Home heating automation

Thanks for this. We just moved in recently so not sure pre hub controller but had plumbers in today balancing the system and he said the piping and switch is there in the hot press for HW only. That rubbish hub controller will be going pronto.

Hopefully I haven't exhausted the grant as it was previous owner. I picked the 1500 number out of my head as a guess really. I like the look of the Tado kit, might go down that route and either get a price from a plumber to install or rope the father in law in!

i used https://www.hagglezon.com/en/s/Evohome when buying mine. Saved a few hundred euro by buying from different Amazon sites. I check for deals, from time to time. If I find any I'm going to buy a few to keep as spares.

I don't know about future app development but I had an automatic firmware update about three weeks ago which wiped my settings. It was no big deal but I found Resideo technical support very responsive. It's still limited to 12 zones AFAIK. A possible workaround is to group rooms, e.g. "bedrooms", in one zone.

Is it possible to install a tado system myself? Or is there anything special to the installation? The cost to buy the system myself seems way cheaper than getting a professional to supply and fit. Does it really need someone rgi registered?

This post below from a Hub Controller thread showing how installers put in the Hub Controller stat, the one supposedly with magic powers. This beggars belief.

....Yes they just installed the hub directly under the boiler so it is never an accurate temperature. The boiler is in the kitchen and the hub would turn off saying it is 22 degrees in the kitchen when it is only 16. Its an absolute joke. So we have to put the temperature on it to nearly max otherwise it keeps turning off , so we cant even get hot water for a shower. Of course it would save money but you would have to wear a wool jumper in the house. It defeats the whole purpose. I emailed them back asking for an electrician to remove this and put back the existing one but haven't had a reply after their subscription email...

Unbelievable. And they now want €64 a year in a sub.

Those EPH transceivers are really useful when you need a cable run but can't drill holes or chase walls. Well done, it's very satisfying to have it fixed, but also to fully understand what's going on in terms of connectivity. See my previous post of a Hub Controller installation where there was no old wired stat in the hall to the boiler, so the installer just wired the Hub Controller stat on the floor under the boiler! A pair of transceivers would have sorted this, but then that would be doing the job right. No profit in that

Thanks for that, I actually had a registered contractor out today to look at heating controls for my house, basically he said:

1- they can supply and fit a hive/tado no problem

2- I won’t qualify for the grant unless I get a big job done with my hot water cylinder to be able to separate the hot water and heating as this is a condition of the grant. Would involve something to do with changing how the pipes are connected to the cylinder and boiler and would need to be put under my floor

3- he can install a smart valve to the hot water cylinder which will shut it off when I want, but this technically doesn’t qualify for the grant still

i feel like I’m left with more questions than answers in a way, anyone here any experience with the above?

so in my head I’m thinking I go out and buy the system myself and just ask a sparky friend to do the tado system for me

so obviously one of the reason I’d like a system like this put in is to try and lower my gas costs in the long run. Is it stupid to think that if I have say 4 out of 7 rads on using the try’s and hot water off with a try that the house is using less gas so should be cheaper. Or will my boiler always pump the same amount of gas? Really new to this stuff!

I decided to buy a Drayton wiser kit 3, waiting on my electrician to install.

Am I correct in thinking that this will give me control over the two CH zones but my HW will only come on with the CH due to the HW motorized value been removed?

Your man removing your hw valve actually complicates installation of the wiser, or any three zone system, as the live to fire the boiler for CH1, CH2 or HW comes from the valve relays, and these are operated when the live for the three zones is sent to the valves from what you currently have, which is a single mechanical timer and a pair of wall switches for CH1 and CH2, and a single eph device for HW. If he's removed the valve, you will need to replace it for the HW live from the wiser to operate the valve and close its relay to fire the boiler, in a proper S plan configuration. Now the HW switched live signal from your old eph, which would have been transferred to the wiser HW timed live, is going nowhere as the valve is removed. At the very least, this live which used to control the HW valve should now be connected to the live outputs from the two CH valves' relays, which are all combined to connect to and fire the boiler. At least then you can heat HW on its own without a CH event, but really, get your valve back.

Not heating empty rooms or heating them to a much lower temperature will save a decent amount, as long as the doors are kept shut. Not having the HW constantly heating every time the boiler fires to heat CH will reduce cost if the HW cylinder is an old type, uninsulated or with only a floppy lagging jacket. These types lose heat at a high rate. The newer deep insulated types or double skin construction type don't lose much heat, so once heated up will stay hot for a long time, so there's little saving to be made by timing the HW for short bursts.

No, the valve was removed.

