Centralized Radiant Control

vready

Hello,



I am the homeowner on a new construction project that has a six-zone radiant floor heating system.  My installer is recommending a combination of Tekmar 538 and 542 thermostats to control our system, however, my impression is that the user-interface is not very intuitive, and the 542 master unit lacks the ability to centrally manage the temperature range and setback settings in all of the other zones.



I'm not looking for an Internet-enabled system or a whole-home automation solution (although having a future upgrade path would be good).  I simply want a user-friendly centralized thermostat that is well-suited to controlling a 6 zone radiant floor system.



Can anyone recommend some good alternatives to consider?



Thank you!

NRT_Rob

if you want

to control multiple thermostats from one control, then you do need an internet capable system: that's networking.



You're going to have to learn the interface of any system you choose, and what you describe is actually pretty good stuff. the 542 can run schedules that all the other thermostats can follow. so you define, say, the "occ" and "unocc" temp for the slave thermostats, and the 542 can toggle between them on a schedule.



you can also use all 541s with remote sensors, and keep all thermostats in a central location if you prefer. or 542s if you are doing floor sensing as well as air sensing.



there are other systems but they would all have the same limitations until you get to internet capable networking systems, as far as I know.