Home heating automation

Thanks. Apologies for the next question. How do I wire it? I found some vague instructions on automatedhome but also caution on not to use this if you don't have a bypass loop as the pump will be pushing against closed valves and that might damage the pump.

Thanks. So I had the thermostat knob at a bit over 5 which is 77C according to this document. I have since turned it down to 3 which is 66C.
The document recommends a lower setting for the summer when only HW is needed anyway. Thanks for the prompt deezell. Hope this will resolve the issue and I won't need to worry about the pump overrun. Thanks for the wiring explanation as well. But I expect I won't need it now as the solution you suggest is much simpler.

garo wrote: »

So I dug into this a bit more and posting it here in case it helps someone else. The Evohome has a "Hot Water Overrun" feature that allows the hot water valve to stay open for a set time. So if you have a boiler that has a pump overrun or put in a delay timer on the pump AND you have a system where there is a valve to the HW, you can set the overrun timer on the evohome and it will leave the hot water valve open for that amount of time after the boiler has stopped firing. I checked today and it works. After the boiler stops, the hot water valve closes after the specified delay.

I may yet go for that delay timer switch deezell.

I had been reading a blog about Evohome to find more information about this. There were lots of references to percentage cycling and the like for CH, and complaints about residual cycling, where the Evohome would give the boiler one extra blast after its calling stat had reached set point. The basis of the complaints were that in these cases the room temperature would rise a further few degrees above setpoint, and posters found their system hysteresis too great, plus or minus 2-3°, which caused too hot/ too cold heating pattern. There was no solution offered in the blog, but it got me thinking that perhaps this was caused by a boiler overrun, but effective only if the rad TRVs / CH zone valve were shut and there was an open sink such as a towel rail or an open HW valve. If the posters had just an open rad system without smart TRVs and no CH zone valve of course the rads would heat in this instance. This problem may also have been to do with the Opentherm controlled boilers used by the posters.

Your boiler is a hard on/off job, but it has only a very small boiler surface as it is a gas boiler, with a small volume heat exchanger, so not a lot of residual heat in there to dissapate. The question now is how does the boiler fire for a HW only request from the evohome?
Is your HW demand to the boiler directly from the Evohome relay, the same one that calls the boiler for CH? Such a call would facilitate HW only if the system was full TRV, so that CH flow is cut while HW valve is opened. The evohome relay has a seperate HW On Switched Live terminal, this is what is connected to the HW valve to open it.
Normally, the HW valves's own aux relay is used to fire the boiler, ensuring the boiler doesn't fire for HW until the valve is opened, as a safety feature, and ensuring that a SL from a HW terminal doesn't cause the rads to heat by reverse opening a CH zone valve. (This would occur if the CH and HW SLs were just combined at the boiler.) This of course means that any call to the HW valve, including an overrun, would open the valve, close the relay and fire the boiler, so the overrun in this case would be pointless, nothing more than a short HW timing cycle.
So it depends on how your Evohome was wired. If the HW valve is passively opened by the evohome HW relay terminal , but the SL to the boiler is a common one for both CH and HW, then this overrun feature could be used to open the HW valve without boiler firing, leaving just the little matter of getting the circulation pump only to spin during this time.
If the above wiring scheme is true, and IF the HW zone valve has an unused boiler call relay, and IF this relay is a two pole relay with NO ( grey wire) and NC ( white wire) terminals, this relay could be used to control the SL source to the pump. By diverting the boiler SL to the pump via the valve NC terminal, and splitting the HW valve SL call ( brown wire) across to the NO terminal, then connecting the pump to the Common (orange wire) terminal, the pump will always circulate for a HW call or a CH/HW boiler call, but the boiler will only fire when the boiler call is on.
This solution will work if the HW valve is Not used to fire the boiler, and if it has an unused relay with the NC white wire terminal, many just have the grey and orange wires.
There's a bit to chew on there, so start examining how your Evohome boiler calls are made, for CH and HW.
Here's a typical 2 port valve wiring with NC terminal

garo wrote: »

........OTOH, if the HW valve opens on boiler shutoff for the overrun period then adding a simple delay timer would work.

This is the key. If the above occurs then a timer on the pump is required, or else the HW SL from the relay to the HW valve can be used to supply the pump via the valves aux relay. This would require some wiring though, which you indicated was awkward with the distance between the boiler/pump and the HW valve.

Are there any products out there that will digitally display and record the temperature of the water in your hot water tank?

deezell wrote: »

This, up to 85°C.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0773MX8BH/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LylgFb8X3HPZN

How will this know the temperature of the water inside the tank though?

Someone hasn't had their coffee yet 😅

Hi All,

I think this has been covered before, but I can't seem to find the post(s)

I have:

- Vokera Mynute Gas boiler + 3 zones: Upstairs, downstairs and HW
- Solar for hot water only
- A standard Horstmann Controller
- Decent internet and wifi via Virgin Media

I'd like to be able to do the following:

- Control the heating and HW via an app - time of day for On/Off etc
- Boost the heating and HW for 1 hour via an app (it's enough to heat the house)
- I'd like to see the temp of the HW in the tank - but I'd live without it

I don't need:

- to control heating by room
- to adjust thermostats or rads etc by room

I'd appreciate a recommendation for a cost-effective solution which would do the basics

Note: we are looking at changing energy supplier too (electricity and gas)

Thanks for reading!

Brilliant!!!

That's exactly the kind of answer I was looking for!

