Line Voltage Thermostast

Hello,

The Aube relay can be installed in the baseboard or in the side of the old line voltage thermostat power box in retrofix situation (If wired correctly both live and live ground should arrive and leave the power box/ if the electrician just lopped the live line your out of luck). Aube have a mechanical and a solid state version (could pulse but I do not believe any Zwave thermostat could drive the pulse). Both provide the 24 volt to power the thermostat. Aartech supply the Aube (and MCV) products in Canada.

Richard.

Hello Richard,
Did you try the in-wall setup yourself ? I’m curious as to the heat dissipation within the wall. The SSR must heat up a fair bit I would think ? Also, how did you come about making it somewhat “code proof” ? I’m looking down both avenues right now. Red tape on creating a device (even on the Zwave side!) makes me wonder how this will ever be worth my while… except for the bragging rights of course ;D

Hello T1000,

I did the retrofit install and it worked OK. I am not sure about heat dissipation but it seems to be how Aube suggest the relay can be installed (I confirmed with AUBE/Honeywell that an in wall install was OK however this is not the case for the RT850T Solid State Relay). The older Intermatic thermostat is better than the 2Gig one, because it reports the locally set temperature (2Gig does not), because it does not require beaming and because it only cost $75. Other thermostats cost $150 and are over kill (no need for sheduling, or cooling, or fan control). With the relay times at least 10 thermostats per home (I have 18) is a problem. Note that in UI4 a thermostat was a smaller frame and in Ui5 it’s much larger, times 18 it takes a lot of screen space.

What do you meen by “code proof”

Wiring and relay placing possibilities diagram attached (as suggested by Aube).
(I used a smaller and horizontally placed box to hide it behind the thermostat
a metal plate “cover” is required by code)

Richard.

Hi,

I live in PQ too and work at an electrical reseller company as a home autopmation specialist. I want to let you know that Honeywell/Aube now make a wireless control system for baseboard heating. The technology is called RedLink eConnect and it can be accessed over the internet by a gateway sold by Honeywell too. You can find more information on the Honeywell website (sorry I can’t post external links) All you have to do is install the wireless relays in your baseboards and place the wireless thermostal on your wall.

I’ve asked my Honeywell sales representativeand unfortunately for those interested in home automation with this technology, Honeywell doesn’t distribute any integration protocol…

Regards

I know this is about 9 months old. . .but to the OP, I also live in Chicago and have one room with 220v baseboard heaters. It had an old mechanical relay on it and a 24v traditional thermostat until the mechanical relay failed a year or two ago. I got an Aube on ebay for about $50 and it’s terrific. I’m going to try to connect a Trane or similar to it shortly in preparation for the fall when I’ll start needing it again in that room.

Any updates on this? I have a 110 v. electric baseboard heater controlled by a line voltage thermostat. I’d like to control it with Vera but I haven’t found any Z-wave line voltage thermostats and I’ve searched the web high and low. I just want something I can drop in without messing with realys and such.

Michele,

My solution is not very difficult to implement. Because you are dealing with line voltage
you will innevitably have to deal with the high voltage. Most baseboards are 208 or 220volt
though (be careful 220v can be deadly). In many cases the relay can be supplied by the
baseboard manifacturer and located in their basebord. But I agree that eventually someome will
/should come up with and integrated solution. I have been using CT100 thermostats with and
without 24v power.

Richard

Hey guys,
Of course this is a side project, but I intend to do it right (no house burning down on my watch…) We do have a working prototype but there are two issues with it, both pertaining to red tape (CSA/UL issue and patent issue). I’m heading to Shenzen again in February, there’s still hope
Stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath ;D

A triac based z-wave replacement for my 12 line voltage thermostats would be awesome. Add z-wave energy reporting to them and I would be a happy customer.

For those using the Aube relays - what cycle settings did you use (cycles per hour, max duty time, …)? Did you experience any issues with fluctuating temperatures since those thermostats weren’t designed with baseboards in mind?

I’m still trying to decide if its worth it to convert one or more rooms from a line-voltage thermostate to the Aube+Trane combo.

