CH status panel?

I have long had an urge to buy or build a small panel with a row of LED's which shows the status of my CH system and wonder if anyone has done something similar? Idea is to be able to quickly diagnose any problems, so I can fix them. I have long since forgotten the wiring plan type.

I have - a condensing boiler, stored hot water, radiators on a wireless room stat, LCD time clock, pump and three port valve. All the wiring and the wireless stat receiver, terminate in the airing cupboard, where the tank and its stat are located.

I'm thinking - LED's for pump running, call for space heating, call for water heating, valve position indication, time clock says heating on, time clock says water on.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield
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There is one just like that at my parents house. Which is just as well since it is insanely complicated with multiple zones, two 3 way ported valves, three thermostats and three independent clock timers together with a bucket load of mechanical engineers relay based logic from well before I understood electronics. Only the neon indicator lamps and a multimeter allow me to figure out what is going on and to bodge round the various failed or failing components to keep it all running. The circuit diagram for this system if there ever was one is long gone.

The weakness is that you have to run a wire back to the indicator panel from every point where you want to know the actual status.

When it was fully operational it could do hot water, upstairs, downstairs or automatically switch to both and then upstairs at set times choosing the right thermostat(s) accordingly. It was advanced for its time but a bit over engineered and more like a process controller.

Neon indicators are much easier where mains voltages are concerned. You don't have to drop so much voltage in the load resistor that way.

Sensing actual valve position is one I would recommend since most failures I have seen have been from one seizing up or motor failure possibly triggered by water leakage. There is a nice stalagmite under one of them now probably been growing since the 1970's.

I wouldn't bother with "pump running" as you can hear it in a quiet house without needing an indicator lamp.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Martin Brown submitted this idea :

You can use a suitable diode, cap and resistor to run an LED on mains.

I will agree, 90% of our faults over the years, involved the valve actuator, which is why I keep a spare to hand, ready to just plug in.

Ours is all but inaudible, apart from when it first starts to run.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Shortly after I moved in here in 1977 I made a control panel with four neons, two to indicate that the CH and DHW were on, and the other two to indicate when the cylinder stat and room stat were calling for heat. You really should take a little time to trace out your wiring first though.

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Reply to
Graham.

I want to do something similar.

I was thinking either:

a) Cheap and quick: Load of GRID neons in a shop lightswitch style panel with dymo labels. But not very pretty.

b) Get a nice panel made up online with a proper legend with a system schematic. Then use LEDs - you can get mains LED panel indicators (with inbuilt resistors and diodes) to make this less Heath Robinson.

I have seen places that will do laser cut various materials, so in theory it should be possible to get a plate engraved with any diagram you can draw in a simple SVG editor (I plan to use Inkscape - it's free). It might even be possible to get all the holes laser cut in the same operation which would be dead cool.

In either case, I'd also like to have override switches for each subsection to aid in priming/bleeding - and also in the event any controller fails.

My system will need some relays anyway to combine:

2 UFH demand signals --> UFH mixer pump

then:

UFH mixer pump -v General call for heat from rads --> Boiler demand Air space heating (conservatory) -^

Probably use more relays than technically necessary so I don't need to assume every control device has volt-free contacts (though most do seem to). Plus the control device for UFH don't have enough guts to power the surge current a mixer pump pulls at startup.

It also makes it easy to add override switches.

I am not sure if it's best to put the override switches in the panel itself or on a separate panel or grid box.

To be super complete, I'd like centre-off 3 position rockers or toggles so each override can be:

Manual On OFF Automatic

with Automatic being the nominal setting.

Not terribly difficult to add in as all the logic is in one place, and avoids lots of arguments with plumbers when the boiler needs a service: "It's your CH controls guv" "No, see here - this green light says "Boiler Demand On"

:)

Reply to
Tim Watts

I had wondered about making LED-sized holes in the cover of the Honeywell junction box, and then fixing LEDs so that they poked through the holes.

Reply to
Davey

Yes, very useful. Had done the same with my old S-plan.

Had neon indications for 'call for water', 'call for heating' and 'boiler on'. All proving when lit that valves were in their correct positions and the micro-switches working. If not, failed valve head motor replaced in 10 minutes and heating back on!

Reply to
Adrian Caspersz

Tim Watts used his keyboard to write :

I have now got this under way...

I am ordering a second CH joint box - double socket box with a blanking plate. I will drill a row of holes in that for the LED's once I know how many, then design a labelling panel to stick over the top.

The LED's I already have in stock, so I ordered up 10x 470nF 630v, 10x

220Ohm, 10x 1n4148 and some Vero- board. I'll add a 250mA fuse - I suspect I will not have much choice but to install that in the common neutral for the LED's. Rather naughty, but better than no fuse at all.

The live inputs will be fault current limited by the 220Ohm resistors.

L ---- 220 -- 470 -- 4148 + LED (back to back) ---- N

My intention is to mount the above display, directly above my CH joint box in the airing cupboard and see what signals I can pick up from it. That location is where I usually end up fault finding, so most useful installed there.

