The valves are asleep all of the time, this is normal. They have to be because the batteries will last two years. They are programmed to wake up every 7.5 minutes to talk with the Genius Hub and then they go straight back to sleep again - it's a tough life being a Genius Radiator Valve! If you make a change on the app and then immediately go to the valve it may take up to 15 minutes for the valve to get this change. If you press a button on the valve than they normally get the new temperature immediately, as you have just woken the valve up and if it is in direct range of the hub then the hub will tell it the new temperature to go to. The reason for a valve's slow reaction time in the first week is because of the 'valve learning'. The Genius Radiator Valve does not know what position to go to be able to give you very accurate control of the temperature of the room, and it needs to learn this. Each time a valve is put into 'mount mode' it starts this learning again. There are 1,000 steps in the electronic valve from the fully closed position to fully open, and it needs to learn about how the radiator responds when it opens. The first few times you set a temperature on the app for the valve to control to, it will use this as an opportunity to learn. The valve will open 5 steps every 60 seconds and measure the temperature of the water (through the valve pin), if there is not a change in temperature of the pin it knows that it needs to open a little more. It does this every minute until it senses a change in temperature of the pin, and it stores this position for next time. This process can take up to 45 minutes, so it can take up to 45 minutes for room to warm up during the first week. Learning this makes the valve very fast to respond once they have learned about the radiator and also helps conserve the battery life, as the valve goes straight to the right position it knows it needs to control to. Some times the valve will try and learn on its own in the first week, even when you have not set a temperature on the app. So don't be alarmed if seemingly randomly a radiator gets warm and then cool again during the first week of the system being installed, or when a valve has been mounted on a radiator, this is just the valve learning. This makes it extremely accurate and quiet when controlling to a set point temperature in normal operation, and as the valve body wears (the part that the water flows through) the Genius Radiator Valve will be continuously learning and adjusting its position to compensate for this. See this explanation of the valve learning if it takes much longer than you expect or continues on more than a week: Genius Radiator Valve taking a long time to warm up - outflow side of the plumbing.