[quote=“T1000, post:13, topic:170332”]Hello folks,
This “line-voltage” thermostat thing has been haunting me for quite a while. I’m an integrator from Quebec, where 80% of homes are heated with baseboard heaters… Let me save you hours of Googling : there is nothing out there. Not only have I looked far and wide, I have talked on the phone with some of the most obvious companies, to no avail. Their say there is not enough of a market for them out there… Your alternative is to use a relay. I can certainly vouch for Aube products. Aube is a Honeywell company who’s factory is 10 minutes out from my office, their product outfit a very large number of Canadian houses. Having the transfo built-in is a plus to my ears, but feel free to disagree :slight_smile: What you need to worry about is both footprint (inside the wall or near the unit itself) and cooling. This thing can heat up quite a bit. Work your numbers out and make sure it’s placed where it can breathe. Also know this : this will be a full on / full off setup. With most modern line-voltage thermostat, you’ll get “pulsing” or the ability to slow down the unit once near the setpoint. The disadvantage of not doing that is that you’ll heat it up red until it reaches the setpoint, then the relay clicks and stops it, but it will radiate a lot more before beginning cool down, so it’s not exactly an “energy wise” method since it’ll produce a lot of unwanted heat.

We have taken it upon us to come up with a solution : we are in the early stage of a working Z-wave line-voltage, triac-controlled, thermostat. If it’s something you need, let me know. I’m pretty sure we’ll be looking for a bunch of people to use/abuse it once it’s ready… Certification is a pain, but there’s hope yet, bear with me :slight_smile:

Cheers ![/quote]

T1000, I registered just to chime in and echo your thoughts exactly. Years and years I have been looking for this!

There are multiple millions of 220/240v thermostats here in Canada and nobody at the big thermosat providers thinks there is even a market in the Line voltage TStat businessDUH. I have been trying for years to find anything either Insteon, ZWave or UPB for that matter that will work, but ended up converting 2 of my 11 in my house to the Venstar 24v Stat, and the AUBE 840T in the link above to work with my Insteon swicthes and software. Works well, but a lot of effort and cash just to get those 2 stats automated. Moving to Z-wave now and still no options beside this?. Grrr… Aube by the way also made an excellent X-10 compatible stat many years ago (12 or so ) that was quite popular with the Automation crowd at the time but they were a small market then mainly early adopters. Maybe they haven’t done much research lately and still thinking back to those days when making their marketing decisions? Of course then why would the big stat vendors be pushing pseudo-schedule-7 day timing junk as their answer to automation? Strangely enough Honeywell does make a rather contorted line voltage wireless wifi controlled tstat now that uses their own proprietary technology. No doubt it is a beautiful stat that works well like all their products but am I going to ignore my investment in automation standards just to bring in another wireless technology with different levels more of complexity from a large vendor because they won’t jump in the automation sandbox with everyone else? No wonder these large players fail at residential automation! Guys we don’t want more stuff!!, but we’ll buy it if it means getting stuff that works! All they have to do is offer one of the common automation standards, in a triac line voltage 240v stat and they could make a lot of money in this market now, that is more and more mainstream all the time. And yet their idea of automation is for me to spend 2 days programming in arbitrary times and schedules into 13 dumb stat terminals with timers they call smart stats, convincing me that I’m saving cash doing it LOL. At least my automation setup knows my habits and can adapt easily without me having to reprogram everything all the time. Hit a scene button and everything changes. That’s automation, hit a button at work, and let the kids in, turning up the temp and lights, and off with the alarm. Go to bed, let the system figure out that everyone’s in bed, lower the water temps, the heat, arm the house, and tone down the outside lighting!! You can’t do that for heat unless the stat vendor integrates into the system like all the rest of our providers do, and the 24v line voltage vendors are lost in the dark when it comes to thinking this through. (pardon the puns) ;D

Anyway T1000, after all this rant LOL, let me know if you need a good beta or alpha tester, and if it works I will take the first 11 units!

