Get Smart and cut costs with these valves
Smart valves will help you cut those rising bills
I’ve been an advocate of the smart home for some time as it can make for a safer, cleaner and healthier house. A smart home, can also save you a few bob. Netatmo is a French company and their products are always well designed but functional. Their Smart Thermostat is no different and I’ve been using one for a while, but I was waiting anxiously for Netatmo to release the next part of their home-heating solution, smart radiator valves.
They can be bought in single packs, or a starter-pack for €200. They are designed to work with the Netatmo thermostat so I was ready to get started when the valves arrived, but you could have the thermostat installed on the same day.
The starter-pack has two valves with a bag of adapter rings to make sure they fit your rads. There’s also the Netatmo Relay, with a mains power plug and AA batteries for the valves themselves are included.
Firstly I needed to download the free Netatmo Energy app. Then, I needed to connect the Netatmo Relay. This is sort of a bridge, and wirelessly talks to all the radiator valves. I placed it in the hallway, more or less equidistant from all my radiator valves, and close enough to my home Wi-Fi base station. It’s an easy process, and once plugged it in a light began to blink to let me know it was active.
If you have a newer home, or one where you’ve had the radiators upgraded in the last ten years or so, you’ll probably have thermostatic radiator valves. The Netatmo valves are designed to replace these, but if you have older, manual valves you should talk to a plumber. I inserted batteries in to the Netatmo valves and a Wi-Fi light blinked to let me know they were connecting to the relay.
Then, using the Netatmo app I selected the room type and named the valves. There’s all manner of adapter rings packaged with the Netatmo valves and I used one of them to make the new valves fit. It took just ten minutes to replace the old valves, but I had called on professional help to supervise.
As you fit the valves you’ll notice the temperature flashes up on a small screen on the valve. That’s useful, but the magic of this gadget is using the app, or even your voice to control home heating. Turning on your boiler with a smart thermostat is great, but the valves give you ability to control the temperature in each room.
For instance, you can schedule the radiators in the bedrooms to maintain a low temperature while you’re in bed, instead heating up the room an hour before you retire for the evening. They even have open window detection, and can adjust output based on that.
While fitting the valves is easy, they do need the smart thermostat to work, and I felt much more comfortable having a registered plumber looking after the fitting.
Netatmo say users can save an average of 37% on heating bills. While I can’t be sure the savings will be that much, unquestionably my heating bill has fallen since I’ve installed them.