Share Your DIY - Home Automation - Heating & Hot Water Set Up

Other Devices & Integrations Climate Control & Temperature Sensors
1

Hi

I am looking at what would be involved in replacing my current ‘standard’ heating and hot water 7 day timer system with a Vera/Z-Wave set up.

The goal is to also to try and see if I can actually improve the way heating is run/handled in the house. (I’m based in the UK, just to help set the scene)

My Current Set Up.

  1. A 7 Day (2 Way) Heating & Hot Water Timer System (controlling 2 motorised valves)
  2. A room thermostat in the hallway that controls the boiler when the central heating is on.
  3. TVRs in each room (except the hallway) to help regulate their temperature when the heating is on.
  4. A separate room thermostat, linked to another motorised valve to manage heat in another room.
  5. Thermostat on the hot water tank, to regulate the temperature and call to the boiler when the hot water is on.

To replace point 1 with a Vera and a z-wave solution, my thoughts are that i could use two Fibrao relay switch and some sort of timer plugin on the dashboard - has anyone done this?

Point 2 & 3 can be replaced with dedicated thermometers in each room along with a z-wave TRV, I could then also use a combination of set points on the TVRs and the Combination Switch plugin to ensure that when x number of rooms have reached temp, the boiler can turn off. - Is anyone doing something similar?

[size=10pt]I’m updating this post so it can be more generic, allowing people to share their own local set ups …[/size]

2

With everything you have going on I would suggest using the Control By Web products to accomplish this. One of their temperature modules has three relays and an eight channel one-wire system to read temperatures. Scripting is an option and I have been able to read the XML output file with Vera.
Food for thought.
Regards
Tim Alls

3

Thanks Tim, Nice product, I would be interested to see what you’ve done to process the output from it. As for me, it does not look like an easy think to retrofit, as it’ll require both a network cable and a run of one wire cables too. The benefit of z-wave is as you knie, that it’s wireless - however I’m keeping an open mind :wink:

4

You may be able to use the HeatMiser system (??). I’m currently installing this system into the extension (for UFH), and retrofitting into the existing house for DHW and radiators. I’m not worrying about separate zones for each room, but the HeatMiser UH1 wiring centre might be able to be used?

The HeatMiser system isn’t Z Wave, but they do have a network system (uses Cat-5 cable) and you can easily hook it into Ethernet and then Vera. I have a basic plugin working with it already to do basic control and once I get the system running in the house I may extend it…

Personally I don’t know that I’d let Vera “control” my heating - I’m happy that it can oversee things, but I don’t think I’d want it to be the brains and then just have a bunch of relays and sensors feeding a Lua plugin - I just don’t think Vera is reliable enough, and my other half likes heating, and I like an easy life :slight_smile:

Not sure if it will do what you’re after, but more food for thought.

Chris

5

[quote=“Chris, post:4, topic:172767”]The HeatMiser system isn’t Z Wave, but they do have a network system (uses Cat-5 cable) and you can easily hook it into Ethernet and then Vera. I have a basic plugin working with it already to do basic control and once I get the system running in the house I may extend it…

Personally I don’t know that I’d let Vera “control” my heating - I’m happy that it can oversee things, but I don’t think I’d want it to be the brains and then just have a bunch of relays and sensors feeding a Lua plugin - I just don’t think Vera is reliable enough, and my other half likes heating, and I like an easy life :)[/quote]

Thanks Chris, the funny thing about reading your post, is that my other half also likes the heating, which is why after I’d changed a few things to zwave (Thermostats & Thermometers) that she mentioned that she liked the potential/option it gave her, so I was curious how much visibility & control I could give her. (Plus as many of the guys on this forum know, it was almost an ok from her to explore some new tech! :))

It was interesting to hear your lack of confidence in Vera being positioned as the sole controller of a home central heating system, I will admit i have a similar fear, but that was more due to the fact that I’m still new to all this. ;D

A quick open question to any other readers of this post - Would you trust Vera to control your central heating and hot water?

There seems a strong goal (by the misses) to control the heating in the kids room to a very specific level, so that is the main goal guess out of my original suggestions - so with Heatmiser and Control By Web in the mix (ideally integrated to some degree with Vera) it’s good to work through the options out there.