I did originally draw a wiring diagram for the system, but it has been hacked about since then by A N Installer, whilst I was out at work. New boiler, new time controller, new wireless room stat, new pump, new valve actuator, during which the wiring was well hacked about.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

I'd been thinking about setting up a Raspberry Pi with a temperature logger, to give me flow and return temperatures on CH (2 circuits) and DHW, plus tank temperature (I suspect I have a slight leak on a diverter valve where pipes are normally inaccessible). And outside and some room temperatures while I am at it.

Reply to
newshound

Well here's most of those:

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Reply to
John Rumm

Seems like a chunk of work for something that you might (or might not) need once every 10-20 years - why not just feel the pipes and measure the voltage in the relevant locations? That's worked for me on the rare occasions things have failed. If you're short of something to do I can find you a few (dozen) jobs ;-)

Reply to
nospam

snipped-for-privacy@thanks.com brought next idea :

Well, much more frequently than that, every few years in fact. I derive great enjoyment from finding ways to make my life easier, such would make my life easier - call it a hobby or even DIY.

My heating failed yesterday. It took me a while to work out that the room stat wasn't calling for heat due to its batteries having failed. This would make it quickly obvious why the heating wasn't working - no call for heat.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

When I did some extension work about 10 years ago I fitted a new boiler and pressurised DHW cylinder and split my system into 2 heating zones (with individual timer/stats), 1 towel rad zone (with timer), 1 DHW "zone" (with timer) and added a DHW recirculation loop (timer integrated with pump) - all with 2-port valves. Since then the boiler and the expansion vessel have each failed once and I've changed the stat batteries once (the LCD display being blank was the hint I needed) but everything else has been fine. Apart from this, and in other houses, over forty years I think I've had to replace two dead pumps, three 3-port valve heads (two of them had broken microswitches), one room stat, one immersion heater and one ABV. All were easy to identify and fix. Based on my experiences, if you've got a 3-port valve and want to improve reliability you might get more bang for your time by replacing it with two 2-port valves rather than devising a monitoring system.

Reply to
nospam

Harry Bloomfield has brought this to us :

{EDIT] My 6mm superbright LED blew with the 470nF. The 470nF will be to large a value, amend it to 0.1uF / 100nF 630volts and it works fine.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

I really don't know why anyone uses neons as indicators - horrible things. They are always wire ended and have about as short a life span as a filam ent bulb. Just try looking at your cooker and see how many of them are fli ckering behind the temperature control, etc.

The problem with bespoke CH control systems is that the designer - and aren 't we all one of those - knows how to operate it but never educates anyone else, nor leaves written instructions or a proper circuit diagram / manual for anyone else coming after them. And I plead guilty to this too, having a back-boilered wood burning stove and an oil CH boiler controlled with som e resistor/diode/relay logic to switch between them and control valves, etc .. The system has run happily for 25+ years without an electronic failure, but I've just spent the day giving the stove some TLC and am wondering how long before I have to do a repeat restoration operation on the oil burner.

Reply to
Rob Graham

I purchased a couple of HIVE thermostat/controllers for my heating system. 2 zones: upstairs and downstairs.

The receivers have very clear status LEDs *and* the best thing is I can check status on my phone from bed (or indeed anywhere else on the planet). I think it's great but my wife simply thinks I am mad.

Reply to
Vortex12

Harry Bloomfield expressed precisely :

Sorry, and another [EDIT] of values....

I was using ideas and values found on the Internet, plus a bit of rule of thumb.

It blew the LED and diode again, after an extended period on soak. So

47nF seems OK at the moment. It was also possible to get it to blow on surge, repeated switching on and off, so I upped the surge resistor value 1k2 seems to make it more robust. My present offering is...

L ---- 1K2 -- 47nF -- 4148 + LED (back to back) ---- N

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

That is ~10mA into the LED and it won't take much more to kill it.

It will invariably blow the LED to kingdom come every time there is a fast mains transient glitch on the power line.

If you put a choke in series as well and/or a capacitor in parallel with the LED it might survive but you would be safer with 1 or 2mA.

Try R = 100k C = 10n as a starting point - nominal 1mA drive.

Only the LED forward biassed by the 4148 will be lit. You may as well put the diodes in series with a capacitor across the LED to avoid mains flicker and smooth out any glitches. I am not sure that I should be encouraging someone so inept to play with mains voltages.

You do this at your own risk.

Reply to
Martin Brown

Since it's basically electrical, get a blank plate of the same make as your wiring accessories in that room, and drill it for suitable LEDs or whatever. The normal back box and fixing makes it as easy to install as a socket, etc.

You could have the blank plate engraved and filled with wax of the colour you want.

Grid systems do seem like an easy way - but are restricted to module width. Likely to be far wider than needed for a LED. And often aren't a good match to your existing wiring accessories.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

on 09/11/2016, Dave Plowman (News) supposed :

That is the plan! I'm mounting it vertically, to make the labelling easier and I have a labelling maching to hand.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

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