Compared to the old boiler (30 years old and DRINKING oil by the tanker) this thing is quiet, sips at its fuel and as an added bonus even has a working thermostat and controller. Ok... the old one basically was a boiler that, through failures occurring before I bought this house, had been reduced to something that produced heat only when someone physically turned it on and did so by bankrupting the poor owner in the process.
The plumbers gave me a choice of thermostats and I plumped for the nice wireless one. No complicated install and it given the thing cost £160 it should be damn good right?
WRONG.
The DT10RF MkII is useless. I mean it does its job but its only capable of programming the central heating (why not the hot water timings as well? My boiler is not accessible from the main house and to go adjust it physically... defeats the object of having the shiny wireless controller!) and you have to put up with the same heating schedule on the weekends as during the week (without adjusting things anyway). Add to that the missing 'give me heat for an hour' button that I've seen on the most basic controllers and you've got yourself the most expensive piece of junk you've ever seen.
Annoyingly the next model up has the proper individual day programming and only costs £20 more... something I was going to rant at the plumbers for until, as part of my Googling, I came across a fantastic page...
http://www.stevenhale.co.uk/main/2013/08/home-automation-reverse-engineering-a-worcester-bosch-dt10rf-wireless-thermostat/
Steven had issues with signal and with the optimiser feature and set about replacing it with something he built himself.
Now I'm a software developer with a very healthy interest in engineering (built a couple internet enabled cat feeders for example) and seeing the faults in my own thermostat and reading a webpage describing how to build a replacement from scratch... well thats just a big red flag to a bull shaped Roger...
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