Jamy

[quote=“patrick, post:30, topic:170332”]For those using the Aube relays - what cycle settings did you use (cycles per hour, max duty time, …)? Did you experience any issues with fluctuating temperatures since those thermostats weren’t designed with baseboards in mind?

I’m still trying to decide if its worth it to convert one or more rooms from a line-voltage thermostate to the Aube+Trane combo.[/quote]

Patrick, I have one stat on 6 cycles /hr and the other on 4 just to test. But I really don’t think there is much difference as they are replacing the old stat that just turned on until it hit the targeted temp, and turned off. I notice my system doesn’t offer a max duty time in the stat that I am aware of.
Jamy

Back onto fitting an Aube and a zwave tstat… trying to get an idea of where to stash the Aube in my setup. I use these style heaters.

They look like a long triangular wedge up near the ceiling. The only room is on the end for some wire nuts so relay needs to be external. I don’t want to put some box with a relay hanging off it next to the heater. Any suggestions? The only thing I have come up with is some kind of in wall electrical box to at least hide the bulk of the wiring/relay. And of course if the relay is in a box, I assume you shouldn’t be mixing 24volt next to 220v in the same confined space (at least not without some kind of separation)

The best solution I have found is something like this:
http://tinyurl.com/cbj55x9

Any other ideas?

[quote=“Jamy, post:31, topic:170332”]T1000, I registered just to chime in and echo your thoughts exactly. Years and years I have been looking for this!

There are multiple millions of 220/240v thermostats here in Canada and nobody at the big thermosat providers thinks there is even a market in the Line voltage TStat businessDUH. I have been trying for years to find anything either Insteon, ZWave or UPB for that matter that will work, but ended up converting 2 of my 11 in my house to the Venstar 24v Stat, and the AUBE 840T in the link above to work with my Insteon swicthes and software. Works well, but a lot of effort and cash just to get those 2 stats automated. Moving to Z-wave now and still no options beside this?. Grrr… Aube by the way also made an excellent X-10 compatible stat many years ago (12 or so ) that was quite popular with the Automation crowd at the time but they were a small market then mainly early adopters. Maybe they haven’t done much research lately and still thinking back to those days when making their marketing decisions? Of course then why would the big stat vendors be pushing pseudo-schedule-7 day timing junk as their answer to automation? Strangely enough Honeywell does make a rather contorted line voltage wireless wifi controlled tstat now that uses their own proprietary technology. No doubt it is a beautiful stat that works well like all their products but am I going to ignore my investment in automation standards just to bring in another wireless technology with different levels more of complexity from a large vendor because they won’t jump in the automation sandbox with everyone else? No wonder these large players fail at residential automation! Guys we don’t want more stuff!!, but we’ll buy it if it means getting stuff that works! All they have to do is offer one of the common automation standards, in a triac line voltage 240v stat and they could make a lot of money in this market now, that is more and more mainstream all the time. And yet their idea of automation is for me to spend 2 days programming in arbitrary times and schedules into 13 dumb stat terminals with timers they call smart stats, convincing me that I’m saving cash doing it LOL. At least my automation setup knows my habits and can adapt easily without me having to reprogram everything all the time. Hit a scene button and everything changes. That’s automation, hit a button at work, and let the kids in, turning up the temp and lights, and off with the alarm. Go to bed, let the system figure out that everyone’s in bed, lower the water temps, the heat, arm the house, and tone down the outside lighting!! You can’t do that for heat unless the stat vendor integrates into the system like all the rest of our providers do, and the 24v line voltage vendors are lost in the dark when it comes to thinking this through. (pardon the puns) ;D

Anyway T1000, after all this rant LOL, let me know if you need a good beta or alpha tester, and if it works I will take the first 11 units!

