Now that the heating season is here again, I have been looking to purchase ‘smart’ thermostatic radiator valves to replace my ‘dumb’ thermostatic radiator valves. I however found that this is not that simple. I live in an appartment and we have a collective heating system (blokverwarming in Dutch). This basically means that I don’t have my own central heating unit that I have to (or even can) manage.
I have been looking around, but all the systems that I can find work in the assumption there you are also managing your own CH with a thermostat.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Must haves:
The ability to control the temperature in all of the rooms in my house that have a radiator individually on a ‘per room’ basis (one room has more than one radiator unit)
The ability to also use the same radiator valves on a central heating system for when I move to another house with central heating
Nice to have
The ability to tell the system I want to have a specific temperature at a certain time rather than having to tell the system when to ‘start heating’ via a self-learning algorithm (either via a central unit, or via a homey app)
The system itself should not be online/on the internet (that’s where Homey comes in)
If possible
External thermometer per room (for higher accuracy?)
Basically what you want is a valve that can be electrically closed and opened. This can be a seperate module to install and control with a device that’s linked with Homey (controllable switch or relay). Add a temperature sensor as input for flows and you’re ready to go.
However the Tado radiator valves might be a cheaper solution since they have all these features combined.
I use Eurotronic Spirit valves. They can be controlled by Homey and have a built in temperature sensor. So, you make flows to control temperature per room and time of the day.
I checked out the Tado stuff, but that seems to be controlled via the internet which I would like to prevent if possible. (I don’t like the idea that my heating is dependent on my internet connection or the availability of a service provider in the cloud (suppose they go bankrupt or they decide to stop support of the valves I purchase, then my smart valves have turned into dumb valves), but that’s just me of course )
The other one, Eurotronic Spirit, seems to be a better match for what I’m looking for (as according to the app description, the ‘measured temperature’ can also be set to it. (I hope that means I can override the measured temperature in the unit if that’s required). I’ll investigate those further for now. Any other suggestions are welcome of course!!
Another question in regards to these units.
Suppose I buy them, would I be able to use the in combination with a central heating system in the future? I have no experience with OpenTherm etc, so can Homey activate the central heating pumps (via a thermostat or something) when the radiator heads report that they need to start heating the room? Or are these kind of things all proprietary.
Here an article in Dutch about zone heating click Google can translate it for you.
I am still testing a work around myself;
IF the measured temp in a zone is lower than the required temperature
AND the central heating (CV) is not running (measured by a powerplug),
THAN Homey sets the room thermostat 5 degrees higher AND powers off the floorheating pump…
Once all zones are heated to the desired temp, the central thermostat is lowered again and the floor heating pump is powered on again.
In the end I went for the Eurotronic units as they are a closer match to my requirements. In case anyone cares, I use them in combination with the essential “Better Logic” app.
They now do the following:
If the room temperature is more than two degrees lower than the requested temperature, the units go in ‘boost’ mode.
If the room temperature is ‘between less than two degrees lower than or equal to’ the requested temperature, he units go in 'Comfortable mode (standard heating)
If the room temperature is higher than the requested temperature, they go in Economical mode.
Every 5 minutes it checks if any of the 3 zones is requesting heat. If that is the case AND the central heater is currently not overruled AND the temperature in the living room doed not exceed a safety limit
Than => increase thermostat with 2 degrees to manually overrule the program, set the variable to ‘overruled’ and stop the floor heating pump.
Else => no action needed. Resume ThermoSmart program (App has a bug, I drop the temp here now) and resume floor pump.
This trigger flow works together with the tempertures I hve set for the various zones:
I use the Candy App too. It has an option to activate/deactivate flows. So, in my case if I want zone controlled heating, I have Candy activate the zone heating flows.
I think you should better start with making some simple flows and get to understand the logic. I built 35 flows to get zone heating working…
Ok that looks more complicated then I was thinking. In theories it is simple.
Zone A below set point > open valve> turn ON boiler.
If other zone are ok valve has to be closed (e.g Eco mode OFF)
I started already to do some flow for my light. But for sure I (We) need a tutorial step-by-step.
Or a video would be great.
Question from my previous post.
Why do you have at the right two card “set the temperature”?
Are you living near by Eindhoven? If yes let me know perhaps we could meet. That would be super.
No I wont But I vote for a video tutorial.
Thanks again for the info, I will give a try. Shame that there is nothing implemented.
I mean I try the Fibaro HC Lite 10 days, and there is an heating panel. But fibaro is not modulable as Domoticz or Homey. That’s why I chose homey.
For the price an app would be awesome, please Athom dev made something to simplify heating control.
But I vote for a video tutorial.