Drayton Wiser Multi-Zone Smart Thermostat and 2 Smart Radiator Thermostat Kit – Conventional Boilers Only – Heating and Hot Water Control

After 13 years we have a thermostat controlled oil heating system thanks to Drayton. Having previously owned houses that were built with thermostats wired in, I had forgotten how effective these can be. Leap-frogging over the lack of wiring has been accomplished using this smart Wi-Fi device setup. So, you need the controller on the wall that replaces whatever timer device you have been using. This links via your Wi-Fi router to your thermostat which sits in your room. The water pump can now continue to pump water that circulates but the boiler fire system only uses oil at the rate it needs to maintain the temperature you set using your thermostat. This temperature control can be modulated via the Wiser app on your iPhone or Android device or Amazon Alexa. More than one person can have the app on your phone controlling the boiler over the internet via your Wi-Fi router. If the internet fails, your heating will not because the Wiser system simply uses your router whether or not it is connected to the internet. Our internet failed across the country (Ireland) after I installed the device but our system heating kept going and was connecting perfectly throughout the 4 hour outage. I had read where another user had praised Drayton for this ability to directly connect to the controller. Of course you still have an override button on the wall controller. So, finally you will need a 2.4ghz router to make this work. If you have a modern 5ghz (5G) router you will need a bit of help in the form of a bolt on additional 2.4ghz router. This is simple to set up and will enable all Alexa devices to work such as smart sockets or bulbs. I highly recommend the ASUS router which sends out both 2.4 and 5ghz signals and allows VPN to be added as Smartvpn —Amazon sells this! Anyway we love our Drayton system- our boiler central heating is oil fired and single circuit. The heated water always travels around the water immersion heater and around the radiators. Dual circuit systems have separate control for water heating-simples!-enjoy!

After my previous heating controller started giving problems time came to replace it. How things have changed since my last upgrade from mechanical controllers to a digital controller to now where I can operate my heating from my smart phone and Alexa. I chose the Drayton Wiser because it was the best fit with my heating system, 2 heating zones and hot water, all I had to do was remove the old controller change the wiring around a bit and install the heating hub and fit 2 wireless room thermostats one in each zone. I remember I did find it difficult to get the heating hub to connect to the wireless router but that was most likely me rather than the hub but I eventually got it sorted. I am very happy with the system and I have added 8 radiator thermostatic valves to the rooms we spend time in. What I am able to do with this system is to set a threshold of 18 deg centigrade for all the room and radiator thermostats and the heating will start up if the temperature drops below this threshold, you can adjust this up or down as you choose, now the house is at a constant temperature, so much better. The system has open window detection to save heating a room and loosing all the heat out the open window and you can let the system know when you are not at home so it is not heating the home when no ones home wasting oil/gas. From the basic system I had before to now has been a great improvement, there are other systems available from other suppliers but this one was the best fit for my needs and installation was easy if you have the confidence to tackle it yourself, if not professional installation would be advised.

I have Drayton Wiser system for more than a year, and I love it, I can thank it enough for the comfort it added to my life. I have done another review of the entire system.
For the thermostat, I think they are essential for comfort. Each bedroom has one, and I think this is how it should be!
The automated radiator heads from this system are great, but they are not precise with the temperature. Of course, they are 2 cm from the actual heat source. It is impossible to be precise. It is like trying to measure your kitchen temp with a thermometer inside a heated oven.
I placed those 2m from the radiator, and when you add it in the system and select the room, the system knows that from now on it will use this thermostat temp instead of the radiator head. And oh boy, it does make a difference. The temp control is far more stable and smooth. No more getting too cold or too hot. If you set 21C, it will be 21C all the time.
The thermostat itself is not the best piece of hardware; it is sometimes slow; there is no visibility of the temp without clicking on it and has minimum functionality for the price. It is only to change the temperature or give a boost. Nothing more! For the price, it should offer more, in my opinion.
So, I do recommend this piece, as it makes the system as good as it can be and definitively adds a lot of comfort to the room that it is located.

This would have been a very straightforward installation had not the electrician who installed our original CH controller made such a dog’s dinner of it. I carefully read the installation instructions and determined that it was going to be easy. However… firstly, my original model controller did not have a compatible back plate which I knew before I started. Secondly, what I did not expect was that it had been installed by someone with a penchant for connecting a wire (or two) to every single one of the nine terminals. Some led to a dead end at a junction box next to the boiler in another room, others simply doubled back on themselves and were connected back at the same terminal. The good news was I found a local electrician who came out, scratched his head, took some photos (which are probably on some electricians blog somewhere) and stripped out all the extraneous leads. After that the installation was a doddle.

The controller found my internet first time and set up was really easy. As the room thermostat was some distance from the heat hub with several thick brick walls between, I knew I would need a Smart Plug to facilitate a decent signal path. Finding the best location for the plug was ‘interesting’ due to the nature of the building layout, but here Drayton Wiser support proved to be excellent. As I tried various locations for the plug they were able to see the strength of the connection being made and their advice, patiently delivered, was invaluable. A few weeks later when I had a query, a call to their support was answered promptly and professionally.

The Wiser system has now been running flawlessly for several months and the control from the hub, thermostat or app has been very straightforward. Setting schedules is easy, and the variable boost function has proved far more useful than I imagined.

Downsides? As I spend hours each day at my computer it would be good if there was a web-based app to control the system rather than my iPad or phone and given that customer support could see the signal strength between the heat hub and thermostat it would be useful if this facility could be extended to users. Maybe a future enhancement.?

