Allowing remote access to turning on/off my oil heating

jamesd

Looking for a little help on this:
Dormer house with oil heating and also a solid fuel stove with a back boiler.
We mainly use the solid fuel stove as there is normally someone in the house all day but if we are gone away for a day the house is cold when we come back and looking for a way to have the house warm using the oil.

There are 2 zones in the house, upstairs and down and there is heating timer that controls both zones so we can have both zones on / off or 1 zone on/off and set the timer for the winter mornings too.
There is a wired stat upstairs and downstairs - wired back to this timer.

I looked at the Nest and it's more for house with only oil and not solid fuel as the main source.

I wonder could something like the Wemo Maker be used ? I would be happy with just having the downstairs some able to turn on/ off remotely.

shay garvey

Hi...my set up is a lot more complex than yours as I have 2 circulating pumps, one for rads and one for hot water and theres 4 motorised valves for the 4 heating zones. Theres also a 4 channel timer to work these valves.

I initially bought 2 Wemo Insight switches to switch on my oil burner and to switch on the circulating pump for hot water around 2 years ago and they have worked perfectly with remote access. All I really wanted to do at the start was turn on my hot water when I was leaving work for a shower when I got home and it works great for that.

I've ordered 2 more from Amazon and intend to connect one to the pump for my rads when it arrives and maybe the other will control the motorized zone valve for the kitchen rads, still haven't decided yet till they arrive.

The switch on the burner is left in the on position all the time as well as the hot water circulating pump switch and are controlled remotely via the Wemos or there is a switch on top of each Wemo to knock them on or off locally.

The Wemo app shows you if the switches are on or off if you are using Wemo Insight switches and bear in mind the normal Wemo switch does not report back to the app what state the switch is in, on or off which is a joke if you ask me. There are 2 models of the Wemo Switch !!!

In the attached photo constant power is coming to the 2 wall sockets, going into the Wemo switches and out the plug tops to the burner and hot water recirculating pump.

You can see in the wemo app the burner switch is lit up green telling me its on.
Only the Insight switch tells you this info.

The app is also showing my garage door as I have a wemo maker connected to open this remotely and a magnetic sensor connected to the Maker tells me if the door is open or closed and this all works perfectly too.

I also had some wireless tags http://wirelesstag.net/ and have 3 on my hot water cylinder and they monitor the temp of the cylinder at 3 different points as you'll see in the pic.
The main use for these is to determine remotely if I need to turn on my hot water for a shower or not. Dont know how accurate they are but at least they give me an idea what the temp is. The PIR section in the app notifies me on my phone if someone is in the garage and temp also.

I know its a crude way of doing things but it does work and If I can be of any help let me know...

Wearb

If I wanted to do what op needs, I would wire a sonsoff in parallel with the call for heat zone at programmer. Cheap option.
I know there are more elegant options, but not at that price.

EHP

Check out eph ember or salus rt310i both would do what you need from your discription I would think eph would be the better option.

jamesd

Wearb wrote: »

If I wanted to do what op needs, I would wire a sonsoff in parallel with the call for heat zone at programmer. Cheap option.
I know there are more elegant options, but not at that price.

What is a sonsoff ?

jamesd

EHP wrote: »

Check out eph ember or salus rt310i both would do what you need from your discription I would think eph would be the better option.

The eph ember looks very interesting - I have mailed them there now.

jamesd

shay garvey wrote: »

Hi...my set up is a lot more complex than yours as I have 2 circulating pumps, one for rads and one for hot water and theres 4 motorised valves for the 4 heating zones. Theres also a 4 channel timer to work these valves.

I initially bought 2 Wemo Insight switches to switch on my oil burner and to switch on the circulating pump for hot water around 2 years ago and they have worked perfectly with remote access. All I really wanted to do at the start was turn on my hot water when I was leaving work for a shower when I got home and it works great for that.

I've ordered 2 more from Amazon and intend to connect one to the pump for my rads when it arrives and maybe the other will control the motorized zone valve for the kitchen rads, still haven't decided yet till they arrive.

The switch on the burner is left in the on position all the time as well as the hot water circulating pump switch and are controlled remotely via the Wemos or there is a switch on top of each Wemo to knock them on or off locally.

The Wemo app shows you if the switches are on or off if you are using Wemo Insight switches and bear in mind the normal Wemo switch does not report back to the app what state the switch is in, on or off which is a joke if you ask me. There are 2 models of the Wemo Switch !!!

In the attached photo constant power is coming to the 2 wall sockets, going into the Wemo switches and out the plug tops to the burner and hot water recirculating pump.

You can see in the wemo app the burner switch is lit up green telling me its on.
Only the Insight switch tells you this info.

The app is also showing my garage door as I have a wemo maker connected to open this remotely and a magnetic sensor connected to the Maker tells me if the door is open or closed and this all works perfectly too.

I also had some wireless tags http://wirelesstag.net/ and have 3 on my hot water cylinder and they monitor the temp of the cylinder at 3 different points as you'll see in the pic.
The main use for these is to determine remotely if I need to turn on my hot water for a shower or not. Dont know how accurate they are but at least they give me an idea what the temp is. The PIR section in the app notifies me on my phone if someone is in the garage and temp also.

I know its a crude way of doing things but it does work and If I can be of any help let me know...

Thank you - thats a very interesting way to do it, I use a few wemo devices already and find them excellent.
Ive been looking for wireless tags for a server room in work and these look excellent - have ordered a few sets there now for water pickup.

Wearb

jamesd wrote: »

What is a sonsoff ?

https://www.itead.cc/smart-home.html

See T10 or T16 with temperature and humidity sensor

dingding

If you are looking for an off the shelf solution, the Climote is worth a look.

www.climote.ie It can control 3 zones, in your case, which is similar to mine, Downstairs, Upstairs and Hot water.

Electric Ireland have offers from time to time.

jamesd

Ordered up an EPH kit, 2 zone timer, gateway and 2 room stats from heatmerchants - Got some excellent tech support from EPH before I went ahead with the purchase.

2011

dingding wrote: »

If you are looking for an off the shelf solution, the Climote is worth a look.

I don’t agree.

The issue that I have with the Climote is that it incurs a monthly charge. Where as the Nest, Hive and others are free to use.

jamesd

Went with the EPH kit, 2 zones and 2 wireless stats.
Setup was simple, and does exactly what I wanted plus a bit more.

eurokev

jamesd wrote:

Went with the EPH kit, 2 zones and 2 wireless stats. Setup was simple, and does exactly what I wanted plus a bit more.

Could you provide a link to what you got, if you wouldn't mind.

How much did it cost.

It's the app good?

jamesd

eurokev wrote: »

Could you provide a link to what you got, if you wouldn't mind.

How much did it cost.

It's the app good?

I went with the Ember03 pack, it’s the 2 channel timer, gateway and 2 wireless wall stats.

Cost €260 from HeatMerchants in Athlone and delivery to them took 3 days.

App is excellent - shows both zones and their temps, easy and quick to boost either zone to a set temp for a set time.
Added in another user easily so handy for the wife.
Also the wireless stats have a boost option on them to boost for 1 to 3 hours, timer has built in frost protection so nice to have as it’s not something I saw advertised for it.

What really sold this make to me was the email support, I emailed them and received about 5 mails back on my setup and any info I needed and what I needed to purchase to suit my needs and also saved me purchasing the higher model pack which I taught I needed.