I'll go and investigate the Drayton - where to buy etc.

Thanks a mill!

I'll update if/when we do it.

Ethereal Cereal wrote: »

You need to get the work carried out by a registered contractor
https://hes.seai.ie/GrantProcess/ContractorSearch.aspx


I am changing my regular boiler to a combi boiler. Each rad will get a wifi contolled trv. I asked the plumber could I claim this back on the SEI grant, and he said there was too many checks involved, etc etc, and that Id nearly want to spend €2k to get the €700 back.

Anyone know if this is right?

Sadly, yes. Only the utility companies can install the bare minimum and get the dough without you seeing it. It's no surprise that the quote for a grant aided installation seems to be increased by the grant and then more. I recall seeing quotes for single Nest of €1200, after grant. I had to sit down to recover.

CiaranTheGreat wrote: »

Has anyone here gotten a Beok thermostat to work with sky broadband? I had it working with virgin which I have since cancelled and I can’t get it working with the new sky broadband. I’ve logged into the modem and turned the 5ghz off as that was an issue with the virgin broadband but it didn’t work

Any help would be great

At a guess you might need to do a factory reset on the stat, as it's possibly looking for the Mac address of the old router, rather than IP. With these devices you often have to start by connecting to them via phone app with the stat as the Wi-Fi source, disconnecting your phone from the router wifi, then using the app through the stat wifi to connect to the router. The stat would need to be in 'New from box' mode, hence a reset. There might be a little button, or a key combination. What model is it?

CiaranTheGreat wrote: »

Unfortunately no. It’s a different model to mine but the basis of it is correct. I have done the reset actions for my model but still nothing. It’s a head melter.

I've had a look at the instructions
http://www.tkarena.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/BOT-313WIFI-Series-Boiler-Thermostat-Instruction.pdf

All I can suggest is that you delete the Beok app from your phone and reinstall it. Then setup the device exactly as per the instructions, youll need to see the 'twinkling' Wi-Fi symbol. It doesn't say in the instructions, but you would normally at this point disconnect your phone from the house Wi-Fi, and search for the Beok as a Wi-Fi access point, a and connect to it. Then open the Beok app and proceed with the next step. If you successfully add the Beok to your home Wi-Fi, don't forget to connect your phone back to home Wi-Fi. This is generally how these devices work, a direct connection to your phone until the device is configured to your network. It may be that the app handles some of this Wi-Fi source changing.

CiaranTheGreat wrote: »

Tried the duplicate name of the old router which didn’t work. I am genuinely at a loss. I genuinely haven’t a breeze as to why it isnt working. There is no WiFi signal from the thermostat to connect to but there is no mention of that in the instructions.

I’m half tempted to just buy a new different stat

Did you get the reset working so that you can see the "quick and frequent twinkling" WiFi icon?

CiaranTheGreat wrote: »

Yeah it only fails at the trying to connect to the network part

I'd guess you're falling victim to an aging wireless chip that doesn't quite implement the WiFi standards right. It should technically still work but I don't know if you'll find easy step-by-step instructions and there's a chance it's just not going to work for whatever reason.


I did find someone with a similar issue here and they managed to get it working. Looks like they switched their router to use and older WiFi standard, got the stat connected and then switched the WiFi back to something more modern. Might be worth a try

championc wrote: »

It's quite possible that the wifi must be on 2.4ghz, on modes 802.11b or g (not n). Most phones, tablets and laptops will use 5ghz, but all devices will support 2.4ghz on 802.11b. b is the slowest speed.

The likes of wireless thermostats could well use 434mhz radio signals

It does, check the instructions I linked. Your phone would also need to be searching for 2.4G.

Try the following:
Download a Wi-Fi analyser app to your phone, such as, er, 'Wi-Fi Analyser",
Go into settings on your phone, select your current Wi-Fi network, and click 'Forget'. Also, turn off mobile data.
Using the Wi-Fi Analyser app, see if you can discover the 2.4Ghz signal from the Stat while it's in Twinkly mode.
Use the app to select this signal as your AP.
Now run the Beok app and see does it connect to the device.
If success,
Then configure your router as a 2.4 only, all types. Give it a unique SSID and pass.
Configure the stat via the Beok app to use this AP
Now finish the installation, and reconnect the phone to the 2.4 AP of the router, (use the WiFi analyser for this also if the phone doesn't discover it and add to the wifi networks list. and check for connection to the app.

Finally, you can configure the routers 5Ghz AP and turn it on, for faster connections, and select this for your phone.The stat should stay connected via 2.4.

"I’ve no idea what that magic button does...."

It accepts for a short period any connections being sought by devices without the device having the id or passkey of the router. It would also connect via the appropriate band, so it seems your router picked up the connection request directly from the Beok, gave it the id and passkey and configured it to the 2.4Ghz band, without you having to intervene via the phone app to supply these crucial parameters. Happy days, and a new trick learned.
I've had a few sticky moments trying to join Lenovo devices to my network using it's device configuration app. I can't even remember if I may have pressed the wps router button in frustration, but that could be it. We should be thanking you.

Hi there,
I have a traditional gas boiler and would be interested in getting a Nest system installed for home automation.



I know zilch about heating and plumbing and have no idea how to install this.


So would anyone have a very rough ball park figure on how much it would cost for plumber to install this Nest thermostat for a 3 bed house with 7 basic radiators? None of the radiators have thermostats installed.


Thanks