In summary, I’m really pleased with the unit. The thermostat is small and neat (and mobile), the app such a doddle to use that my technophobic wife (who never managed our previous ‘old-school’ controller) is very confident to use and the customer support has been exemplary.

I took the plunge in to smart heating and considered the pros and cons of a few systems but this ticked all the boxes at a price that was affordable and I’m glad that I opted for the Drayton kit over the others. It was a breeze to install and configure through the app (I had an existing Drayton controller that I simply lifted off from the bracket and slotted the Wiser hub in its place). Although I have a small flat, for the first few weeks it couldn’t keep a consistent connection to my router which was situated only a few metres away behind a wall but I now believe it was an issue with the router as it became clear that my other smart devices were dropping off randomly – router was replaced and have enjoyed months without a single drop-out.

I love that it offers a comfort mode meaning that you set a room schedule and it learns how far in advance to begin heating to reach the desired temperature before the scheduled on time – I just set a schedule and forget about it – and I love that the bathroom is always cozy ready for my morning shower without having to remember to turn up the thermostat at night. Also a bonus that it has an eco mode so it learns when to stop heating before the scheduled off time.

The valves themselves were simplicity itself to install and didn’t need the adapter for my radiators – simply unscrewed the existing TRV’s, screwed the Wiser ones in place and the app found each straight away, and they make very little noise. The app itself is great but it’s a faff setting it up for geofencing as you need to install 3rd-party apps to make it work and have Away Mode activated when you leave the house, but once set up I just forget about it. Alexa integration is good but could be better – I can use my voice to check and control the heat in individual rooms but have yet to find a way to have the heating off everywhere without manually turning on Away Mode in the app.

Overall though, I’d highly recommend this system for anyone considering a smart home heating system that can control heating per room and that doesn’t tie you in to a subscription for basic functions (like geofencing).

I have used this product for almost a year now and like it. It is a lot better than Hive or Nest as it allows individual control of each room and does some real savings on heating. I live in a rented apartment, so I didn’t want to make any too significant changes in the current system. The building has a central boiler but is allows individual control in each apartment.
The wiser Central replaced the old thermostat in the wall, I needed only to add a power cord, as the previous one was battery powered, so I put a power cord and connected it to the wall socket. If this were my apartment, I would probably do something more elegant, but as I mention, I want to take this all out once I leave the apartment. That said, it is clear that I’ve installed myself; it is easy enough if you like DIY and have a basic knowledge of electrical installations.
This kit is a good start, but I bought more devices to expand the system. The radiator heads (Drayton Wiser Smart Heating Radiator Thermostat) do have a thermostat in it, but it is not precise for big rooms (as it is only centimetres from the radiator). What I recommend is have one of their digital thermostats (Drayton Wiser Smart Heating Room Thermostat) on each room as well. The Wiser system automatically assumes its temp instead of the radiator’s once they are mapped in the app to be in the same place. You should put the digital thermostat some meters from the radiator. I put one close to the baby’s crib, so the central controls the temperature in that place. By the way, if you have a newborn baby, this is amazing, as you can guarantee that you have the correct temp all the time in his room. It is peace of mind as the digital thermostat is very precise.
My set up: Radiators heads on 2 beds, 2 baths, living room(5 devices); 3 digital thermostats: 1 in the baby room, 1 in my room, 1 in the living room.
Wiser support is also very responsive via email; they genuinely try to help you, asking for more pictures and prompting you if the problem was solved or need more help.
My heating bill was definitively cheaper, as this winter I’ve only heated the rooms that I was in, all programmed to be on-off in different periods of the day and different temperature needs. Definitively worth the money.

Bought as an addition to a Wiser kit that I installed with 2 rad stats provided, these made up for the other rooms. I love the whole set up although its important to get the installation tight on the rad taps before calibrating otherwise performance can be poor.
Delighted now I can individually set a room to off whilst others are on a schedule and can boost a room with a simple twist of the rad stat and rely on it going back to its original setting. I also like the fortnightly self operating maintenance feature that keeps the things in good shape.
The system monitors battery life so no fear off unnoticed failure although changing batteries looks a bit fiddly.
Overall a great buy, if rather expensive when bought as a standalone purchase without a kit.

ok, so bought the hub, room thermostat and two radiator thermostats from amazon warehouse. described as packaging scuffed but in as new condition. package arrived and it looked like the last package in the mail room, crushed and falling apart. still, once the items were inspected all were there and unmarked. first tip, go online and get the instructions for the wiser heating system you have just bought. yes i got them half price, but previous customer had attempted to install and not reset. my first mistake was not to factory reset hub and all other items. it will save days problem solving and back and forth from support. next tip, this system requires 2.4ghz internet. set up a guest network solely using 2.4ghz it will save endless non pairing issues. my main internet ssd runs 5ghz and 2.4ghz, it will not work with this item as you can’t select only 2.4ghz. so having done both of those before attempting set up all should go far easier than my installation.i messaged the support more than i chatted to my wife during the entire lock down so far. support were excellent, even when started contact before closing hours they still advised me much much later. having used this item, it was a straight swap for my older drayton hub, even the wife now fiddles with her phone checking the stats. plan is to add radiator stats on more rads as expenses allow, which is such a simple thing to do, my 13 year old son even did one. the adapters included were easy to install. this is a good product and my personal experience with alexa gets four stars, my son has some how made a second household account and alexa is questioning me more than my wife. however the app is excellent and my preferred choice over alexa. hope this helps, but rather than send it back or get frustrated contact support no issue is too small.

