In the app, the stat is showing it is off. Is there a tado TRV int his linked linked to this stat using it as a relay to call the boiler? In that case the stat can't cap the kitchen temperature, but the basic could if you turn it down. I'll have a look back at your previous posts, i can't recall exactly what you had intermarriage of zones etc.
It's all one zone bit your saying the standard tvr is higher than the stat temp makes sense.
Would the standard tvr not dictate the room temperature no matter what the stat was doing?
If I put a tado valve on am I wasting a valve.
If you have a passive trv in the same room as the boiler main wall stat, you would normally have the trv stat set higher, otherwise the boiler might keep running as the stat can't reach set temperature due to the TRV closing the rad before the kitchen reaches target. If your room stat is also acting as a boiler relay for other smart TRVs, then of course it will call the boiler even though it is locally at target temperature. Setting the manual TRV to close only slightly higher than the wall stat will minimise over heating of the kitchen when other smart TRVs call the boiler.
Putting a smart trv in the kitchen is the best solution, hardly extravagant, and will allow the stat to close the kitchen TRV exactly at target, while still calling the boiler for other smart trv schedules. For €60+, it's effectively a plumbed zone. You can also reduce the kitchen schedules temperature in the evenings without it heating when the main stat calls the boiler for other TRVs. The kitchen TRV will be configured slightly differently, with the wall stat assigned as its temperature measuring device, so the kitchen TRV is just a zone valve controlled by it, it's own built in stat unused. Mobile auto fill butchered my last reply btw, I posted without proofreading. Autofill is a pith.
Thanks for the detailed reply. It explains a lot.
Do you know of any good tutorials on fitting tado valves by any chance?
If your existing mechanical TRVs are connected to the valve base by a threaded ring, tado TRV valve heads are a straight swap. The supplied instructions are fairly clear, and if you have to use adapters for other types of valve body, they are supplied. By screwing on the base of the Tado TRV head first, you then only have to position and fractionly
turn the head with a click. The trv head only powers up operationally when the plastic base and body are locked together, whereupon it goes through a calibration routine by fully depressing and releasing the valve body pin. Follow the instructions to add the TRV to your system and app, by scanning in the TRV code.
This is a good tutorial
https://youtu.be/HP0mHRqaaN4
Thanks. Looks simple enough
My Evohome system is less than 6 months old, bought from Amazon. An additional electric zone would be very useful. What device did you use?
Edit: Are you using the BDR91 relay? If so, can I create a zone with this and a TRV? The TrV would activate the boiler and the BDR91 would switch on a fan in aplinth heater.
you could use a BDR91 but you can not switch any large load with it using the R6660D I have been switching Two Underfloor Bathroom Heating circuits and a 1.5 Kw Bedroom Heater three seperate zones ie three R6660D they are rated 10a and works perfect and all directly integrated in Evohome Schedules etc but no call for heat to Boiler on these Zones
You dont need trv for electric zones they operate like any other zone but no call for boiler as it's not Needed for electric zones
If you schedule both electric and normal zones at same time then boiler is called by normal zones
You would just set up new zone for plinth heater designate it as electric zone then wire plinth heater to above device and that's it
Evohome user here
Will continue to work if internet down it uses its own internal network does not rely on your wifi
Trvs can do all temperature measurement but if any rads ate behind rad covers or curtains you will need separate room stat
That answers your 2 specific questions but the complication of a dual fired system with a solid fuelled boiler would really need to be carefully designed for safety reasons in event of power loss etc
Isn't the R6660D just a wireless relay switch? So you can set schedules for it, but not temperature control. It doesn't have a temperature sensor built in afaik, so you're guessing the temperature of electrically heated zones, or at most, using the fixed set temperature on the heating appliance, be it electric radiator or electric underfloor. Handy to have, but not Smart in the real sense.
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated. I have a plinth water radiator on the same circuit as a radiator. At the moment the TRV on the radiator also turns on the flow through the plinth heater. I want to turn on the electric fan on the plinth heater when the TRV calls for heat.
The controller is in this area, so an option might be to have it act as the thermostat for heater and radiator.
You could pair a BDR91 receiver relay to the TRV, but it's probably already paired to the one switching the boiler or zone valve for this area. I can't say if it's possible to have a second one switching at the call of the TRV. Connecting via the existing receiver relay is not a solution, as it's not exclusive to the TRV. Giving the TRV its own exclusive receiver would switch the fan, but the zone/boiler would not be called unless you also connect this receiver via an isolation relay to the zone Switched Live.
