Smart controller for large heating system

[RichD1]

We have 17 radiators spread over three floors in our house, so to use something like Wiser TRVs is prohibitive. However, it is possible to divide the system up into 4 heat zones using 2 port valves (or is there a better solution?) controlled say through Wiser smart plugs and then use a combination of Wiser TRVs and Thermostats to control each room or combination of rooms.

In practise the middle floor is not used regularly just occasionally for our kids when they come home or for guests. So one zone valve would be adequate plus a Wiser thermostat. The top floor is our master bedroom so a couple of TRVs in the bedroom and en-suite would probably suffice. The ground floor is quite open plan apart from the hallway and has five rads spread around the area. So again, maybe a strategically placed thermostat would suffice.

Does anyone know if the Wiser App can provide control for the zone valves?

 

[omega015]

Something like honeywell evohome or other smart TRV's will give you control over each room to create your own zones. Why do you say the wiser trv's are prohibitive? Looking at the wiser trv page they say individual radiator control too.

 

[RichD1]

Due to cost.

 

[omega015]

While you could use motorized valves to create zones for the floors / bigger areas, do you have the access to the pipes? Have the cable runs from the motor to where they will be wired and controlled from? Given a simplified zone creation using those would still cost at least £150-200 I would suggest perhaps starting with smart TRV's for the mostly used rooms where you want control and putting the middle floor rads on low settings then as you can allocate funds to more TRV's slowly upgrade each rad as you can. It will give you greater flexibility in the long run and keep things simply without having to mess around with pipe runs, cables etc.. not to mention those valves can stick or you need to gain access to put them on bypass etc...

 

[ericmark]

I have started to install Wiser, but as yet no Wiser TRV heads, I have three types, Kasa, Energenie, and eQ-3 the latter were the cheapest, cost me £15 each in 2019, I have 9 programmable TRV heads, and 5 non programmable, three thermostats and 2 zone valves, the zone valves allow me to turn 4 rooms which are arranged as a self contained flat off, but in the main only need thermostats of linked TRV heads in key rooms.

So TRV heads, can be simple wax, can't really see the point using them, but still have 5 left as said, OK at £5 each you can get them cheap, but I find a pain trying to work out what *123456 means in degrees C. And a quick google and these showing at £15 each, so seems pointless not to have programmable TRV heads, the Terrier i30 and the eQ-3 come as just programmable, the eQ-3 also has a bluetooth version which allows you to pair them when two radiators in the same room, but will only pair to one phone, and only show temperature set, not the actual temperature of the room, the slightly more expensive Kasa is wifi, so can connect to multi-phones and to Nest Mini system so can be set with voice control, same with the Energenie, the Energenie will connect to a wall thermostat, but the wrong way around, wall thermostat sets TRV temperature not the TRV using the wall thermostat as a hub to turn on the boiler.

But in real terms if the coldest room has a Wiser thermostat which will start boiler, then other rooms only need to control the flow in the room they are in, OK if we have a set of rooms heated 9 am to 10 pm, and another set of rooms heated 10 pm to 9 am, then two linked TRV heads, for the two time zones, but only in the coldest room.

I have a wall thermostat in the hall and living room of main house, hall controls overnight, and living room during the day, and it seems to work well, and a staggered start with just 10 minutes between each TRV head calling for heat, gets the radiators hot in sequence so important rooms heat up first.

Tried using geofencing with Energenie and it was a failure, found the anti-hysteresis was OTT, and to heat a room to 20ºC by 8 am, had to set to 22ºC at 7 am, and then back to 20ºC at 8 am. Also tried geofencing with Nest Gen 3, this was useless as no way to set at how many miles away it starts the reheat, only control was the comfort and eco setting, never tried geofencing with Wiser, it uses the IFTTT as does Energenie I think this now costs.

Biggest cost is the 20 batteries each year for the TRV heads and wall thermostat.

 

[Rodders53]

Wiser has max 3 'zones' HW CH1 CH2 but of you have a HW tank that's only two for heat.

More would need customising your own via Wiser smart plugs (£25-ish) or Electric switch module (£75 ish).
Or perhaps going to the UFH controller / wiring centre (£300-ish) ... to switch zone valves... With a smart thermostat for each zone switch (+£100)... I think you still need a Wiser hub with that.

So with Wiser TRVs at £40-ish each its probably 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. Excluding the cost of plumbing and wiring for the zone valves themselves.