I’ve had this running for about 6 months now. Although in my use-case it is working fine, I am finding the feature set pretty limited (given that what is missing is generally software).

There is no ‘Work from home/holiday’ setting. Actually, in my case, I’d really like to have an option of A or B week. You can force ‘away’ mode to keep the heating on, but then it stays on till you remember to turn it off.
There is no CSV save/restore for settings.
Away mode doesn’t have a ‘away until’ setting. So this means I can’t easily say I’m going to be out for most of the day.
Comfort mode can mean the heating coming on rather too early in the morning (and mine is noisy).
There is no data export for easier analytics (although there is a HomeAssistant plugin, so this has a viable workaround).
Alexa can’t ‘boost’ the temperature or turn on the hot water.
A hot water thermostat would be nice (although a little hard to use).
Proper multi-account design is rather sad to see absent.

Having been very disappointed with Drayton Controls previous product which never worked fully and the controller needed replacing after two years, I decided to try this, their new product, as I like the fact that the thermostat is completely self contained requiring no wiring for either control or recharging, and because their support had been very good. I have been using the product to control my heating and hot water for the last three months and it has worked perfectly in all respects. In terms of effectiveness, the room temperature has been maintained on target (with the MiGenie this was never the case) under all conditions. When making the purchase I still some doubts, but now am very pleased I did so.

The wiring from the boiler to the hub is simple, live, neutral and two switching wires, I actually just wired the hub to a plug (the switching wires can wait until you install it for real) to set up while sitting comfortably in my living room. Here are some pitfalls you may experience;
* The ‘setup’ light flashes green/amber, turn off/on and just tap the ‘setup’ button
* Inability to pair your phone to the hub, ensure the phones data is off during this procedure
* Ensure your router Wi-Fi channel is set to 1 or 11, to insure stability of connection
When our boiler was fitted, we were given a basic, very basic remote which allowed only hours to be set, as a result I often extended it to constant and some nights forgot the put it back to timed, on all night. The other annoyance with that remote stat was its temperature ‘sampling rate’, this left the heating on till I was sweating and off when the sweat started to freeze (hyperbole) but really not good. To replace said stat was over 200, this cost me under a hundred on Black Friday Deals. The sample rate is excellent giving an even temperature by switching the boiler off/on more frequently. Be aware however that as this being battery powered, transmits the signal at a set rate. This means that although you change the setting, either stat or phone, it may not react immediately but it will soon.
The apps default setting will not be to everyone’s taste but are so easily changed, see screenshot. A lot of controllers have a ‘boost’ button which does nothing but override for a predetermined or settable period of time, here however, boost means exactly that, by 2% over the current temperature for 30 minutes to 3 hours.
I can’t help myself rambling on about this setup because I have lived with that horrible stat for some time so if you want ‘simple’ with a great Customer Service, I don’t think you can go wrong here.

I am writing this review after using this product for couple of months. So, apologies for long review in advance 🙂

I have a newly built 4 bed room town house (3 floors). I have 2 heating circuits with 2 room thermostats and a hot water tank with a thermostat. Lounge is on one heating circuit and rest of the house is on other heating circuit. I have ESI programmer, ESI room thermostats and Hot water thermostat.

My requirements were:

1) Independent room temperature control – Met
2) Easy installation without major wiring changes – Partially met
3) Geo fencing – Met with IFTTT
4) Amazon Alexa integration – Met but with limited operations.
5) Energy saving – Met
6) Opentherm interface – Opentherm itself is not compatible where the system has a hot water tank with external water temperature thermostat. So even though my boiler has opentherm module, the system won’t work with my setup. Opentherm enables wiser to control boiler temperature in real time to reduce the gas consumption.

Why I chose this kit?

I did a lot of research in this area and I found the following

1) Google nest: No seamless way of having individual radiator thermostat temperature control. We can use Energenie smart TRVs with MI software but the integration is clunky and unrealistic.

2) Tado : Features like Geofencing are subscription based which is not a great way to save money.

3) Hive: Although it is possible to install smart radiator thermostats to get individual room heating control, reviews suggest that the radiator TRVs are taking 1 hour to turn on. Recently hive released a firmware update to reduce this time to 30 minutes. This defeats money saving objective. Also, the radiator TRVs don’t have the same priority as the room thermostats. This way, if the room thermostat reaches target temperature, even if TRV calls for heat it won’t work.

Some information about the wiser system:

I purchased wiser kit 3 (Comes with Wiser hub, 2 room thermostats) and I purchased 4 radiator thermostats separately.
Wiser hosts a 2.4 Ghz radio network to communicate with room thermostats and radiator thermostats.
It is advised to use a 2.4 Ghz wireless home network with WPA2 security (But it worked ok with my dual band wifi network which hosts 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz frequencies with same SSID).

Installation procedure and issues I faced:

Note: It is important to know TRVs which are linked to specific heating circuits before starting the installation process.

Step 1) It is advised to remove the existing room thermostats and short the call for heat wire so that the thermostat calls for heating all the time. I achieved this by simply turning the thermostat to maximum temperature so that it is calling for heat all the time.

