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I have a heating system that has a separate "smart" heater in each room, each controlled with a separate thermostat (a simple one, like Honeywell T410A1013). What I would like to do is to convert to a single point of control - a single thermostat controlling all heaters.

Short of completely re-wiring the heaters, are there any reasonably affordable options to replace the existing thermostats with some kind of wireless "receivers" that would be controlled from a single device (fancy stuff like controlling via the Internet is not required)?

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I still want to have the part with the thermometer in every room, just like it is now. What I would like to change is the need to set the target temperature in each room separately. I did not mean that I would want to have a single thermometer sensor for the entire house.

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Alexander L. Belikoff
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    What's your motivation for wanting to have them all controlled by a single thermostat? Having a control in each room means that every room is set to the right temperature — probably more efficient, definitely more even heat from room to room. – Hank Apr 11 '13 at 03:39

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It sounds like you have baseboard heaters or similar. Since there is a heat source in each room, it doesn't make sense to control them all together (eg, every room on, or every room off) and since you also want a thermometer in every room, I assume that means you still want individual rooms on/off as needed. You just want to be able to set the whole house to some temperature, and not have to run around to every room to do so.

I am going to guess the motivation for this is that you turn the heat down at night or while you're gone for the day to save energy. I'd suggest the best way to do this is to replace all your therostats with programmable themostats. You still have to program them individually, but you only have to do it once. I have a forced-air system in my house with one thermostat, but it's programmed that I essentially never have to touch it, except for on holidays where I'm home during weekdays. A quick internet search shows it's very easy to find multi-packs of programmable baseboard thermostats for a decent price.

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You'd actually have a lot of flexibility with this setup. For example, if you only use a bedroom or two and the living room after 10pm, you could have the heat in other rooms turn off earlier.

For fancier setup, you could use something like the NEST thermostat or a wifi-enabled thermostat (eg, Radio-Thermostat CT300 or Filtrete model). I have the CT300 at home, and the website and iOS app allow multiple thermostats to be connected: in addition to being programmable (and thus not generally needing to touch it), you could obtain your centralized control of all of them, albeit at a higher cost than simple programmable ones.

Radio-Thermostat iOS App

gregmac
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    In my case, it is a summer house which I like to keep at relatively low temp when I am not there and get it back to about 70 when my family is visiting. Having multiple NESTs (or similar ones) is somewhat of an overkill, both effort- and price-wise. I was just curious if there is something more specific for this purpose (e.g. a set of Xbee based thermostats remotely controlled from a single controller). Programmable thermostat would not help as the heaters themselves are "smart" in their power consumption. – Alexander L. Belikoff Apr 11 '13 at 20:44
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I've been pondering your question recently, and came across this thread while Googling it.

I think there might be some off-the-shelf options out there now. For example, the Honeywell Prestige IAQ thermostat is set up to communicate wirelessly (via the RedLINK protocol) with local "EConnect" controllers on your baseboard heaters. You can controll the Prestige IAQ via its own apps, and it looks like perhaps ?also? with wifi home remotes like the Lutron app.

I don't know how expensive or realistic these options are but this is something I'm exploring.

Ryan Budney
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    I'm currently considering Sinope (http://www.sinopetech.com/en/). They offer wireless 2-wire thermostats that replace the old-style rotary ones and communicate to an internet gateway. All thermostats can then be controlled over the net. Based on what they claim that might solve all the problems. – Alexander L. Belikoff Sep 11 '15 at 04:53
  • It looks as thought there might be a lot of new technology along these lines. Caleo by CaSA is another similar product. https://casaconnect.com/en/ – Ryan Budney Sep 11 '15 at 05:15
  • I contacted a Honeywell rep about this question (for my specific baseboard setup) and they suggested the E-connect thermostat with Redlink YTL9160AR unit. – Ryan Budney Sep 11 '15 at 18:32