Electric heating recommendations? (UK)

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I’m just getting started with home automation. We live in a flat which has individual electric radiators in each room. The property has no gas, and no central heating control.

The radiators are 20 years old and aren’t particularly efficient, and they don’t have timers, just thermostats.

I’d like to replace them all with better models, and also to make them smart. At least to set a smarter programme, but also with integration with SmartThings or similar.

Does anyone have any recommendations? I can’t find any radiators with ZigBee/z-wave built in. There are a few with WiFi or Bluetooth but all of them look a bit flaky.

The alternatives I’ve seen are to get dumb radiators like the ones we have, and then using either Lightwave or Genius Hub switches to control them, though I’m not sure how effective these are.

We’re also going to replace our electric water heater with something like a MegaFlo - if anyone is controlling one of those, I’d also love ideas!

Many thanks,
Nick.

2

most sockets arnt designed to swich that kind of load, however i would look at someting like this, never used it myself but should be able to control the radiator with smartthings as the timer/schdual/temprature

3

Fibaro have relays that can take the load of individual electric heaters, up to 2.5kw for the max, and I’ve used these well with electric heating which then used a thermostat on the device.

If you are open to some additional wiring the pilot wire system could be another way to go, where the signal to control the heating is sent down a pilot wire. Qubino have modules available for this, e.g. the ZMNHUD1 . Acova are one of the big manufacturers of these types of radiators. but I don’t think the system is widely used in the UK.