Step 2) I had ESI programmer which I removed from the back plate. The back plate of ESI programmer is different from wiser’s back plate. I had to removed the cables from existing back plate and labelled them. Then I removed the existing back plate, installed the wiser back plate and connected the cables to wiser back plate as described in the manual.

Step 3) After the wiser controller turned on, it hosted a wireless network. I installed wiser heat app on my android phone and from wifi settings, connected to the wifi network hosted by wiser hub.

Issue 1) Android system detects that the wifi network hosted by wiser hub is not providing internet connection and requests the user to switch wifi. While this prompt is open, wiser heat app can’t find the wiser hub. So, I had to select the option on wifi settings to stay connected to wifi network hosted by wiser. After this the wiser heat app found the wiser hub

Step 4) I paired the room thermostats and Radiator thermostats with wiser hub via the wiser heat app and started installing the radiator TRVs.

Issue 2) After pairing the radiator valve with the wiser hub, I went to the top floor to install the radiator thermostat. After the calibration started, the mobile phone lost wifi connection with wiser hub due to poor signal and the configuration failed. So, I came back to ground floor, connected to wiser wifi network and then completed the setup. This resolved the issue.

Step 5) After pairing and installing room/radiator thermostats, we have to connect the wiser hub to home wifi network which is by far the most painful step of all.

Issue 3) I hosted a 2.4 Ghz wireless guest network with WPA 2 network security as advised in the manual. I tried 10 times to connect wiser hub to this guest network but it failed every time. Ironically it connected to my dual band home wifi network (Which hosts 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz frequencies with same SSID/wifi network name) with WPA/WPA2 security with no issues.

Step 6) Created new account with email address etc. This completed without any issues.

General issues reported by users.

Some users reported that Wiser system has issues in homes with Philips hue lighting system. But I didn’t face any issues as I have Philips hue lighting at home.

I called wiser technical support to know the signal strength of my radiator TRVs. They told me that I don’t need to worry about signal strength until the TRVs show offline frequently in wiser heat app. So far, I didn’t see any issues.

The TRVs make some noise when they turn on and turn off. As my kids are older, I am not finding this as a real issue.

Look and feel of wiser heat app.

This app is functional but not flashy. It has everything that we need from a Smart heating system. If you are someone who can figure out things by using apps, then it should be a breeze for you.

Advise to product team:

The wiser hub power led blinks in the same way when it loses wifi connection and when it is updating the firmware. This won’t help the user to understand what’s wrong. Please change the power led blinking pattern so that we can distinguish the difference.

The Alexa integration provides very basic functionality. Please add functions to alter heating schedules.

In the next version of Radiator TRVs, try to reduce the noise.

Final verdict:

This is by far the best smart heating system for the price in the market but to set this up and use it, user must have a troubleshooting mindset. So, non-technical users must opt for professional installation 🙂

I’ve just moved to a Wiser system and needed an extra thermostat. They’re easy to install and add proper heating zoning across the house far more cheaply and far more effectively than trying to add a dual zone valve into the system. So far… I’m impressed. The app allows you to control the temperature in each room that has a thermostat installed, setting schedules as well as very easy manual override (and you can also manually override from the radiator thermostat as well). So far, I’m impressed.

One thing to note is that you do need the thermostatic valve on which to connect the thermostat. Mine were a like-for-like replacement so no plumbing was involved.

Despite the issues which I will go through below ( it may be of help if you encounter the same) with the system up and running i’m delighted all appears to be working (ok not the TRV ) but think my old valve bodies are stuck and don’t want to drain the system in these temperatures to fit new ones. The app is easy to use and has just had an update great to control from anywhere.
OK so the problems and there were a few.
1) Ordered over black Friday week had dropped to 109.99 so ordered when it arrived it had clearly been out of the packaging so returned for a replacement.
2) Physical install was easy mounted next to boiler and 4 wires connected following the instructions and markings on the boiler and disconnected the old controls. Old boiler face plate re fitted but no connection
3) followed the instruction for setup found the hubs temp network followed instructions added to my WiFi no problems then it tries to connect to the cloud and fails.
4) Phone support are helpful but after almost 2 hrs still not connecting and they were to send me an email to test some ports . The tests come back OK so its not that and they are suggesting its my network causing the issue. AT this point I have control but only when connected to my WiFi
5) After what must of been 15 attempts at pairing this thing I email and get nowhere fast just wanting me to try the same over and over again.
6) I give up and decide to phone one last time I explain the situation and that my WiFi is not the problem as when logging into the router I can see the heat hub and its MAC address.
7) The new guy on the phone asks for the MAC address and once he has this tells me he knows whats wrong and that they need to run a script from that end but that it could take up to 24 hrs to get processed and that its a common issue.

