Does anyone have any experience of / recommendations for a "smart" multi room CH zoning system? Thinking here of something like the Honeywell Evo Home range?
A mate of mine is considering a system like this, but already has a wet CH system installed, so things like the Emmeti system with its smart manifolds is not really any use, as this needs to be retrofitted to system already piped up in a conventional single zone.
Main desire is individual temperature control on a room by room basis, and remote access to cope with difficult to plan occupancy times.
I've set this up before and it's what I'll be using when I get the CH fitted in a fortnight (hooray).
Downsides: Cost, batteries (these seem to last 1-2 years so not actually that bad)
Upsides: Trivial to retrofit, British company, well known Z Wave parts (except for the hub and software which is theirs), reliable.
The costs can be mitigated by selective zoning - eg leave TRVs in areas likely to see more occupation. It's easy to buy an extra rad head later and reconfigure the system.
Nice app, nice website, more importantly, local control if you poke buttons on the rad valve or twiddle the optional wall mount stat for a timed override.
The other reason I'd recommend them is they seem stable. Other companies have form for dropping this type of thing, then relaunching a totally different system. This is all these guys do, that's their focus.
Yes. An example from where I installed one previously:
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Essentially, you get a temperature profile per zone with 0.5C adjustments and 5 minute granularity on a per day basis.
Notice the am slot is 22 and the pm is 21C
I do not know if there is a limit on how many temperature bands you can set, but probably a lot more than anyone could ever want to set.
There's a "copy to room" and a "copy to day" for quicker replication of a particular profile. It's pretty nice.
One thing that could be made better might be to have "heating sets" like "Working at home" and "Out for the day" that would swap entire schedules around.
In practise, though it works well - you can just "off" the room or the whole house, then return it to "auto timed" upon return (or remotely via phone).
One thing is worth understanding well though:
The rad valves are (or were) Danfoss Living Connect LC-13's. These are actually programmed to the set point by the hub based on time. Previously these valves could give no feedback when they wanted to operated (setpoint>room temp) so you *needed* an additional wall sensor.
Genius say they've solved that (possibly custom or modded firmware in the head, not 100% sure) so you can run on the cheap, with the same advantaged and disadvantages as a normal TRV (cold draughts from windows, influenced by the radiator heat, hard to reach maybe). You can programme an offset into the valve if it seems to have consistent behaviour.
So you then have 2 choices of option room sensor. A passive temp sensor with PIR detection that allows a "self programming profile" to be build based on how it sees the room being occupied - or you can tell it to run to a schedule.
The other is a more expensive "room stat" that looks traditional - knob or buttons and LCD display of current temp and setpoint.
With heads only or heads + PIR sensor, you can poke a button on the rad valve to manually override the room setpoint for a default time (configurable per zone I think, 1-24 hours)
With the "room stat" unit, it's much more user friendly - poke buttons and get heat.
Overrides are dead easy from the app/web too.
So it depends on the user base and to some extent where the rad valves are.
I'd recommend starting light as it is so easy to just buy the sensors/stats and programme in if it turns out they are required in a given location.
Boiler relay is a straight swap for room thermostat *if* you have L,N, demand present. If no N then obviously, you'd have to site it nearer the boiler wiring - but it's a radio relay, so that's not a problem.
Looking at the new builds here which are all UFH and heat pumps - God help them in a power cut - its possible to run wires to each of the zone valves on the manifolds and equip them with flow switches and room thermostat but there is that way no master wired OR setup that will fire up the heating when a single room needs it.
I think were I to doi it myself, again, I would equip each rooom with a stat - possibly programmable - an off switch for 'not in use' and a motorizied zone valve. All that would be run off the local ring main, except the contacts from the MV which would all be parrleleed to provide 'call for heat' in the boiler.
You could do it in software, but in the end you need some means of detecting room temps and some means of controlling flow to the roomn and some means or telling the heat source - be it heatpump or boiler, that its services are required.