6

Not a chance. Especially in countries/locations where pipes freeze when you get it wrong. I prefer my systems to run autonomously, and simply be influenced by Vera when events occur.

eg. “switch to Away mode” when the house is armed.

In these cases, things still work when Vera fails, albeit in a reduced capacity. My Vera unit fails[sup]*[/sup] regularly. I see it more as a home automation co-ordinator, not a controller. More and more I use intelligent devices that run with Vera simply hinting them to do things and/or trigger [non-fatal] state changes.

This also makes it easier for me to swap out Vera at a later date when something more reliable comes along.

  • where failure is defined as not running a scene on-time, or in some cases at all, as well as rebooting at in-opportune moments.
7

Not a chance. Especially in countries/locations where pipes freeze when you get it wrong. I prefer my systems to run autonomously, and simply be influenced by Vera when events occur.

eg. “switch to Away mode” when the house is armed.[/quote]

This is exactly my stance - I use Vera to monitor, and provide some overriding control to influence what’s happening, but I’d never just get a load of z-wave switches and use Vera to control them. I have the same concept with other things (eg. irrigation). I prefer to have simple controllers and have Vera as the central monitor and control point, but not the brains behind the system.

Chris

8

An example of how Vera helps here is that our existing heating system (a Honeywell system) provides a reading of the water temperature, while the new system (Heatmiser) doesn’t. I need to change to a system that supports underfloor heating, multiple zones, radiators etc, and actually not many systems have a reading for water temperature (and provide everything else I need). So, I have a temperature sensor on the water tank (hooked up to my One-Wire interface), and can provide a Vera interface to the heating that gives everything we (she!) need. She can then control the heating with a more intuitive interface on her iPhone - so the Vera helps, but I don’t have to rely on it…

Chris

9

Thanks - This is very good feedback…

What I’m hearing is that you only use Vera as a monitor/influencer, and not the sole brains or control of an important system.

(Which is interesting if you class security as important as Vera is often sold as a security solution, but that’s probably a whole other topic, left to the Security section of the forum)

I’m happy to explore a route when Vera only acts as a monitor/reporting tool & influencer, so the question comes back to which dedicated heating system does Vera best coexist with?

So leaving the central timer and control system as they are, I would theoretically only be looking at the thermometers, room thermostats and/or thermostatic Radiator Valves (TRVs)

Looking at those that are supported on Vera.

Thermometers = There is a wide choice here, so this one is pretty easy
Room Thermostats = To be explored
TVRs = To be explored

10

I have been thinking about something similar, but rather than doing all by Vera, I thinking about letting Vera be able to adjust the house heating +2,-5 degrees C, as well has the boiler water temp hysteresis. (my house uses a heat pump for the water system so having a bigger hysteresis saves the compressor and gives higher efficiency), leaving the heat system to do its job from within these limits.
As a tiny first step, i am waiting for the Remotec 120 to control a air-air heat pump in my basement, vera is already controlling under floor heating in bathroom and kitchen.

My main reason for planning for this, is that I’d like to play with forecasts in the end.

11

I wouldn’t trust Vera to run my whole heating (though I’ve toyed with the idea). Nothing bad about Vera, by the same token I wouldn’t trust my PC or Mac mini. I do trust Z-wave enough to act as a network for the components in my heating system, and let Vera set temperatures based on timers or presence.

My setup uses 3 Horstmann thermostats, in the living room, bedroom and office. These thermostats are linked by Z-wave to 3 separate boiler actuators (Horstmann / Fibaro units, essentially they are just Z-wave actuated relays) wired in parallel, so each will turn the heating on. In addition, the office thermostat is also linked to the floor heating pump. Most rooms in the house have Danfoss radiator thermostats, also controlled by Z-wave.

This setup runs autonomously and has proven to reliably keep the temperatures around the house where they need to be. Vera manages the day schedule, i.e. in the morning it sets the living room and office temps to the day setting, turns everything off when I leave or go to bed, keeps the guest room heated at night if I have guests, etc.

Vera runs a scene every 15 minutes to copy the wall thermostat settings to the right Danfoss radiator units, so I do not have to worry about those at all. During the day, the bedroom radiator valves are closed. I turn on the radiator in the hobby room by hand when I am there, but Vera shuts it off again when I turn the lights out. The Danfoss units may take an hour or more to react to a setpoint change, but they work very well if you just keep that in mind.