However in under 3 hrs i’ve had an email to say it’s been done and I restart the app log in and complete the setup and now have a fully functional system that I’m delighted with.
Did I get frustrated with setting it up yes do I wish I’d got through to the 2nd tech support guy 1st time round you bet but even with those issues would I go through it all again hell yes and all because I want to say “Alexa set the lounge to 20 degrees” rather than get off my A*** and adjust the thermosta

After looking at smart heating controllers for a long time I finally decided on this Drayton Wyser system. Easy to Install and backed up by Schneider – what could go wrong.
This Kit2 version is used to control both water heating and central heating. I already had a Honeywell C21 timer/programmer controlling an Ideal Standard boiler. The backplate on the existing timer was the same as the Wyser, so following the instructions it said disconnect the existing thermostat in the living room and simply swap out the controller. Checking the diagrams looked fine as the connections matched what I had in front of me.
Following the instructions I downloaded the app on my Android phone and started the process. Initially you have to connect up to the local Wyser WIFI created. What is the most important piece of missing information during set up is that when you connect your phone to the Wyser WIFI is that due to the Wyser WIFI not having internet connection you have to check the option on the phone to Always connect to the WIFI service – if I had realised this at the time I wouldn’t have had the problems trying to get the system set up. Once realised my set up issues was down to not ticking the box on the phone WIFI set up the rest of the set up and account creation went through very easily.
Ok – time to check the heating, however when the thermostat called the boiler to switch on – nothing, just a click then silence. After a call to their technical team it turns out that you need to disable the original thermostat but connect the 2 existing wires together. Once done the system has worked well.
Easy to set up and monitor the room temperature and timing control for the water
1 week on and very happy with the install – if only these little set up issues were documented on their FAQ’s and it would have taken literally minutes to set up.

I am at home most of the day and need to have some rooms heated but not all of them. I live in an old house that is expensive to heat and hard to insulate. Having done what could be done, I wanted to save further on fuel and began looking at the rooms that were empty all day but were still being heated because the heating was on. The Drayton Wiser system appealed to me because I can set schedules for every room that would benefit and only heat them when they needed to be heated. It was fairly easy to install: my radiators had non-standard TRVs (Thermostatic Radiator Valves) and the smart TRVs would not find and neither would any of the adapters. In the end I drained down my system and swapped the TRVs for some very cheap ones from Toolstation that were compatible with the new smart TRVs, and then I could easily fit the smart TRVs where I needed them. I did the wiring myself – that was trivial.

My house is very spread out being a chalet bungalow and I found two of the smart TRVs were about on the limit of the range from the Wiser Hub, so I bought two Wiser Smart Plugs – these are very expensive compared with other Smart Plugs that I use but they also function as an amplifier for the Wiser Hub ensuring that those two zones always get a good signal.

I’m not going to write here about all of the benefits of a smart system – if you’re looking for a smart system then you’ll already know most of those from their advertisements. I looked at several systems including Hive and Nest and felt that the Drayton Wiser system offered the best value for me because of the ease of setting up zones. It has all of the features of the others apart from Nest’s ability to not have schedules instead opting to learn what you want by observing how and when you set your heating.

Drayton not only had the best match of features for me, but it was the best price, and Drayton have been making heating control systems for donkey’s years – they are a household name for heating.

The app has some very interesting statistics (graphs) to show you how your heating is performing. It has intelligent modes that can shut off the heating for a room if there’s a window open there. It works well with Alexa. With the help of Life360 and IFTTT it is easy to set up geofencing so that if nobody is home it goes into background heating mode and then automatically resumes the schedule when someone arrives back home again.

Now on to why I only gave 4 stars when what I’ve written suggests 5 stars…

[a] If there’s a power cut, or the internet drops out, then often the hub gets “stuck” and cannot reconnect to the Wiser cloud – it sits there with a red light on. My son-in-law has the same system and also experiences this issue. The heating still continues to work, but you can’t work it or monitor it remotely. The fix for this is to turn off the master switch for the heating, thereby shutting down the hub for 2-3 minutes and then turn it on again – but you need to be at home to do that UNLESS: I fitted a smart plug in the power feed to the Wiser hub so (remotely) I can cycle the power on and off. Fortunately, we don’t get many internet outages or power cuts.

[b] It’s quite an investment in time to set up all of the schedules and I change them with the seasons [1] Spring and Autumn, [2] Summer and [3] Winter – I have requested (but had no feedback) that it ought to be simple to have the App store your schedules as a SET so that you could restore each SET as and when you need it.

Bottom line: brilliant system but nobody’s perfect.

This is really good system and installed in a 1930s bungalow with 13 radiators. Mistakes I made on the first install:

Trying to be clever and keep things tidy I initially installed the base unit very near the boiler. This was a mistake as you should put it in as central location as possible in order for it to see your router/TRVs. (and preferably away from large metal white goods that are going to interfere with signals).
Naively I assumed that the new smart TRV(thermostatic Radiator Valves) would be compatible with the old lockshield(tap) valve controls. You require compatible thermostatic Radiator valves and I had to install 4 new ones for the planned system. (cheap units are available for around 7 each – and you don’t seem to be able to buy just the valve body). These require the system to be drained and a bit of plumbing work.

Good points
While it takes a while to get used to the philosophy behind the new control, its great being able to switch individual radiators off. We have noticed that the system heats up so much faster and each radiator gets hotter.
I’ve found the app very intuitive and relatively clear.
The integration with Alexa is seamless and brilliant.
The thermostat is very accurate and the TRVs accurate enough.
You have the option for the system to switch on at fixed times (normal mode) or to be clever and use ambient temperature to determine start times (comfort mode)

Bad points.
Sometimes it takes a while for the boiler to be requested to fire despite the indication of Flame ON displayed on the app.
An indication of the position/status of each TRV would be useful.
It would be nice if the thermostat was non-backlit LCD with the display on all the time rather than having to wake it up to display the current temperature. I also assume that only the thermostat temperature is used in its assigned room rather than the associated rooms TRV — does the system just ignore the TRV temp?. (I also wonder if you can have a cheaper system without the thermostat as I’m not sure it adds much.)

