UK heating experts win a long-running battle on boiler efficiency

Is your smart thermostat really just a bit dumb?

Photo by Heiko Ruth.

I remember the first time I heard about it. There were so-called smart heating controls all around the UK that weren’t doing their jobs properly – because they were unable to fully adjust the output of gas boilers.

Jo Alsop, co-founder of independent consumer advice organisation The Heating Hub, first explained this to me a couple of years ago. Basically, it turned out that many smart controls couldn’t speak the right language in order to interface fully with the gas boilers to which they were connected.

It stopped me in my tracks. I had, quite recently at the time, bought a smart heating system myself. Alsop had just told me that it was flawed. None of the previous research I had done before making my purchase had revealed this to me.

Thousands of other homes in the UK probably had the same problem, I mused, though some people will have purchased a fully compatible control for their boiler, whether they realised it or not.

But this nightmare could be about to end.