I'm still baulking at the cost of the Wiser UFH centre and wireless stats to do my home 'properly'.

 

[ericmark]

Wiser has max 3 'zones' HW CH1 CH2 but of you have a HW tank that's only two for heat.

Three hard wired zones, but not sure how many wifi zones it will allow? It seems as if you can have more than one wall thermostat, but not tried it, per hard wired zone. You can add more than one TRV head, and these do form zones.

However cost wise, if you have say 4 bedrooms, and everyone goes to bed at around the same time, you will only need a Wiser TRV head for the coldest of those 4 bedrooms, the other 3 could have an unlinked TRV head.

Same applies down stairs, if you want dinning room, kitchen, and living room to be heated at the same time, only one Wiser TRV head required, other two could have a cheap head.

Before Wiser was installed, I just had a silly Nest Gen 3 thermostat, so I would set it in 2 hour stages, 0.5ºC every two hours, so starting at 8 am, so would set TRV heads to raise in temp at 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 hours, so they would be open when the boiler fired up, the problem was starting at 17ºC only worked if colder than 17ºC at 8 am.

But what really messed it up, was hall cooled too slowly, but three TRV heads.
1) Energenie, the problem was there was really no option to manually change the setting, at the PC or phone, easy I could set temperature and time, they had OTT anti-hysteresis but worked well. Needs a hub.
2) eQ-3, far cheaper, bluetooth only not wifi, would only connect to one phone, so wife controlled some and I controlled some, had window open detection, actually used to turn kitchen radiator off when unloading shopping, so door open, all setting could be done at the head its self, and just press knob down to get a boost.
3) Kasa also known at TP-Link, by far best of three, but not found window open function, but the app seems to only work on phone, tablet, or emulator, it will not work direct on my PC, need to use BlueStacks, which is rather slow. The report is good, it shows how the room has heated, but the thermostat in the range needs to be hard wired, so not linked in my case. Needs a hub which doubles as door bell.


One Energenie destroyed by carpet fitters, they are the oldest around 7 years old now, the batteries last around 2 years, the eQ-3 batteries last just the year, the Kasa only been fitted around a year

so far so good as to battery life.

 

[RichD1]

A lot of info to digest guys, thanks.

The pipes to make the 3 or 4 zones are readily accessible together with mains electric close by. I was thinking about a Smart Plug on each, but can't see a way of linking it to the boiler when heat is required.

Totting the costs up and it looks like its around £250ish and still won't provide the control that would make it easy.

So I've been looking at the costs to install Wiser and I notice on Amazon they list a TRV from Schneider by Drayton at £32 whereas a Drayton one is £43ish. Amazon offer a triple pack of TRVs for £133! Buying separately and the Schneiders come in at £96. Seems odd!! Is there any difference?

Also can Wiser be controled from two smartphones?

 

[Rodders53]

The Wiser documentation is available readily enough.

https://www.productinfo.schneider-electric.com/wiser_home/wiser-home-sug-uk/English/System%20User%20Guide_Wiser_Home_UK%20(Bookmap).pdf

Supports up to 63 Zigbee devices (plus the Hub) - has limits of 16 wireless room thermostats, 32 Radiator TRVs, and 3 UFH units -- see page 21/22.

My Wiser 3 is intended for a typical modern house install with HW storage... HW on/off via timer. Zone 1 (Downstairs, Living) and Zone 2 (Upstairs beds) with a wireless thermostat on each although in the App they refer to the stat location as a Room.

I have mine do my Downstairs UFH via the thermostat but just as a timer powering up the wiring centre and that controls the UFH circulator pump and calls for heat operating the UFH zone valve which then caused the oil boiler pump to run and fire up. Each UFH room (4) has a dumb wall thermostat. I need another 3 room stats and the UFH centre to do it 'correctly'.

Wiser treat every TRV as a 'Room' with individual control. Quite how that works out which zone to fire up is something I don't know as we have no need for bedroom by bedroom control by schedule so have no Wiser TRVs (just ultra dumb mechanical Pegler Terrier jobs). I'd guess they are assigned during installation/setup?

It may be worth a look at the Wiser App to see if it has a demo mode?

 

[omega015]

In terms of connecting to the boiler, you would at a minimum need something like a smart / remote relay that you can trigger when any TRV needs heat. coupled with home assistant or something like that and you can create a fairly open heating system and even use a mix of different branded TRVs etc..