and wondered what others think?
Boiler options - I need 35 to 38 kw.
Vaillant ecoTEC plus 637 - 5 year warranty as standard, increases to 7 if installed by an approved installer.
Viessmann 100-w - 5 year warranty as standard, increases to 10 if installed by an approved installer.
Viessmann 200-w - 3 year warranty as standard, increases to 5 if installed by an approved installer.
What's the difference between the 100 and 200? All I can see I see is more advanced weather compensation but is this needed if I am running the Evohome setup?
Cylinder
Telford Tempest 500L seems to be getting good reports and is priced competitively.
Evohome
Property is a 3 storey - do I need a radiator controller on each rad - i.e. each room? I'm assuming these fit over the regular TRVs?
Boiler options - I need 35 to 38 kw.
Vaillant ecoTEC plus 637 - 5 year warranty as standard, increases to 7 if installed by an approved installer.
Viessmann 100-w - 5 year warranty as standard, increases to 10 if installed by an approved installer.
Viessmann 200-w - 3 year warranty as standard, increases to 5 if installed by an approved installer.
What's the difference between the 100 and 200? All I can see I see is more advanced weather compensation but is this needed if I am running the Evohome setup?
Cylinder
Telford Tempest 500L seems to be getting good reports and is priced competitively.
Evohome
Property is a 3 storey - do I need a radiator controller on each rad - i.e. each room? I'm assuming these fit over the regular TRVs?
Thursday 10th March 2016
You don't 'have' to have a evohome valve on each radiator, but that is the idea. You could have as many or as few as you want. Or you could have a thermostat on each floor instead if you wished. The rad valves replace the head of the trv, you can get adaptors for different valves.
Friday 11th March 2016
Friday 11th March 2016
Get the vaillant over a viessmann every time!.
No love for the Viessnann?Friday 11th March 2016
Get the vaillant over a viessmann every time!.
Totally agree with this. Every time. Advertisement
Friday 11th March 2016
No I have not seen any of the conventional boilers they make but the combi versions I think are awful. Plastic manifolds, rubber hoses all black wiring looms where you cannot trace a wire easily (not normally a problem but the outlet for the loom from the PCB housing catches when the case is repeatedly opened/closed causing the loom to short). For the money they are not good imo.
Friday 11th March 2016
You don't 'have' to have a evohome valve on each radiator, but that is the idea. You could have as many or as few as you want. Or you could have a thermostat on each floor instead if you wished. The rad valves replace the head of the trv, you can get adaptors for different valves.
If the rad vales replaced the head of the TRV, is there any point in getting one of the better TRVs e.g. Drayton?Friday 11th March 2016
You don't 'have' to have a evohome valve on each radiator, but that is the idea. You could have as many or as few as you want. Or you could have a thermostat on each floor instead if you wished. The rad valves replace the head of the trv, you can get adaptors for different valves.
If the rad vales replaced the head of the TRV, is there any point in getting one of the better TRVs e.g. Drayton?Bar the chrome look, I wouldn't class them as better.Saturday 12th March 2016
You need to be careful that you get ones which work with the evohome heads. I bought some cheapy ones from toolstation, but found that the evohome could never really close them off. Thankfully I found this out through testing first and not after they were installed and filled. I ended up with some drayton ones from Screwfix as I needed lockshields too ( http://www.screwfix.com/p/drayton-rt212-white-chro...).
I found it difficult to get cheap (drayton price) valves/lockshield pairs that would fit to the 10mm microbore pipes we have, but decided to trim the all back and put on 15-10 end feed reducers anyway as the previous installer had cranked everything up so tight that any new valve would never seal!
I found it difficult to get cheap (drayton price) valves/lockshield pairs that would fit to the 10mm microbore pipes we have, but decided to trim the all back and put on 15-10 end feed reducers anyway as the previous installer had cranked everything up so tight that any new valve would never seal!
Saturday 12th March 2016
You need to be careful that you get ones which work with the evohome heads. I bought some cheapy ones from toolstation, but found that the evohome could never really close them off. Thankfully I found this out through testing first and not after they were installed and filled. I ended up with some drayton ones from Screwfix as I needed lockshields too ( http://www.screwfix.com/p/drayton-rt212-white-chro...).
I found it difficult to get cheap (drayton price) valves/lockshield pairs that would fit to the 10mm microbore pipes we have, but decided to trim the all back and put on 15-10 end feed reducers anyway as the previous installer had cranked everything up so tight that any new valve would never seal!
What's the difference between the RT212 and TRV4?I found it difficult to get cheap (drayton price) valves/lockshield pairs that would fit to the 10mm microbore pipes we have, but decided to trim the all back and put on 15-10 end feed reducers anyway as the previous installer had cranked everything up so tight that any new valve would never seal!
Sunday 13th March 2016
What's the difference between the RT212 and TRV4?
One's double the price and chrome.Sunday 13th March 2016
You don't 'have' to have a evohome valve on each radiator, but that is the idea. You could have as many or as few as you want. Or you could have a thermostat on each floor instead if you wished. The rad valves replace the head of the trv, you can get adaptors for different valves.
