St Luke’s Community Centre in Islington is a vibrant, inclusive space supporting local residents with activities, advice services and community cookery projects.

With a wide range of age groups using the building throughout the day, maintaining comfortable and stable temperatures is essential. However, inconsistent heating control was leading to regular complaints and frustration for both users and staff.

The challenge

The centre was experiencing:

  • Frequent heating complaints, often daily, with some rooms too hot and others too cold.

  • Limited control at radiator (emitter) level.

  • Difficulty balancing comfort and energy use across a multi-use building.

  • A need for simple remote monitoring without replacing existing plant or installing a full new BMS.

  • A desire to give room users some local control, without allowing wasteful extremes.

The goal was clear: improve comfort, reduce complaints and gain better visibility of performance, without major disruption or complex system upgrades.

The solution

St Luke’s implemented a pilot phase using Sontay LoRaWAN Smart Radiator Thermostats (TRVs) alongside the Sontay Tower platform.

LoRaWAN smart radiator thermostats

25 Sontay LoRaWAN TRVs were installed across key areas of the building.

Each TRV provides:

  • Manual rotary adjustment for local control.

  • Configurable comfort and setback modes.

  • Weekly scheduling and automatic climate control.

  • Open window detection to prevent energy waste.

  • Tamper and child lock features to avoid unwanted changes.

This delivered smart, room-level temperature control without replacing the existing heating system.

Sontay Tower (Wattsense technology)

To manage the system, St Luke’s deployed the Sontay Tower — an independent, cloud-managed building management solution based on Wattsense Tower technology.

The Tower combines gateway, PLC, modem and edge functionality into a single device, providing:

  • A web-based “mini BMS” with dashboards, schematics and graphs.

  • Alarms, logs and live data for all connected devices.

  • Secure remote access from any location via subscription service.

The LoRaWAN TRVs connect directly to the Tower, allowing the heating upgrade to sit alongside existing controls without a full BMS replacement.

How it works day to day

All TRVs are onboarded to the Tower console, where devices are clearly labelled by room and shown within simple graphics and floor plans.

Operators can log in at any time to:

  • View live room temperatures and valve positions.

  • Track trends over time using intuitive graphs.

  • Adjust setpoints, modes and schedules remotely.

Local adjustment on each TRV is deliberately banded. Occupants can gently increase or decrease the temperature within a defined range, but cannot overheat or overcool a space.

The Tower’s alarm and logging functions allow staff to identify issues early, shifting from reactive complaint handling to proactive management.

The results

The impact has been significant:

  • Heating complaints have reduced from almost daily to “almost never” in pilot areas.

  • Staff receive far fewer calls to “come and fix the heating.”

  • Users appreciate having limited local control that suits different activities.

  • Operators value the ability to log in remotely rather than visiting individual radiators.

Following the success of the pilot, the centre is now planning to install a further 18 TRVs to extend the benefits across more of the building.

Key benefits

  • Independent, cloud-based Sontay Tower platform with built-in mini BMS functionality.

  • Full remote visibility of room temperatures and TRV status.

  • Clear dashboards, graphics and logs for easy performance monitoring.

  • LoRaWAN smart TRVs delivering emitter-level control and improved comfort.

  • Banded local adjustment that keeps users comfortable while preventing waste.

  • Significant reduction in heating complaints.

  • Simple scalability for future expansion.

This project demonstrates how wireless smart radiator control and a lightweight, cloud-based management platform can transform comfort and visibility in a busy community building — without the need for a full BMS replacement.