Z-Wave Compatible Thermostats question

[gdselzer]

Hello all, I am about to embark on building my first LinuxMCE system. I am very excited to get a system up and running.  I am building primarily for climate control, lighting control, and security through Z-wave using the Tricklestar dongle.  I have about 12 years experience working with Linux as an OS, so I am fairly comfortable in the environment.  With that said, all else held equal I'd rather work with hardware that works out of the box rather than having to do lots of hacking and tweaking.  I am hoping the community can point me in the right direction.

The house has radiant floor heat with five zones.  I'd like to be able to set schedules for each as well as remotely increase/decrease the temperature (in Fahrenheit would be great...)  I am looking at two different Z-wave thermostats, the GE Security IS-ZW-TSTAT-100 and the 2gig Z-STAT.  I am looking for 1. any info or insights as to how as easy it will be to get these functional and 2. guidance on which one to get.  Through e-bay, the GE one is literally half the price of the 2gig (about $250 savings across 5 thermostats.)  While saving $250 would be nice, I'm also not going to sacrifice my time and sanity for that amount of money if the 2gig will be much easier to deal with.  If someone would like to advise I look at a different thermostat all together, I'm open to that as well.

Thanks for any help.

[posde]

* posde wonders why people would remote control radiant floor heating, given the latency of such heating.

[gdselzer]

Posde, for exactly that reason.  I am away from home for extended periods and want to keep the temp low in order to save energy.  It takes a long time to bring the temp back up to a comfortable level.  It would be nice to be able to remote in and raise the temp a couple hours before I get home.  Know what I mean? 

I am still hoping for some insights into thermostats.  Thanks

[posde]

* posde only uses KNX, which can control floorheating. No idea about Z-Wave

[totallymaxed]

Posde, for exactly that reason.  I am away from home for extended periods and want to keep the temp low in order to save energy.  It takes a long time to bring the temp back up to a comfortable level.  It would be nice to be able to remote in and raise the temp a couple hours before I get home.  Know what I mean? 

I am still hoping for some insights into thermostats.  Thanks

We use HRT4-ZW's for water based underfloor heating installations; http://www.horstmann.co.uk/central-heating.php#Room
The HRT4-ZW's comprise of a room stat linked to a motorised valve controller by ZWave. There must be a US compliant ZWave product that does something similar.

Hope the above is of help.

All the best

Andrew