Has anybody tested Plugwise Floor and Koen on Homey? Both are aimed at controllong the valves for floor heating, but I’m trying to see when you want to use one or the other.
In my situation, I have 3 groups in the living room and the manifold, that is 3 valves and a pump.
From what I understand:
Floor is a single valve, plugs right into a (wall)socket. In my case, I would need 3 Floors. For the pump I would need a Plug from Plugwise to swith it on/off,
Koen looks like a cheaper solution when you have to control 2-6 valves all in one go. It requires a Plug to activate the Koen. Since the pump will also work with a Plug, perhaps they can both be controlled by the same plug.
When would you use one or the other? Does having 3 Floors in one room provide you with some (practical) flexibility, like have the colder side of your house heated just a tad more?
I think you can realize the same thing by buying cheaper valve motors (eg. Honeywell MT4-230-NC actuators) in combination with an ikea zigbee plug. Connect all valves which you want to control simultaneously (together on and off) to the same plug. Check if you want normally open or normally closed valve actuators. Pump should not run when all valves are closed.
On a side note:
Actuators consume energy when “actuating” all these (same for Koen) use “thermal motors” which actually heat an internal wax element which expansion creates the actuation. Actuators are pretty slow (probably over a minute from fully closed to fully open) and can only be fully opened and fully closed from a control point of view (no proportional control) but should not be a problem for floor heating.
That is correct, but in my case there are 3 circuits/loops in the floor plan. One is on the South section, One in the North section. The North side of the house is usually the cooler side, hence I thought it could make sense to balance that with the amount of heat provided by the Northern circuit/loop.
This was just a thought, hence the check here for others and their input
Thanks for this elaboration Kevin, but would there be a practical benefit from installing it as a single package, or (to stick with Plugwise naming) 3 separate Floor valves? If so, what are others doing with that setup?
In your suggestion, would would hook up the valves/pump all to the same Plug (checking for NO/NC, etc.), right?
If you want less water to flow to a certain zone eg. Bathroom you would need separate floor actuators. (Or just on the zones you want to have less water) If the zones you want to have less flow can be controlled together (together on and together off) you can use the “Koen” actuator, if this is not the case (eg. Heat zone office only during weekdays and heat bathroom only between 6-9 and 21-24 hour) you would need 2 floor actuators. If a zone you want to control has 2 or more circuits (valves) you can use the Koen actuator for those valves of that zone.
But keep in mind that if you balance the flows using the static setting of the valves you can get a good temperature distribution (eg. Living room 21 and bedroom 18 degrees) Only when you want to heat a zone momentarily it is interesting to automate it. (See Earlier example)
If I made it more fuzzy for you pls let me know and I’ll draw you a quick schematic.
Thanks again for this clarification Kevin, good to hear that the Koen is a device which switches all valves on, or all valves off.
That basically makes Koen a choice when you want to control a number of valves in one go and be a cheaper solution than a number of Floor valves. Assuming the pricing from the Plugwise site, with two valves you are cheaper off to install two Floors. With three or more, an appropriate Koen and Plug will cost you less.
Thanks for chipping in Willem, my technical questions appear to be answered.
How do you like them in everyday use? Did you make a choice to install Floor or Koen in a zone purely on cost and the number of valves, or was there something else you considered?
koen-5 controlling 5 valves (3 livingroom, 1 open kitchen and 1 hall way) that I wanted to control as on zone1 floor for a conservatory that I wanted to control separately
But I’m using also more of the plugwise setup, so also an adam and 5 lisa’s and t tom’s for multiple room radiators
This works perfectly because the adam can setup schedules per room/zone and has a learning curve to achieve the requested temperature at the requested time
It opens the valves proportional sometimes 100% but also 25% etc.
Now everyone can manage their own temperature in the house
I have connected the plugwise devices to the homey but this didn’t add much to the use case that I had using the plugwise app
Maybe in the future I when I setup my alarm based on presents I do the same for the heating.
But this is best done by managing the settings of the thermostats (lisa’s) selecting status home and away.
Hi Roelof
Sorry I was busy
If you want to control the temperature with the homey you connect with the Lisa
You can set the temperature or use the pre-select temperature (home, away, sleep, extra)
By connecting with the adam you can set the boiler temperature and hotwater on/off (this is depending on your heater installation
If you are using the adam I would not mess with the tom or floor.
Because the Plugwise comes with a nice app, I find it not useful to control the heating installation with the homey
I am going to control the pre-selected temperatures based on presents of the home members using mobile phones
I’m running a pilot using the presents in homey.
But that one is not always accurate. Sometimes it take 4 hours or activating the homey app for the homey to see that I’m gone or arrived
It is expensive stuff the Plugwise. But it gives a lot of convert
I believe you are in the Netherlands. You can order them at HAshop. Good service, very fast delivery and it is the cheapest
Much appreciated. Sounds logical to maintain as much of the controls within the Plugwise/Adam ecosystem and only build some extensions into Homey.
I’ve found the presence detection of Homey (or most other systems for that matter) to be rather spotty. I’ve toyed with the thought of using some NFC thing to scan when coming home (hardly automated) or checking for a BlueTooth/WiFi solution (when in range, or on the network, classify as home). The lack of an actual need has not nudged into action to truly explore those options
I have the same experience. I’m now trying to use the unify wifi controller.
There is an app for it, but for some reason I can’t connect (login failure). It is running on a raspberry pi.
I think I will post a question here on the Forum. Maybe someone knows the answer.
@willem_korving I know this topic is already more than a year old, but still thought this is the right topic to ask my question…
My question is related to ‘Floor’ without having the Adam. I have Anna with the plugwise smile, added to Homey. So with Homey I can set the temperature of Anna
Now if I add Floor to Homey (without having an Adam) which controls will I have? I guess I can read out the temperature and possibly also set the water temperature on which it opens or closes the valve . But will I also have direct control over the valve ?