Things that still confuse:
The app has too many ways to change room temperature. E.g
* There is a boost function which has a time limit. (also enabled from the TRVs control). Does enabling from one radiator automatically apply the same boost to others assigned to the same room?
* You can also change the room temperature without the boost time limit.
* You can also set the room to MANUAL (shown as a HAND on the app) control.

I’m still unsure if ALL or any of these settings are automatically overridden by a scheduled temperature change?

Word of warning for those with an older system. I had planned to smart control just 4 of 13 radiators in rooms only used part time. I did this but noticed how much warmer the whole house was. The problem being that 6 radiators/towel rails in my house do not have TRVs (just lockshield taps). The living areas would get up to temperature with bedrooms ‘smart controlled’ off, then prior to bed these would switch on but request the boiler ON for prolong periods to get them up to temperature. However, obviously the 6 radiators/towel rail with lockshield valves would then get very hot in rooms already up to temperature. So I’m now having to convert these to TRVs or smart. In summary — your house requires TRVs!

This is a very good system and I’m not entirely sure what features are missing or that you’d ever need. Only concern is the longevity of the motorised TRVs at 40 a pop.

Replaced the wireless (not internet enabled) thermostat that came with my boiler with this system. I was lucky enough that that my switch over from old to new was straighforward, requiring only 4 wires at the side of the boiler to be wired into the Drayton Wiser Hub. Once this was done, connecting to the new system and setting up the phone app took a matter of minutes. I was also able to get it to work with Alexa very quickly and easily. Now that it’s set up I can turn on, or adjust my heating from anywhere with an internet connection/mobile phone signal – not just in the house. Alexa can tell you how warm it is, and you can raise or lower the temperature with Alexa too. There are some smart features on the app, you have a weekly planner for how you want the heating to react, but you can also set it to eco mode where it adjusts itself automatically – I haven’t tried this yet. So far, I only have one thermostat and the hub. I plan to get the Wiser smart thermostatic radiator valves so that I can control all radiators in the house from my phone too, as this will obviously incur savings on my heating bill if radiators not needed can be scheduled to be off and automatically come on at certain times of the day. Overall very pleased. I also had to contact support as I couldn’t work out how to change the wifi (I have more than one wifi signal in my house and wanted to change the hub to a different one) – they responded within the day and were spot-on with their reply, and I was able to resolve my problem. Many thanks to Wiser Support! 😉

Originally had a 2nd Gen Nest thermostat, but it became problematic and was always losing connectivity to the Heat Link box by the boiler despite being installed practically right below it. Problem was when the thermostat lost connectivity, you had no heating which occured a few times. Also disliked the fact that despite the thermostat being wireless, it needed to be constantly plugged into the mains meaning portability was lacking (wasn’t like you could easily carry it from room to room for e.g.).

Being that the product cost alot of money and also wasnt that old, was very disappointed. Rather felt as though it was all show and no go.

In the end decided to rip and replace for the Wiser Heat system and on the whole couldnt be happier with it. Had some initial niggles with the control box losing connectivity with the WiFi but it transpired it was a WiFi problem (or not enough of it!). Once that was sorted its been pretty rock solid.

The system is pretty easy to set up (though the control box really needs professional installation), easy enough to configure and by and large does what it says on the tin.

We bought the pack with the single TRV included and used it in our main bedroom. To begin with I was disappointed as it didnt seem to fit the valve properly and subsequently failed to control the rad properly……several months later after trying it again have found that I hadnt installed it correctly and now seems to control the radiator OK. They arent the quietest things (if you are a light sleeper the opening and closing process could wake you) but do the job. Only issue I have encountered is that the TRV set temperature has a few times dropped down from what it was set to (was 18, falling back to 15 degrees) meaning we’ve woken cold a few times but having disabled Eco mode now seems OK.

I will probably eventually install the TRV’s in all the bedrooms, but at 40 quid a pop it’s not really a cheap exercise (though far cheaper than Honeywell’s offering) but it’ll be nice to have temperature control in the bedrooms in order to run the house a bit warmer and the rooms cooler for comfortable sleeping in the colder months. Test will be whether a range extender will be required as our house is fairly large….time will tell I suppose.

In summary, I imagine the Honeywell system is probably better but at the cost it ought to be. For the money this seems very good value for money as whilst arguably not quite as polished as the likes of the Honeywell offering it offers nice, reliable functionality at a relatively low price. Certainly knocks a single Nest thermostat into the weeds in terms of reliability and overall functionality, from my own experience anyway.

Originally had a 2nd Gen Nest thermostat, but it became problematic and was always losing connectivity to the Heat Link box by the boiler despite being installed practically right below it. Problem was when the thermostat lost connectivity, you had no heating which occured a few times. Also disliked the fact that despite the thermostat being wireless, it needed to be constantly plugged into the mains meaning portability was lacking (wasn’t like you could easily carry it from room to room for e.g.).

Being that the product cost alot of money and also wasnt that old, was very disappointed. Rather felt as though it was all show and no go.

In the end decided to rip and replace for the Wiser Heat system and on the whole couldnt be happier with it. Had some initial niggles with the control box losing connectivity with the WiFi but it transpired it was a WiFi problem (or not enough of it!). Once that was sorted its been pretty rock solid.

The system is pretty easy to set up (though the control box really needs professional installation), easy enough to configure and by and large does what it says on the tin.

