Issues

[Apples]

As domestic and commercial gas engineer gas engineer I have noticed a few issues which I think Schneider should sort out and if they did it would make Drayton wiser a much better system

1) no installer level of access to adjust hysteresis, apply offsets or adjust heat curves when using open therm, they seem to have designed it on a house in the ideal world and not the real world, radiators are not always perfectly located or perfectly balanced not every boiler is perfectly sized, not every house perfectly insulated. 

2) no ability to adjust cycles per hour other than to change the fuel type! For example gas is preset at 6 c/ph which they claim is an “ industry standard “ this may be the case on newer boilers that have 10:1 turndown or even 13:1 turndown on some of the latest appliances but even boilers that are just 7-9 years old you will find the turndown ratio to be more like 6:1 or 5:1 which means the lowest they could modulate is around 20% this causes boilers to cycle a lot which bad regardless of what they say it would be like sitting in your car and constantly turning the ignition on and starting the car briefly then turning it off, it’s just not healthy. 

3) the room thermostat seems to show the flame symbol even though the ambient temperature has met the set temperature, it doesn’t show the flame symbol in the app and it doesn’t call for heat constantly so the thermostat is acting accurately in that sense but the flame stays on the thermostat I can only assume this might be because the ambient temperature is within the hysteresis limits so still shows the flame symbol but that’s a guess. 

4) I’ve noticed on the apps current update when you go to change the room order on the main screen where it shows all your rooms the screen just goes blank rather than letting you move the rooms into a different order I’m assuming this is just a bug with the app but needs sorting. 

overall I’ve managed to get the wiser system to work semi well in my own house this is my advice : 

1) leave towel rails without smart trvs if you have any to act as bypass if your boiler doesn’t have a high turndown ratio this will limit boiler cycling ( yes they will come on when other rooms come but better for your boiler in m opinion) 

2) if you have a smart trv in the same room as the thermostat remove it and replace with mechanical although Drayton say the room stat will take precedence when in the same room as a smart trv I found in my experience they seem to fight each other, My stat was calling for heat but my smart trv in the same room was closed which obviously defeats the object because that zone was constantly calling and not meeting demand, again this is my experience so not everyone might have found that. 

3) Again if your boiler doesn’t have a high turndown ratio then set your fuel type for oil even if your boiler is gas this will put the wiser system into 3 cycles per hour you will find that by the time the boiler comes back on every 20mins there will be more rooms calling for heat and the boiler will stay on for slightly longer and cycle less 

4) set your radiator thermostats 1 to 2 degrees higher than what you want the room to be I’m not sure what funky algorithm they use to calculate the temp in the centre of the room but it’s not incredibly accurate, it would be better if they sent out with the radiator thermostats a small screen less box with ambient sensor in it that wirelessly connects to the radiator valve and could be placed in a more central location away from the heat source this would give much more accurate readings for the radiator valves and would be incredibly easy and cheap for them to implement.