I have a clear idea what the setup should be now. I will speak to the plumber tomorrow and take it from there

It's taking about 3 mins to bring the room to target, which indicates good output from the boiler, but probably only an increase of 1°, before OFF. I'm more concerned that its only taking 5-7 minutes for your downstairs to cool by the threshold of the stat, probably about 1° or less, before it fires again. I looked at my graphs for today, outside temperature of about 6-7° at 9.31 am. My general central stat area, hall/corridor of a bungalow, which was at 20.9°, took an hour fifteen to drop by 0.8 ° starting at 9.31 this morning when heating went into away mode.The kitchen on the north west corner cools quicker, even so, it took 32 minutes starting at 21.5° to cool by 0.8°, and had dropped 1.6° compared to the Hall in the same one hour fifteen minute period when the Tado was in away mode.

Your house seems to be losing heat rapidly, and even if your firing threshold is only 0.5 °, it would appear to be dropping at a rate 5° per hour, which indicates a hard to heat house.

I use 12 -17°, if your house is insulated well it will never drop to these unless you're away for the weekend in winter. In this case you don't want the fabric of the house getting too cold, as it will take a bit of time to recover, and beds etc will feel miserable on return, so in these cases I'd go 15 -17. Geolocation will switch it on before you return, fine for a day out, but after a few days or a week away you'd need to bring it up manually maybe a half day before you arrive home.

From the on off cycles of your stat, even without the actual temperature measurement from the stat itself, I assumed that it would have to drop by about 1° before the boiler would fire to restore it. With smart stats this may even be less, as the stat should be using predictive and second order calculations to learn the room rate of heating, and cooling, and switch on and off in a manner so as not to have overshoot or undershoot of the target temperature. A steady state of plus or minus a half degree would be very accurate control, whereas a simple bimetallic strip mechanical thermostat might swing by plus or minus 2° from off to on.

Assuming your room temperature was falling by at least a half degree from boiler off to on again, in a time which was measured as between 5 and 7 minutes on your sample, I calculated your cooling rate somewhere between 0.5 to 1° every 6 minutes, which implies it would cool by at least 5° in an hour if the boiler was turned off. Compared to the graphs on my Tado stat, this seemed excessive, as my worst room took over 32 minutes to drop by only 0.8°. That seems to indicate a high heat loss rate in your stat location.

You could only really measure this by turning off the boiler and read off the stat over a longer period, say an hour. I don't know if the Wiser records the room temperature over its data record, or just the on off times. I know your data was over a short time, less than half an hour, during which your boiler was called three times to restore the room temperature. In fact your duty cycle On to Off was reducing, suggesting an increase in stored heat as time progressed, with longer Off and shorter On cycles, so the room may have been much colder than 20° just before your first OFF measurements:

OFF. ON. (Min)

5 -------- 4

5.5 ------ 3

7 --------- 2.5

Decreasing cooling rate indicates that the physical structures are warming up as well as the air in the room, thus acting as storage, slowing down the cooling rate and reducing the ON heat up time. The duty cycle for this period was 35% ON, and falling, but without knowing the actual temperature drop from Off to On my figures are an estimate. It would interesting to see the cycle sample with measured temperatures, taken when the room has been at 20° for a longer period, say more than 2 hours. I'd hope your steady state cycle to maintain 20° would be a good bit less than boiler ON for 35% of the time, as depending on your boiler jet flow rate, this could be expensive. Only you would know if your fuel consumption over time was costly. If that cooling rate remained on the high side measured over an hour, it points to the possibility of reducing costs with better draught proofing, Insulation etc. The cost of upgrading at the moment though may not be justified by the savings in gas or oil. Its hard to cut €500 a year off a gas or oil bill if it requires tens of €Ks to make improvements. Small things can help though, checking windows, velux, outer doors for draughts. Attic trapdoors. Room wall vents that can't be adjusted or closed. Fireplaces and chimneys. Push in ceiling donwlight and spotlight fittings, which are spring retained in a hole in the ceiling board, but not sealed, can have draughts whistling to the outside. I have 8 of these in my kitchen, just push fitted into a 3 inch hole. Warm air sucking through into the attic above. I pulled them out, and sealed behind them with expanding foam, with a little cavity left for the fitting to push back into.

Food for thought anyway, if your heating bill is not bankrupting you, it's probably not a priority. I had two family members move to A rated houses in 2021, I shudder to think what their heating bills would be now in their previous homes, both 30+ year old builds, heat flying out everywhere.

i checked todays usage.

instead of copy-paste i copied it to notepad.

i got heating from one home assistant entity and temp from another entity.

i checked last night when heating was off.

every 2 hours, stat temp reduced 0.5 degree from 1.30am to 5.30am - it went from 17 to 16 deg.