We bought the pack with the single TRV included and used it in our main bedroom. To begin with I was disappointed as it didnt seem to fit the valve properly and subsequently failed to control the rad properly……several months later after trying it again have found that I hadnt installed it correctly and now seems to control the radiator OK. They arent the quietest things (if you are a light sleeper the opening and closing process could wake you) but do the job. Only issue I have encountered is that the TRV set temperature has a few times dropped down from what it was set to (was 18, falling back to 15 degrees) meaning we’ve woken cold a few times but having disabled Eco mode now seems OK.

I will probably eventually install the TRV’s in all the bedrooms, but at 40 quid a pop it’s not really a cheap exercise (though far cheaper than Honeywell’s offering) but it’ll be nice to have temperature control in the bedrooms in order to run the house a bit warmer and the rooms cooler for comfortable sleeping in the colder months. Test will be whether a range extender will be required as our house is fairly large….time will tell I suppose.

In summary, I imagine the Honeywell system is probably better but at the cost it ought to be. For the money this seems very good value for money as whilst arguably not quite as polished as the likes of the Honeywell offering it offers nice, reliable functionality at a relatively low price. Certainly knocks a single Nest thermostat into the weeds in terms of reliability and overall functionality, from my own experience anyway.

What should be a straightforward install, took ages as the instructions are woeful. They miss out key steps and details. i.e. switching from the hub to your own wifi at the point you want to create an account. Password appears to require upper and lower case and special characters (!”$%^&*) in order to work (when you get it wrong and it fails, it just says error and not whats wrong!). Wifi hub has a rubbish range and you will probably need the range extender plug which is more money!

In the end I have sent this all back. The radiator thermostats would not control the radiators and I’m fed up faffing with it. Looking at the reviews for Hive and Nest, I don’t think they will be any better, so I will just fit a traditional heating controller and room stat.

Our house was always incredibly difficult to heat properly despite having conventional thermostaic valves on all rads. To get the living room hot enough the rest of the house was too hot. But then in the morning if the bedroom was warm enough the living room was too hot. I am sure this could have been sorted by splitting the house into zones but with the Drayton Wiser system I have a smart thermostat on almost all of the radiators. If one of the kids wants their bedroom heating when the rest of the house is empty that can be done. we now have a warm living room and do not waste energy heating the whole house to heat one part.

A full review would take ages – I will just say that I do a bit of DIY and found the whole thing very easy to fit. The rad valves are simple to do if you have TRVs already. The only problems I had using the system in a large house was some of the rads lost signal with the control unit. I have ended up buying two smart plug extenders that have solved the problem but probably could have got away with one carefully positioned. The second problem is that I needed an adaptor to fit each of the Drayton thermostats to my rads. The advice from the Drayton hotline was unimpressive and suggested buying from a European company at vastly inflated prices. I bought suitable adaptors from Amazon – no problem. Had the system running now for a few months nd am very happy with it !

This is a fantastic product when it works, when it doesn’t it,s a pain.

I have had the home kit 2 installed for about 2 weeks. Initial installation and registration was a breeze following the clear instructions supplied in the box and all was working well for a few days.

Then woke up 1 morning to a solid red set up light indicating that the hub had lost cloud connection. Luckily the unit follows its schedules but my heating was set to go off at 9:30 so I needed to connect locally in order to advance the heating. The manual indicates that this should be possible but in my experience you have to press the set up button to invoke a local wiserheat WiFi connection to the hub. Bit of a bind but works and you can alter schedules etc… I then spent all day playing around and racking my brains, why wouldn’t my hub connect to the cloud, reset everything but still no luck, Drayton site says cloud working fine.

Next day I telephoned Drayton and asked them to delete my account which took seconds for them to do this then let me set up the account again. Apparently my heat hub wasn’t paired to my account. Why this is when it was paired the day before god only knows.

Anyway couple of dropouts from the cloud over the next couple of days seem to resolve themselves within 30 minutes or so. At present all working well but I’m not confident this will last but am confident I will be able to resolve it. Would I buy again, is a daft yes. It’s brill when it works and I’m sure reliability will get better.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Another week passed and the hardware and software has now worked flawlessly in 4 bed detached house with solid walls and no smart sockets. Either the web reliability has improved after Xmas or the changes I made have made a significant difference.

I have a virgin netgear superhub 2 which was set automatically find the best WiFi channel, I found it was switching at least once a day between channels 6 & 11, protection was also set to WPA – auto. I used the WiFi app on my Mac to find the least congested channel which turned out to be channel 1, so I fixed to this on my 2.4 ghz network. I also changed WPA – auto to WPA2 – PSK as I don’t have any legacy devices. All now seems good, heat hub 2 metres from router on ground floor under stairs in centre of house. Room stat 5 metres from hub through 2 solid walls. 1 radiator valve 7 metres from hub through floor with loads of pipes and 2 solid walls. Other radiator valve 4 metres from hub through floor with loads of pipes and 3 solid walls. No connectivity issues.

Well pleased just ordered more valves !

I bought this after getting fed up with going to bed cold and waking up roasting. My thermostat was in the hall so even with thermostatic valves the other rooms were never the proper temperature. The bedroom was especially bad. I could never get it comfortable at bed time, always chilly, and then in the morning too hot as the heating tried to get the ground floor warm. I looked at several other products, HIVE seems good but the basic kit just replaces the thermostat and I wanted more. TADO seemed to fit the bill but seemed expensive.