Jamy[/quote]

Hey Jamy, thanks for dropping a line. Your analysis of the perception problem that seems to exist with large manufacturers is exactly right in my experience. The folks at Aube are nice and all, but when it comes to thinking hi-tech, there’s no-one to pick up the phone. In an unrelated project, they brushed me off saying they weren’t interested… After finding another more willing supplier, my client is not only happy, he’s considering going national with the product. I don’t have MBA, but I’m pretty sure that’s how you define a successful endeavour. As for this product they put out, it’s not even worth the discussion. It is headed for the same discount box where you’ll find every other attempt at wireless automation with no common ground with existing technology. It’s hard to understand why this lesson hasn’t been learned already…

Anyways, as I said earlier, the matter is not of making it work. We did that in 4 hours flat. The matter is coming up with a UL/CSA listed product that matches all standards, does not go against a zillion patents and can land on the shelves for a reasonable price. It’s a taller order than it sounds :slight_smile:

I am checking out manufacturing samples these days and my next visit to China is in February, so we should make some progress then… Y’all be the first to know !

Cheers!

I’m from Quebec, and my house is full of Line Voltage Thermostats.

I would like to share an idea. Most of the new thermostats cans be used in many modes: DAY, VACATION, NIGHT, etc.
I think that some of these thermostat have in their back some contacts to activate a specific mode.

If I’m wright, could we think about a simple way to add a zwave device to simply, as an example, activate or desactivate a mode, letting the thermostat doing is job in that mode ?

Is there a possible solution there ?

GH

Hello huogas,

There are plenty of hacks to be done in order to make this work. One of the best is Richard_Canada’s use of SSRs and Zwave thermostat. It’s a good hack because it’s within the confines of what"s acceptable, i.e. if your house burns down, it could be argued that this was a safe installation sinces parts where used within the confines of what they were meant to do (assuming of course the actual installation was done to code). But when you have stuff that does things it didn’t do when it got stamped by CSA, it doesn’t mean it’s not safe, but it sure means you’ll hear from your insurance company should something happen. In fact, an earfull is probably the only thing you’ll get from them. I can’t condone fiddling around with something that can so easily turn into a blaze and/or zap you in the process… If however you’re equipped to experiment safely, then by all means do and please do share your results with us as this gray area sure needs some light.

I’m thinking the OP might want us to move this discussion to it’s own thread ? Or are you still on the market for a solution to your problem ?

Here’s another decent hack as well posted on ebay.

[url=http://www.ebay.com/itm/Schlage-Link-Trane-Nexia-Zwave-Baseboard-Heat-120-240VAC-Thermostat-MOD-/321008086011?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abd92abfb]http://www.ebay.com/itm/Schlage-Link-Trane-Nexia-Zwave-Baseboard-Heat-120-240VAC-Thermostat-MOD-/321008086011?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4abd92abfb[/url]

I was looking at using something like this for my radiant heat in my shed

I am looking at using the Aube relay/transformer to switch loads on baseboard heating. I am going to mount it above the suspended ceiling in a basement, but am concerned from a safety point of view. The instructions say to mount it through a knockout of a junction box, but I am concerned about having the relay exposed and in contact with fibreglass insulation. I was thinking about mounting two standard 4" square boxes side by side with the relay in one and the threaded piece through the two knockouts - holding the two boxes together.

Do you get the picture? That way all the electrics are in one box and the relay is in the other box protected. Depending on how hot the RC-840T-240 gets, I may or may not put the cover on the relay box.

Thoughts about this? I am just uncomfortable doing what the instructions say and having the relay sticking out exposed on the side of the junction box - even if it is code, which I am not sure it is.

Thanks,

Paul

@paulbrit, I too would be interested in just what is ‘safe’ as well as ‘code’. I am getting ready to hook one of these up at my cabin. Relay and box need to either go up in attic (not a good idea), or in the wall. I already have an access panel in the outer wall of the place where the original heater was (like 12x24"). Behind that is insulation now. However just above that is the relocated wiring and line voltage thermostat running to the newer radiant heater (mounted up near ceiling).

I really didn’t want to put any electrical box on the wall near the heater as it would look just wrong. I figured I could pull the access panel, splice in there with Aube in a box mounted in the wall on the stud. I do like your idea of putting 2 boxes side by side to protect the Aube and its low voltage wiring too. What I don’t know is if behind the wall is code or not (still is an access panel in front of it that can be easily remove).