And plumbers know about wires and MVs, but they can't code for toffee...
Their probably is an opportunity for a mains fed mains ethernet equipped combination MV and roomstat.
And a mains ethernet equipped embedded controller sitting there and running a web server as a UI and conotlling each MV and the boiler/heatpump
But as to rolling your own? just reduces the resale value of the house.
Use technology that plumbers and heating engineers are familiar with.
I very much agree. This is such an obvious thing yet all the auto systems seem to fail to provide it. I'd just like a simple button at the front door marked "going out for the day". If it is not pressed the system should assume I am in all day.
IIRC neither John Rumm nor Tim Watts are at an age where it's relevant but these days I approach such systems with the thought "Don't ask yourself if you're confident you can cope with it now, ask yourself if you're confident of doing so 10 years from now."
AFAICS there's not a lot of design with an ageing population - or an increasing population of aged - in mind. Perhaps it's a nudge to the elderly to choose retirement homes (or Soylent Green factories).
Thanks for the link. I might fit this before the winter.
The initial hardware cost of £ 250 - £ 300 seems a bit pricey at first glance. But the luxury of being able to turn the boiler on without getting out of bed is very tempting.
To be fair my comment was just tickling harry about his inability to read and comprehend, since he posted a link to the very system that I quoted in the original question - presumably in case I had not worked out how to use google, rather than having any practical experience with the Honeywell Evo system. ;-)
no, but not a requirement in this case.
For UFH the Emmeti system looks better suited:
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The networking bit should not pose any problem for the chap who wants the system.
I've done exactly this. The plumbing dated from the 1930s and the heating system dated from the 1960s. It's not a small house and DIY would have taken me months so I decided to get someone else to: replace boiler, all plumbing, 23 rads, DHW tank, and 3 towel rads; add a DHW return and a dedicated heating loop for the towel rads and airing cupboard; remove all old tanks and pipework. They're at the final commissioning stage as I type and the whole thing will have been about
45 man days work :eeek! DHW and all rads are controlled by Honeywell Evohome. The towel rads and DHW circulation are on timers. Each Evohome controller is capable of controlling up to 12 zones; I haven't yet decided how best to zone the rads but have opted for two controllers to give maximum flexibility. It's too early to say much about the performance, but first impressions are excellent. The rad valves are slightly noisy but it's the sort of noise that the brain will ignore after a few weeks. I'm not convinced that it's worth having DHW under Evohome control, but I'll report back as experience grows. I plan to add the gizzmo that gives me remote control from a browser.
I looked at some other systems but decided that the Honeywell system was the one to go for. I'm happy to answer any specific questions.
Robin grunted in news: snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com:
It's a valid point. However, having seen the horrendous conventional programmer that my 85-year-old Mum had installed a couple of years ago, I really doubt this would be more complicated. She has no clue how to operate it, and quite frankly, neither do I. (I'm always loathe to even touch it, as she lives a fair way away and I normally see her on long day trips, so am scared of accidentally leaving it inactive the following morning after I've gone. The fact that these newfangled systems connect to the Internet, however, means that problems could hopefully be sorted out remotely (in the same way that I spend half my life resolving Mum's IT issues... :( )
IT - especially gadgets - has been driven by ever increasing computer power and a desire to lower costs by reducing the mumber of buttons.
And to get market share by adding 'feetchas'
The result is an ergonomic nightmare.
Solved by the use of a stripped down Linux web server and using a computer or other browser capable device to program the device as in e.g. a domestic router.
Here is a web page I developed to control an all software guitar preamaplifiee/FX that I am intermittently working on. To do all those knobs in real life would cost a couple of hundred for the panel alone.
(use scroll wheel and left mouse)
If the web paradigm becomes de facto in the realm of smart devices, and it probably will, then programming stuff via a more familiar interface will develop. Even if the devices themselves are simply SNMP capable, (software) plugging into a master control panel...
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