Uponor hydronic thermostat - what to replace?

CaptainHoneywell

I am wandering around my in-laws home and they have these Uponor hydronic thermostats, which I understand control underfloor hot-water heating. There are 6 of these throughout the house.



QQ: Oh examining the back, it's pretty obvious there are simple two-wire (i.e. no C-wire) deals. Are there good smart thermostat solutions to be used here? Maybe using Z-Wave or something?

Alternatively, depending on whats going on in the basement, is there's chance I could C-wire these things up? What would I even look for?

Jamie Hall

You could... but do you want to? Underfloor -- radiant -- hot water heating responds very slowly, and setbacks and the like are a very very poor idea. For which reason, any sort of "smart" thermostat is not going to do anything for you, except possibly be useful to read the temperature in the space from a distance. Unless you lock out all the smart features, it will, in fact, be worse than useless -- so why bother?

Dave Carpentier

I opted not to install genuine Uponor tstats when we built.. I needed 7 stats and the total bill was going to be silly (20 yrs ago, not sure how they are nowadays). I have various brands, 2 of them are heat only units and the others are heat/cool/fan typical digital ones that I just use in simple heat mode. They seem to work fine.
But.. I always figured the Uponor (or other brand radiant stats) possibly do a better job with anticipating or swing range ?
As I migrate to ODR lower supply temperature water with the new boiler, Im not sure if I should be upgrading my stats or not.

Maybe those oddly yellowed stats can be cleaned back to white with a little elbow grease ?

Jamie Hall

They are sort of... old looking. However, if it is aesthetics, not function, that you are after any good simple thermostat will do, non-programmable, maybe even no batteries!

GGross

For what purpose are you replacing the thermostats?

ChrisJ

Dave Carpentier said:

I opted not to install genuine Uponor tstats when we built.. I needed 7 stats and the total bill was going to be silly (20 yrs ago, not sure how they are nowadays). I have various brands, 2 of them are heat only units and the others are heat/cool/fan typical digital ones that I just use in simple heat mode. They seem to work fine.
But.. I always figured the Uponor (or other brand radiant stats) possibly do a better job with anticipating or swing range ?
As I migrate to ODR lower supply temperature water with the new boiler, Im not sure if I should be upgrading my stats or not.

Maybe those oddly yellowed stats can be cleaned back to white with a little elbow grease ?

First thing it made me think of was cigarettes.
The yellow, and the gloss of it.

I'd try cleaning them with pure ammonia with some good ventilation.

GGross

I would try cleaning them personally. The new uponor stats have a touchscreen, they are not terribly cheap and I will tell you I am having one heck of a time keeping them on my shelf.

CaptainHoneywell

1. I want to replace them because I was wondering if I could control them via centralized hub through a smartphone, rather than going throughout the house and manually tweaking each of them in the winter. My in-laws have mobility issues and memory issues.

2. It was intentionally supposed to look blegh. They stained/painted it to match the wall behind it. I guess that didnt work.

TAG

CaptainHoneywell said:

1. I want to replace them because I was wondering if I could control them via centralized hub through a smartphone, rather than going throughout the house and manually tweaking each of them in the winter. My in-laws have mobility issues and memory issues.

2. It was intentionally supposed to look blegh. They stained/painted it to match the wall behind it. I guess that didnt work.

How often do they want to change them? That's what people were getting at -- radiant does not work well with turning it up and down each day. Does any part of the system have outdoor reset