HoneywellT6 Wired Smart Thermostat - Works with Amazon Alexa

The world of 'smart' house heating controls is huge and confusing - and I include myself in this even though as a Marine Chief Engineer I have worked on high voltage construction vessels that would confuse military experts.The market seems to boil down to two types. The first type is probably the most common which is the type that simply starts and stops your boiler according to the settings along with all the other bells and whistles chucked onto it. The other type is more sophisticated and also relies upon individual radiator controls.Both of these do not entire work for those of us who had a dual zone plus water tank system fitted.There are also other issues of course. If you add up the cost of WIFI rad valves across your house one has to question the bonkers claim that these will save you money. Honestly, even after fitting this I'm 100% certain I will never get back the money I've spent on the miniscule fuel savings.I'll digress here a bit as well. I'm a marine engineer and as such I've worked on VLCC steam ships in my yoof. Steam ships are basically big thermodynamic experiments that use epic amounts of fuel. We would easily burn through 150 tonnes a day, so any saving no matter how small is easily seen and useful. And this is how we do it. Turn the temperature down. No, really. What we did was open up the main steam valves fully. 100% open. This is important because throttling is really inefficient. Then we dropped the main boiler pressure down to match the turbines with the control valve fully open. This is the most efficient way of not using fuel.If you take a house, every time you fit a thermostatic valve you are throttling water and this is inefficient becasue in order to maintain control temperature you need a high water temperature. And heating water is a logarithmic curve. The higher the temperature the more fuel you need un an upward curve. This is why underfloor heating is efficient. A large area with water heated to 36c not the 65c for rads.So what I do is not throttle my rads. Instead I have turned my water temp down to 57c which is above the level required for killing legionnaires but requires significantly less fuel to maintain.Anyway, going back to controls I could not find anything that met my needs exactly because a there are no dual zone + water smart systems.What there is, is this. Becasue basically what all these smart controls come down to is a remote controlled switch and this is just that. A typcial dual zone system consists of a dual zone controller - which simply puts power onto the mechcanical thermostat at set times. This thermostat will then open up the zone valve which will send a signal to the boiler to start.So, if you have a dual zone system, ignore the blurb in the Honeywell instructions, because its about direct boiler control and, well you can't do that immediately.What I did was install this in place of the thermostat in one zone and using the 240v feed to the controller power the hub unit - which the instructions say to mount close to the boiler and which I didn't. I of course played around with this on my bench to make sure I had it right then temp mounted it once I figured the best way to do it. See the pictures.You then set your original controller to 24/7 on for the zone this is controlling. From then on, this smart controller will control the temperature to your settings which you program in. Of course if like me you have got one zone working on this then inevitably you will want to do both and that means another controller. Once I do that I'll rewire the system and remove the original controller complete.Now, the only bugbear I had was setting this onto my wifi network which took me an age. The blurb is not 100% clear and I was getting frustrated. Bottom line is that you have to use your phone/tablet to log onto the Honeywell wifi - then step back using the back button. It is noted but easy to miss so read very carefully the information and carefully check your app. It does work well once you understand it.Anyway, once you are on line you can do the usual. Set up a calendar for on/off, geographic operation which means it will start up or stop depending how close you are to your house and of course allow manual remote control.A quick word about geographical operation. If like me you have a lousy mobile signal at your house you might have fitted a mobile booster that uses your internet. Which also means your location isn't your house, so you have to go and find an actual signal close to your gaff to set that up.Once fitted its a neat system that is easy to use looks smart and allows excellent control.

This Internet enabled thermostat has many great features but two key ones are:+ Works with both Apple HomeKit and Amazon Alexa. (Great for families with both Apple and Android devices.)+ Can be fully programmed and controlled directly via the thermostat touchscreen or via the Lyric App.Another great feature, which is as a result of the second key point, is the unit will remain fully functional as a programable thermostat even without an Internet or Wi-Fi connection. Few other units can say the same, especially many of the other popular models on the market.The unit is an ideal replacement for those with a combination boiler and can eliminate the current time clock and directly replace the current thermostat. However, even those with a fully pumped system (valves control if the boiler heats the radiators or the hot water in a cylinder) may appreciate this unit if they are just replacing a thermostat and don't need to control the hot water separately (still controlled by an existing time clock). This was my situation partly driven by my wife wanting to be in full control of the heating but not having to rely on an App. Those who have technophobes in the family will appreciate this point!Wiring up any thermostat is not a simple task unless you are competent or employ a electrical or heating engineer. Although on the face of it this Honeywell looks complicated it is reasonably straight forward if you know what you are doing. I have added a image of how I connected my unit and this may assist others in installing their own unit. Providing your current thermostat has three wires (must include a Neutral wire) then replacing the existing thermostat with the provided control box is easy, especially if you opted for the T6r wireless version. If the wired regular T6 then you will need a bit more work to run some extra connections but again this is not too difficult, especially when the thermostat is wired to a wiring centre. Honeywell supply additional wiring diagrams on their website which may prove useful.Once installed and powered up the setup process, using the App (on a phone or tablet), is quite simple and I had it configured with my desired switching times and temperatures quite soon. I noticed not long after it was setup a firmware update was pushed to the thermostat via the Internet, so it is nice to see updates are automatic. I did not try but I think you could make the setup only via the thermostat touchscreen but of course without any Internet or Wi-Fi setup included.Once I showed my wife how to use it via the touchscreen she actually commented as how it seemed better to use and see what was going on than our old programmable thermostat. I then added the Lyric App to her Android phone and showed how simple it was to use. She said she would probably not use it but a few weeks later she was out and wanted to check she had turned the heating down after she went out so used the App and confirmed the setting! Now she is a convert to Internet enabled thermostats!We also like the fact the thermostat display is backlit all the time and have found it provides great low level nighttime illumination in the hall to prevent accidents in the dark (you can set the light level via the touchscreen). The icing on the cake has been that the temperature regulation has been far better than the old thermostat, which of course is the primary function of the unit.Overall the Lyric T6 has provided all the features I wanted and would recommended it to anyone. Just be sure to read all the literature available to ensure you know it will work with your current system and you have the skills to fit or employ someone who does.

Unreliable connection to Apple home hub. Worked fine for first year but Honeywell have not kept up to date with changes to home hub. If you look on Reddit there are hundreds of unresolved complaints. Honeywell blame Apple despite plastering their boxes with HomeKit compatible. Would not recommend. Also I suspect not very energy efficient. Just fires up boiler every 10/15 mins to maintain temp. Costly approach. Shame but I’d go with another company who does what they are doing with technology.