Using a mobile phone to control your home heating and hot water – via smart thermostats – is becoming more popular due to ease of use, cost efficiencies and reliability.

Your mobile phone gives you direct access to these controls, even without a data signal – via SMS text of specific commands.

Systems such as: Climote, Nest, Hive Active and Netatmo help you remotely control heating, hot water systems and sometimes more.

This gives you direct remote control over important functions like boosting your heating when required or activating existing heating programmes, without being physically present in your home.

Are smart thermostats suitable for business premises?

The short answer is, no.

Why aren’t smart thermostats suitable?

Smart thermostats are better suited in domestic homes, as houses aren’t equipped with a building energy management systems (BEMS).

A BEMS is more complex than a smart thermostat due to its wider range of features, protection measures and the breadth of equipment connected to it.

Protection measures

If installed at a business premises containing a BEMS or HVAC controls, the smart thermostat may bypass frost protection and high and low pressure switches, which are designed to protect equipment in the following cases.

1. Frost protection (low outside temperatures) – the outside frost stat turns on all pumps to circulate water.
2. Frost protection (low water temperatures) – immersion stat fires up the boiler to raise the water temperature.
3. High pressure – failure in the heating expansion system, detected by the high pressure switch. This ensures boilers don’t fire, as they’ll add further pressure to the system by heating the water and increasing expansion.
4. Low pressure – a leak in the system, detected by the low pressure switch. This ensures boilers do not fire or top-up the system by introducing fresh water into a closed system loop.

Advice

We advise that you examine all considerations carefully, in consultation with a BEMS service provider. Thermodial provide maintenance of BEMS systems as well as installation of such systems through HVAC upgrades. We invite you to take a closer look at these services.