This system has sorted this. I put the two radiator valves in the living room and bedroom. The bedroom is now comfortable when I go to bed, kept at a constant temperature all night, but doesn’t get too hot as the rest of the house is warmed for the day. The living room is warm when I get up and stays warm till bed time. The bedroom is no longer heated through the day, but If I want a daytime bath I can warm it for changing from my app, or just a quick twist on the radiator cap will again add heat.

I haven’t enabled goe-location, but I have put buttons on my phone that I can use to turn “away mode” on and off as required, so hopefully saving money.

So all in all its doing what I wanted, and I am very pleased. I have only given four stars as I think the Alexa and Google integrations are a bit limited.

I would also say installation can be a pain. If you have a conventional (non-combi) system with a Y-valve or two motorised valves, a programmer on a standard wall plate and fairly modern Thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs), or a combi boiler and modern TRVs then you are pretty much good to go.

Saldy I had a single motorized valve, old TRVs that are too small to fit the new Wiser radiator valves and a programmer on a non-standard mounting plate. So the install was a bit of a pain. The existing boiler circuit required a tweak as it was wired so that the system only ran if just the “Hot Water” input was live. The existing timer was not on a standard plate so some drilling was needed to fix the new plaate. Also when it says “by-pass the thermostat” you usually need to add a link to do this. The instructions are not clear at this point.

I ended up replacing several radiator valves. One TRV was stuck and leaked when I operated it a few times. One lockshield (so the trailing valve) developed a dribble, one radiator (the one where the thermostat was) didn’t have a TRV, and one TRV was the wrong size and Drayton didn’t make an adaptor, which is odd as it was a drayton valve. In any case the new radiator valve was cheaper than many of the adaptors, but as draining the system is a pain if one valve needs replacing check them all.

I don’t think this will be typical. My basic heating system is 38 years old, and its a tribute to the Drayton folks this works with it.

Once the physical install was complete the app set up fine and it connected to my router no probem. All working fine.

Have no words to express how good this product is for its price. Whilst competition is at least 3 times more expensive, Drayton was the perfect fit for our home. Have to be honest and say it helped having a programmer from the same company, therefore the transition to this one was extremely smooth, just had to shut off the energy, remove the old unit, put the new unit in place (it is using the same frame) and turn the power on again. 2 minutes tops! Therefore no money spent on installation. Also having TRV valves helped as I just screwed the Wiser ones in after removing the old ones, 1 minute max.

The app can be improved, but it does exactly what I need it to do and more. Schedule as many periods based on the temperature I need is so convenient. Also being able to turn heating or water on and off whilst not at home is very handy. And it helps saving money too as I don’t need to have the water heated if we’re not in for the weekend.

Best spent I have ever made on a product for home!

The main attraction of kit 2 is that it replaces a standard UK timer controller though the wires need to be transferred connection by connection to the supplied mounting bracket. The setup process did not complete until I switched the mobile WiFi connection back to the home SSID. Either the hub WiFi could not route connection to the web or the on screen instructions are missing this step. So 4 stars only!

Once connected everything worked as expected though switching my router WiFi to N band only made it more responsive especially when relying on web connection via mobile 4G for remote management.

Comparing with a Netatmo system there are no extras like performance graphs or integration of weather station devices but it does the basics well including hot water control which the Netatmo lacks.

Initially I thought I was going to have problems with this product (I did) I live in 1930’s 3 bed bungalow with brick internal walls, my heating system was already fitted with a Drayton wireless RF thermostat, so it was simple to remove and replace the base unit with the smart base unit.
My Boiler is situated at the back of the property in the kitchen, after fitting the radiator stats all seemed well except that some of the units were showing very low Wi-fi signal strength after a day the lounge thermostat lost its connection altogether, I started to worry.
I phoned Drayton and they sent out the free extender, after fitting this and finding the best position for it the signal strength improved and all is well.
Be aware that valve head adapters may be required if your heating system has 28mm valve threads, these can add to the overall cost (approx 10/12 per adapter)

This is a good economical system but it has its faults, the app might confuse some, when it displays the rooms and devices it shows the room name then a line, then the device assigned to the room then the next room name then a line, I’d have thought the room name and device could have been included in the same box. Hopefully these things will get looked at in further updates.

Bottom line I’m happy….so far.

UPDATE. Drayton have updated the app (March) the update states that it has made improvements to the signal strength and this seems to be the case, still a few things about the app UI that I personally don’t like but the system seems to be running very well now

This is a well made and well thought through product. Small details all over the products, the documentation, and packaging show me this has been thoughtfully designed. If you have experience of Drayton TR4 radiator valves – the quality is the same.
I downloaded the full user and installation guides from the internet while awaiting delivery – recommend doing this to aquaint yourself with the product.
It was easy for me to mount the hub and connect up to to existing wiring centre.It was then also very straightforward to link my smartphone to the hub once the app had been dowloaded and installed.
The system works perfectly – there are enough options to allow a wide variety of desired heating and hot water plans. I am pretty tech savvy, but my wife is certainly not, but we both operate the system readily in our individual ways.
The electric radiator valves actually seem to work better than the TR4 valves they replace. I think this is because the valves are fully on (open) until room is warm enough, then fully off. So no time while the valve gradually closes by heating as per my old valves – creating a longer time to bring the room to heat while the last few degrees are warmed by a gradually closing valve.
I have no hesitatation in recommending this product – it works very well, is keenly priced ( cf Nest, Hive etc), easy and clear to control, needs no additional house wiring ( eg no room thermostat wiring).