If your plinth radiator had built in detection, the fan would come on when the water in the flow is hot. You can do this yourself with the addition of a cheap pipe stat, set somewhere in the region of the CH flow temperature, say 60°. When the TRV opens, pipe stat will turn on the fan. When the trv closes, pipe stat will overrun until the now static flow cools.
https://brooksonline.ie/eph-cylinder-pipe-thermostat-strap-on-uj0740?
I have the R660 bound to the evohome as actuator for electric zone and a DS thermostat as temp sensor for the zone works exactly like ch zone
660 switches the heater on either by schedule or manually from app and heats up to setpoint set by DS exactly like any other zone so it's as smart as all the other zones exactly like a trv zone with external thermostat the BDR relay normally used for zones that don't use trv are the the same they can switch a zone valve but the BDR has no temp sensor you have to use a separate temp sensor but this is very common config with evohome not all ch zones use a trv some would use a zone valve switched by a BDR an electric zone is exactly the same and fully Integrated into evohome and smart
When you are setting up any zone you set actuator which can be trv,bdr,R660 etc
You also select temp sensor for zone which can be
Trv,DS thermostat, Honeywell round thermostat
So a trv is combined actuator and stat but it's not the only option
This is what makes Evohome by far the most well designed heating control system
.
Yeah, that would work.
What I don't know is whether I could use the controller as a thermostat, controlling the TRV as a boiler zone and BDR91 as an electric zone, simultaneously. I suspect that there is a way of doing this, but it's not an immediate priority.
That's similar to other smart systems so, you need a zone stat and a receiver relay for electric zones or even just a stat with a built in relay (current permitting). There's nothing mysterious or unique to Evo about this. If the zone is electric the receiver powers a heater (subject to receiver current capacity) instead of opening a zone valve and thus firing the boiler. Drayton have a relay with 16a capacity, sufficient for a 3kw heater. I'm just wondering if you see my point that a smart TRV which is an individual water valve also has to call the boiler electrically via a receiver relay. If the system allows multiple TRVs to call this one relay, then that relay can't be exclusive to the TRV you want to operate an electric heater or the fan of a plinth heater. Can you pair a TRV twice, to operate the zone valve/ boiler SL receiver, but also an independent receiver to operate an electrical heater or device? It may be possible.
In short, an electric heated zone is possible with most any smart stat system. It gets tricky when you want a stat or a TRV to operate both boiler/pump/ zone valve and an electrical heater or fan. This can only be possible if the receiver is exclusive to a single stat or TRV, so no other stat or TRV will operate the electric device. Also, the output of that receiver is also required to fire the boiler for the TRV call, and this voltage can't be simply spliced to the output of other relays calling the boiler as their live voltage will feed back to the fan, so another mains to mains electrical relay would be required to isolate combined boiler SLs from the live used to operate the device. Zone valves provide this isolation between zones, so a TRV in CH 1 will not open the Zone valve for CH2 or HW, but any TRV in CH1 will operate the CH1 zone valve, so the zone voltage from the receiver is not exclusive to the TRV you want to operate an electric device.
It might look like I'm repeating myself, but NewClareman's request was a very specific case where the electrical signalling from a receiver had to perform two operations. So it has to be exclusive, and isolated from other outputs.
Of course any system can switch an electric heater instead of boiler but if you look at evohome it knows when you select a zone as electric not to call boiler without having to wire it through any extra interlocks etc you can have 12 zones and any of them can be either electric or ch plus a hw zone
I'm not aware of this in any other system where during setup it asks if it's electric zone or ch and sets it up accordingly of course u can wire a heater through a smart stat but that's not quite the same as fully Integrated into control panel etc
I have Evo and it is unique in this way
Yes you can bind a trv to 2 relays and use one to call boiler and one to run fan on plinth heater which is really a small rad with a fan assist so if that zone calls for heat you would want boiler but in pure electric zone boiler is not called if you look at evohome controller screen your can see different zones all shown with ability to schedule each zone be it electric ch or hw
Also in the case where smart trv is say behind a rad cover it will not sense room temp very accurate so in this case you can also select external stat as measuring device for that zone again all easily setup from main Evohome screen no splicing no interlocks etc just use recieving relay for boiler or a different relay in same zone to switch electric heater etc it's really a great system I am a control system guy and I have not seen a system to rival it
@deezell it appears that Evohome can operate a group of TRV's, with one TRV/thermostat used for temperature monitoring, as a single unit for scheduling purposes. That's why I think it may be possible to add the BDR91 to such a group, as the TRV and plinth heater are in a combined living/dining area.
