this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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TBF, over 15 in Germany I've only seen a couple of actual thermostats. The vast, vast majority use a valve on each radiator. There are electronic solutions for the radiators, but sticking a Nest on the wall is going to do nothing for someone unless the customer installs specific hardware that the Nest would have to support
In the Netherlands, almost all houses have a thermostat. I don't know anyone that doesn't have one
I haven't been in many private houses in the Netherlands. I could only speak to Germany
Those "valves" are, in fact, thermostats. They use thermal expansion of wax to open/close the valve to get to their set temperature. Settings 1-5 are 12, 16, 20, 24, 28 Celsius.
Yes, but they are not electronic and they don't reflect the temperature of the room like a wall thermostat does.
They don't (usually) display the temperature but they definitely sense it, and react to it. When the sensed temperature is at or higher than the set temperature, the valve will be closed, if it's lower it will be opened. Mere valves can't do that.
That's what a thermostat is: A negative feedback control system regulating sensed temperature towards a setpoint, and keeping it there. They're simple, inexpensive, reliable. Yes having the temperature sensor right next to the radiator isn't ideal but unless the room is quite large that's not an issue. Also with large rooms you probably have more than one heater and thus thermostat. And you could, in principle, put the thermostat far from the heater but I've never seen that done.
That's what I meant, the device is directly next to the heat source. It's never going to be accurate. And you can tell in the way people use the two systems. In Germany, people don't think about our check the temperature of the room or what the dial is set at, just, I'm cold, turn it up. In the US, the room is set to a specific temperature and just left alone except for day/night, home/away.
But, anyway, the comment was about how they wouldn't work for Nest, and that's true. You'd need a third party solution. It would be hard to sell these and then say, hey, by the way, you can't use it until you go out and buy something from someone else and install it