If the rad vales replaced the head of the TRV, is there any point in getting one of the better TRVs e.g. Drayton?Don't know if there's any difference to be honest, if you don't already have rad valves fitted then it's probably better to get some that don't need adaptors as that will save you around £5 per rad.Monday 14th March 2016
Watching this topic, as we are doing similar.
Boiler is a Worcester Greenstar 35w. Cylinder is the 250l megaflo inherited with the house. May be a bit small, but just the two of us at the moment? House is 3 baths 6 beds, neither Lady F nor I are big bath users, preferring to shower. No kids yet.
Evohome has 12 zone maximum I believe, so every room will not be able to have a controller. So garage, boot room, WCs and utility will be on manual TRVs. Habitable areas and main baths will be set up on the system along with kitchen/conservatory underfloor heating.
Any advice? Should I just upgrade the cylinder now whilst everything is ripped out?
Boiler is a Worcester Greenstar 35w. Cylinder is the 250l megaflo inherited with the house. May be a bit small, but just the two of us at the moment? House is 3 baths 6 beds, neither Lady F nor I are big bath users, preferring to shower. No kids yet.
Evohome has 12 zone maximum I believe, so every room will not be able to have a controller. So garage, boot room, WCs and utility will be on manual TRVs. Habitable areas and main baths will be set up on the system along with kitchen/conservatory underfloor heating.
Any advice? Should I just upgrade the cylinder now whilst everything is ripped out?
Tuesday 15th March 2016
You can use a combination of different systems.
I fitted Evohome just before xmas and have it set up like this:
Top Floor (attic room and spare rooms, not used often) - Motorised valve, thermostat and relay box
Middle Floor (main bedroom, bathroom, other bedrooms, study etc..) - HR92s on each rad, apart from the bathroom and ensuite
Ground Floor (Kitchen, hall, lounge, dining room) - Using the main controller as the thermostat, then controlling a motorised valve and relay box
For us it works well, at any point if the hot water or the heating is on the ensuite and main bathroom get heated, we have a manual TRV on the radiator and just a normal valve on the towel rails, so the towels always get dried, they could do this even with nothing else in the house heating.
In the mornings we have the ability to just heat our bedroom and the ensuite/bathroom.
It's a good system and does have great flexibility. However if the house wasn't as big as it is, I'd look to just zone upstairs and downstairs and control through two thermostats and motorised valves.
I fitted Evohome just before xmas and have it set up like this:
Top Floor (attic room and spare rooms, not used often) - Motorised valve, thermostat and relay box
Middle Floor (main bedroom, bathroom, other bedrooms, study etc..) - HR92s on each rad, apart from the bathroom and ensuite
Ground Floor (Kitchen, hall, lounge, dining room) - Using the main controller as the thermostat, then controlling a motorised valve and relay box
For us it works well, at any point if the hot water or the heating is on the ensuite and main bathroom get heated, we have a manual TRV on the radiator and just a normal valve on the towel rails, so the towels always get dried, they could do this even with nothing else in the house heating.
In the mornings we have the ability to just heat our bedroom and the ensuite/bathroom.
It's a good system and does have great flexibility. However if the house wasn't as big as it is, I'd look to just zone upstairs and downstairs and control through two thermostats and motorised valves.
Tuesday 15th March 2016
It's a good system and does have great flexibility. However if the house wasn't as big as it is, I'd look to just zone upstairs and downstairs and control through two thermostats and motorised valves.
This will be your main decision, either do it Zoned per floor or zoned per room.If you go per room, it is £50/rad
If you go by floor it is a HR92(?) which is a £90 rotary dial thermostat that will control a motorised valve installed to control that floor.
Monday 28th November 2016
Thread bump...
I'm looking at evohome. Boiler is an oil rayburn and the controller is simple timer - on/off. A switch determines whether it heats water only (typically summer, and it's unvented not that I think it's relevant) or both water and heating (winter) . System has zero flexibility otherwise, no room thermostat etc and TRVs the only temperature control of heating. There is a valve which I presume switches between the water heating circuit and the central heating circuit.
I've read you just set the timer to always on and use evohome to interrupt the on/off depending on whether heating is required. I imagine given the current setup that would mean the water is always on when the heating is on (not the biggest issue), however in summer that would mean the central heating circuit is hot even though the TRVs have turned off the radiators.
Any thoughts? I think I need to control the valve as well as the boiler somehow?
I'm looking at evohome. Boiler is an oil rayburn and the controller is simple timer - on/off. A switch determines whether it heats water only (typically summer, and it's unvented not that I think it's relevant) or both water and heating (winter) . System has zero flexibility otherwise, no room thermostat etc and TRVs the only temperature control of heating. There is a valve which I presume switches between the water heating circuit and the central heating circuit.
I've read you just set the timer to always on and use evohome to interrupt the on/off depending on whether heating is required. I imagine given the current setup that would mean the water is always on when the heating is on (not the biggest issue), however in summer that would mean the central heating circuit is hot even though the TRVs have turned off the radiators.
Any thoughts? I think I need to control the valve as well as the boiler somehow?
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