It’s the first time I live in a house that has thermostats (one per floor) to control the heating. They are not ‘smart’ thermostats, but over the years and after fiddling with many useless ‘smart’ devices, you tend to appreciate the simplicity of a good old ‘dump’ device. Now that it’s winter and I started using them I realized I don’t like them very much.
Temperature Difference
You get to control the temperature of the house or floor based on a temperature sensor located in one spot in the house. That’s not very accurate, is it? The north/south orientation of the house means that the difference between the south and north facing rooms might be 1-2 degrees C that cannot possibly be captured by a thermostat.
Location Matters
You need to be sure you place the thermostat in a central place in the house, where it is away from heating / cold sources and also near to a place where ideally you will be spending most of your time indoors. If not, good luck trying to move it somewhere else. In my case, the thermostat is placed next to the house entrance (!) so if you open the door the thermostat is the first one to get hit by either a cold current (not good)
Unnecessary heating
Having one single thermostat (or a few) means that you will be heating parts of the house that you don’t want to be heated. In other words, you don’t have granular control over the heated areas. There might be rooms that are not occupied so they don’t need to be heated.
Conclusion
I may be in the minority, but I simply don’t like them. In my previous residence I had TRVs (Thermostatic Radiator Valves). They give you control over each radiator, very easy to use by everyone and you can heat up your house according to your specific needs. They are even dumper than the thermostat but hey… they work. Take it from somebody that had so much faith in smart devices that ended up with a hefty heating bill in the middle of summer when the smart devices that controlled the heating, malfunctioned while he was on 1-month vacations.
Maybe I am missing something so please enlighten me!
