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Agreed on the "smart" features.

When I moved into my current house we had painters working on one floor. They cranked the newly programmed Nest that was in learning mode to 90 degrees for one night to keep the paint warm while it dried. I, of course, had no idea they had done something that silly, but for weeks afterwards this smart thermostat will crank the heat to 90 and I have to manually turn it down. I'm convinced that it will not be able to unlearn and I'll have to delete the profile and recreate it. I should set it on a schedule as you mention.

Am I the only one who sees "learning" features for things like this as nothing more than overcomplicated ways to engineer in unexpected, unwanted behavior?

My heating/cooling desires are straightforward: unless I'm gone, stay in this range. I am not gone on a predictable schedule, any pattern it picks up will be incorrect.

The only thing the "ugly beige box" doesn't do that I want is remote access, and that would only have been handy a couple of times in the last 11 years I've been in this place. And that is not worth the surveillance or the freakishly buggy behavior some people report.

I'm increasingly convinced the major effect of "AI" will be to ensure that instead of bugs not being fixed because ultimately they aren't considered worth fixing, bugs will not be fixed because nobody understands them.

My homegrown solution is Home Assistant talking to the Lennox API for my system. If my phone moves more than a mile away from the house for more than 30 minutes, then it switches to Away Mode (62℉–82℉), and when I get back within a mile of the house it switches to Home Mode (70℉–78℉).

It works flawlessly. It's been months since I manually tweaked the thermostat. When I do need to override it, it keeps that override in place until the next leave/return event.

I have the same setup but with Ecobee 3 lite instead of Lennox

> I am not gone on a predictable schedule, any pattern it picks up will be incorrect.

Very much this. Either the pattern is predictable which makes it easy to program into a simple thermostat or it is not in which it'll always be wrong in any "smart" thermostat.

Nest and similar are great case studies on the ills of overcomplicating something that should be super simple and reliable.

My mid-90s thermostat is much more reliable. I programmed my schedule into it decades ago and it does its thing with zero confusion ever since then. When I need to override it's just a button press and it automatically resets back to the schedule next cycle. Nothing to go wrong.

I have an Ecobee. Agree with you that the killer feature definitely isn't the self learning stuff.

It's simply:

- Has WiFi (update from phone)

Then also:

- Being able to link with Alexa or similar to do things like turning off when you leave automatically

- Custom programming modes. So instead of setting a temperature at a single time during the day (home/away), you could do (morning/home/home2/afternoon/night/away)

- Can run my fan once an hour automatically for just 5 minutes

- Looks cool

Oh I wish nest could run my fan for 5 minutes but it can do only 15. Touched a raw nerve.

My problem with all these recommendations is literally all of the ones mentioned in this thread as I post this are discontinued or out of production.

Chinese branded and produced ones like Tuya and MoesHouse are really the only option.

Even Honeywell aren’t producing them.

The remote functionality is nice, as is the auto-away part. Those alone make it worthwhile, but I agree that the "smart" functionality leaves much to be desired.

Ours, somehow, has gotten into a state where it thinks we like to bounce between 68 - 70 degrees all day, and doesn't "learn" when I try to adjust it back to the same temperature it was. The weekly schedule has over 70 different temperatures on it and there is no (obvious) way to reset it, so I haven't bothered to go clean it up. I think it could do better there.

You might enjoy some videos from HeatGeek on youtube. Something they cover that if you design the heating system correctly (with appropriate temperature compensation on the boiler) you only need TRVs or thermostats as limiting controls. Which sounds similar to what you are saying, aka set the thermostat to the maximum temperature you would ever want then just let the system run.

TRVs have barely been developed. They’ve existed for about 4 years so far and most Chinese sellers have already gone through 4 - 5 design iterations. Any TRV relying to auto adjust based on temperature of the thermals from the TRV head are wrong. It’s a stupid design and was never going to work.

The only way to reliably set temperature is by reading it elsewhere in the room. With radiators that’s really inconsistent because they’re slow to heat up and slow to cool down if you “over heat”.

Also the window detection feature on any TRV should be disabled. It’ll only cause you issues.

I simply have a “fully open” or “off” control from a Zigbee gateway per room. I’d consider adding sustained motion sensors to each room but to be honest just having a timer to turn them on in the morning, off at bed time and the ability to adjust and view what rooms are on manually from my desk or phone is more than enough.

There’s value in electric TRVs but not in the automating part beyond scheduling.

Thermostatic Radiator Valves for anyone wondering.

The "smart" feature in the UK seems to be add a temperature change every time you adjust the temperature, so your "smart" schedule is just the temperature yo-yoing throughout the day between 14 and 20C based on what you did in winter.

Then to edit it you have the worst possible UI and end up, like you said, turning all off the smart features.

I lived in a Georgian (so built somewhere in 19th century) flat in London with Nest, gas boiler and thermostats on radiators. My experience was similar.

In a while I realized that to make the experience smart would not be to add a different thermostat but to change the windows and have some proper insulation. To get that I had to ditch the whole country tho. It's just abysmal how much gas is fired to heat the streets.

Insulating an old house in the city is expensive but it had been there for 150ish years .. the breakeven from adding insulation would be what? 10 years? 20?

I find even here that the “smart” features basically come down to “I can bump the temperature from my couch” and not much more.

Ever since work from home the “away” hasn’t mattered much and the house has so much thermal mass that letting it cool down a bit when we are actually away doesn’t seem to do much at all.