Which Smart Device - EcoTec Plus 940

dave_44

dave_44

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I'd like some advice on what I should connect to my new boiler please

I'm getting a Vaillant EcoTec Plus 940 installed and I don't think my plumber would mind me saying that he's a great plumber and corgi engineer but he hates all that smart boll-ox.

I currently have a Nest connected to the old boiler but I don't mind spending money on a new system if it gives me better control and more smarts, I love tech and new toys.

I've read about the myVaillantt Connect Smart Gateway, should I be asking him to fit one of these? Should it be in addition to the Nest or instead of the Nest? What functionality will I gain by purchasing it vs using the Nest I already own?

I also have Nest Protect so I like the functionality that my Protects can tell the Heatlink to disable the boiler in the event of carbon monoxide being detected, will I lose this if I go with myVaillant? I can possibly replace the functionality with a routine in Home Assistant.

Thanks
Dave
 
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Vaillant controls will work better with a Vaillant boiler, aside from mains voltage controls, then I’d say the Nest is better
 
I spoke with Vaillant technical support and not unsurprisingly they were very pro the myVaillant solution but whilst he claimed it would be more efficient he didn't have an answer for the fact that Nest home/away awareness means that the home is only heated when someone is home (or is on the way home).

Unless I'm missing anything obvious I can't find any benefit of using the myVaillant over the Nest solution
 
dave_44 said:
I spoke with Vaillant technical support and not unsurprisingly they were very pro the myVaillant solution but whilst he claimed it would be more efficient he didn't have an answer for the fact that Nest home/away awareness means that the home is only heated when someone is home (or is on the way home).

Unless I'm missing anything obvious I can't find any benefit of using the myVaillant over the Nest solution
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The Vaillant will modulate down, the Nest will likely not. Think of it as Nest Driving to the shop down the road at 70 miles per hour from start and the Vaillant as driving there being more efficient at say 20 miles per hour - both will get the end result, one uses less fuel
 
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dave_44 said:
he didn't have an answer for the fact that Nest home/away awareness means that the home is only heated when someone is home (or is on the way home).
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Really, it is a load of rubbish as there is no way to set the distance from home. It allows you to select Eco and Comfort and it will auto go to Eco if no one has walked past the thermostat activating the PIR and the mobile phones are not showing as being at home. When the gales took out the local EE mast, my central heating went to Eco mode, unless I went to look at the thermostat, when it would switch to Comfort mode, so it took me a whole day to work out why the house was cold, and I disabled the geofencing on Nest Gen 3.

And coming home it swaps to Comfort mode far too late. I am nearly in the house before the heating fires up.

I was told Nest works with Energenie MiHome TRV heads, they do use the same app, but one it works the wrong way around, we want the TRV to tell the wall thermostat what to do, not the wall thermostat change all the TRV setting, and it does not change them any way there is in real terms no connection between the TRV heads and the Nest wall thermostat, I had to turn them all back to manual.

Nest USA has sensors you can place in rooms, but not released for Nest Europe. Nest Mini speakers work great, and I use Nest to control a lot of my automation, but Nest heating is useless. Nearly every other make is better, Hive will no accept a demand for heat if thermostat is at 22ºC or above and is on/off only, Tado UK has started bringing analogue controls back, but most are like Hive on/off only, Drayton Wiser and Honeywell Evohome have OpenTherm, but as to if you need analogue controls I don't know, not sure what Vaillant uses, but what we want who ever does the system is a fast recovery time as the geofencing detects a phone is coming home. So we want a schedule heating rooms in the order they will be used in.

This does work, with a simply times return home, but not found one which will work with geofencing. So on return home first room used is say kitchen, then dinning room, then living room, so as long as the radiators are large enough we can set the heating to heat in that order, but to heat a room quickly we need to move the air around the room, so looking at fan assisted radiators, and the fan assisted radiator does not have TRV's, just a 5 speed fan, and also no restriction to water flow, so want series plumbed no parallel and a building management system to control them.

Once one sees the price of Myson iVector you will realise why hardly used with domestic, so the big question is how far do you want to go with the control? Theory sounds good, until you see the price.
 
There isn't anything smart about nest other than their marketing.

At the end of the day its what control would you preffer?

the sensoROOM control will give weather compensation which modulates the flow temeprature of the boiler to maintain as low flow temp as possible for the given weather, this gets the boiler condensing more (Condensing boilers don't condense at high temps, therefor waste energy)
It also is 2-way communication, if the boiler pressure gets low it will alert you on the phone, if their is a fault you get an alert on the phone, you can see energy usage breakdown on the app between heating and hot water, and if you have the likes of home assistant theres some fancy api stuff you can do to for more indepth monitoring and data logging. With a nest you can turn the heating on. or off.
 
Oh, other thing, the 940 has the hot water storage tanks. They need to be kept heated 24/7 with other controls. With the Vaillant control you can time it so they only stay heated at certain times (i.e. when you plan to use hot water) You would still get hot water outside of these times, just take a moment or so longer for it to get heated up and going.
 
As above, the sensoCOMFORT / MyVaillant system really is best for this. Nest will just demand 100% or nothing from the boiler, the Vaillant controls will request the appropriate power level to achieve and maintain your desired room temperature
 
Thanks everyone that's really useful, especially about home assistant integration. New toy it is then.

With regards to your experience @ericmark with the nest, that certainly differs from mine, with the combination of 4 nest protects, thermostat and 4 mobiles in the home, in the many years I've used it I've never had a problem with it not knowing we were at home. Even in the situation of the EE mast or other network being down the nest app determines whether you're at home by knowing both local cell tower and your home wifi with gps as a backup.

Either way, myVaillant it is with home assistant integration here I come, cheers all
 
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