Having said this I've always liked simple solutions and your suggestion of a pipe stat is perfect for my purposes.
Yes, €18. Job done! Full praise to Xl500, he's obviously a hugely enthusiastic Evo fan, passionate about it's abilities. I'm sending him a box of commas as a reward.
Thanks for sarcasm I was just trying to help someone who's a new user as they said they were only a six month user and possibly not aware of all Evohome capabilities
I look forward to receiving the box of commas
No offence intended! I got a huge amount of info from your descriptions of the evos capabilities, just took a few rereads. NewClareman summarised it well also, Cost will mount though when you have to add several components in terms of extra stats and relays, especially if you just want to turn on a fan. The automation enthusiasts here will probably add such features for a tenner with a SonOff switch and a bit of smart home coding. I find all the main smart brands have certain shortcomings in their system architecture, be it lack of wired wall stats, limited wireless capabilities, integration with legacy gravity systems, lack of mesh or repeaters for TRVs connectivity in bigger houses, or lack of a TRV integration altogether. Factor in affordability and install cost v complexity, there's no one system ticks all the boxes. Some will spend thousands, some will be happy with a DIY black friday special for a few hundred euro, others will try and achieve a result with ten euro aliexpress relays, a bit of IFTTT or Google Assistant coding and everyone's happy with their own result. I do in fact recommend evo for large scale TRV projects, it's cost effective as an alternative to retro plumbing in zone valves.
Thanks @deezell , @xL@xl500
I choose the Evohome as I wanted a system that didn't rely on the Internet. It is very unreliable where I am.
From a functionality perspective all I wanted was to be able to schedule the temperature on a room by room basis. I known the Evohome can do more, but I haven't looked in to this. I got a good deal from Amazon and with the current cost of oil it's already paid for itself.
If I was to nitpick, the TRV's are a bit clunky and the control unit a bit small. The latter could be solved by using something like Home Assistant as a front end. I might look at this next winter. (But only if I'm really bored. -:) )
What are the best cloudfree smart options? Toying with replacing the boiler and definitely replacing the heating controls, but don't want a dependency on the internet (and integration with home assistant is required)
Most of the smarts stats will work to their schedule without internet, or at least can be operated manually or by Assistant/Alexa/Homekit/IFTTT. There's a distinction between working without external Internet and working without any local area network connection. With some brands local network/Internet connection is optional, Nest, Heat Miser. Ember and others. The Internet hub is an optional purchase in some cases. Other brands will work using local connections between apps and the device, Tado for example can be controlled directly by Apple Homekit when the Internet is down but your local router is still up. I think Wiser will work locally also.
When I was bored myself one day, I dug out an old android tablet I got literally in a bin. Just by displaying the web version of the interface I had an instant 10" control panel, but as I never change anything except by phone, it was only a novelty.
and theres another project for some old tablets in my drawer!
What would you all choose for the below setup?
Existing:
User commonly just uses boost function, the programmed controller is really only used for hot water and to heat the house in the morning.
Desired setup:
Smart TRV valves controlling individual zones (which would make call to activate / de activate existing zone valves) + some way of controlling hot water (new wireless cylinder stat or a smart controller for existing).
Option 1:
TRV valves used to send commands to assigned thermostat for it's location (i.e. zone 1 is downstairs, so TRV in kitchen, hall, sitting room etc. send commands to wireless receiver kit, TRVs in bedrooms to the wired thermostat).
Option 2:
Not sure if in this setup Evohome TRVs can be setup to individually activated / call for heat and trigger their assigned relay to activate the zone valve?
Option 3:
Drayton Wiser Kit 3 - €274
Drayton TRV - €54
Based on looking at prices it seems it's Drayton v Tado.
The user in this case is my father who is a plumber (!). He wants a system which "removes" the thermostats and only has relays + TRVs + smart cylinder stat. But I haven't seen an obvious consumer option like this. Now because he's a plumber it's not exactly an issue to move the wiring or possibly even the zone valves. His ideal situation was moving relays / controllers to the hot press.
So that could mean removing the zone valves entirely at some stage (and upgrading to Combi Boiler) if it resulted in the best system.
The final option is to go open source with Home Assistant (WiFi / Z Wave / Zigbee). Somewhing like Vesternet's options or the various Sonoff Relays, Smart TRVs linked via HA.
Z Wave (Vesternet):
Zigbee - To Add:
Sonoff (WiFi):
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