That’s the nice thing about letting Vera manage the settings of your heating components, it gives a lot of flexibility, and allows you to tie heating in with household patterns that Vera already tracks for you (lights, motion detectors, timers, virtual switches to indicate home/away, guests etc).

The range of Z-wave enabled heating stuff is a bit limited here in Europe though. For thermostats, Heat Miser seems to make some nice kit, though I am quite happy with the Horstmann thermostats. They look nice and minimalistic, and actually have a quality look & feel about them, unlike so much other Z-wave stuff that looks cheap and plasticy.

For TVRs, the only option seems to be Danfoss. They work ok but have some issues, such as taking ages to react to setpoint changes, and sucking batteries dry in 1-2 months (mine are all on 3v power supplies). Also it seems that Danfoss no longer sells these (some stockists might still have some); their new line of TVRs only work with their proprietary system, although there are some credible rumours that there’ll be Z-wave versions of these at some point. And with some luck they will have the kinks ironed out of them.

Security? It all depends on what you mean by that. If you mean “break into my place and the police will be there 5 minutes later” or “warn me when my elderly mother hits her panic button” kind of security that always needs to work, I wouldn’t trust anything but a dedicated alarm system. But Vera is reliable enough to keep an eye on my place when I am away, so I can monitor cameras and smoke/flood/gas detectors, and call someone of there is any trouble.

12

Thanks Intveltr

A very interesting read, when you have time some questions for you…

Am I right in saying that you’re using 3 x HRT4-ZW, each one linked to a Fibaro Relay FGS211, you are not using the ASR-ZW?
Also, you say ‘wired in parallel’ does this mean you have standard wired or other wireless thermostats installed too?

If I have understood you correctly, you basically have a ‘sort of’ zonal system, in that you have a parent wall thermostat (a HRT4-ZW) that dictates the 'set’point value to all its associated Danfoss TVRs?

Agreed, I have one already and noticed the setpoint change delay very early on, which is frustrating, but like you say ‘hey-ho! Just work with it’ :wink:

How did you do this?

Interesting, but crossed figures, a new quality and responsive z-wave TRV would be great!

Thanks again Intveltr…

13

Hi Intveltr

If you have chance I would be very (very) interested in your responses to my questions above, plus id love to hear/see more details on your post (below) that you made on the European Thermostat HRT4-ZW section.

Are the Fibaro FGS221 or the FGS211 direct replacements to the ASR-ZW ? If the FGS211 was to be used how or what can the other (unused) switch be used for? and what is meant by an ‘association group 2’?

14

I use 1 ASR-ZW in my setup, along with 2 Fibaro switches. The Fibaro units are a direct replacement of the Horstmann switch, but you will not be able to use the 2nd switch in these units. Z-wave equipment is associated to each other in association groups, which are a bit like channels. The problem is that these devices do not all assign the same meaning to these channels. To Fibaro switches, an “on” command on group 2 means turn on the second switch, but the Horstmann thermostats do not transmit anything on group 2 as far as I know (I tried controlling the second switch of a Fibaro unit from a Horstmann thermostat, but no dice)

I have the ASR-WR and the 2 Fibaro switches wired in parallel, which means that when any of these units is activated, the electrical contact is closed and the boiler starts to burn. I have no other wired thermostats installed

For the Danfoss units, I got some good quality 3v switching adapters (about €8 each), soldered their leads to a nail driven into wooden dowels the same size as an AA battery, which I then inserted into the Danfoss units. Easy and reliable. :slight_smile:

15

[quote=“intveltr, post:14, topic:172767”]I use 1 ASR-ZW in my setup, along with 2 Fibaro switches. The Fibaro units are a direct replacement of the Horstmann switch, but you will not be able to use the 2nd switch in these units. Z-wave equipment is associated to each other in association groups, which are a bit like channels. The problem is that these devices do not all assign the same meaning to these channels. To Fibaro switches, an “on” command on group 2 means turn on the second switch, but the Horstmann thermostats do not transmit anything on group 2 as far as I know (I tried controlling the second switch of a Fibaro unit from a Horstmann thermostat, but no dice)

I have the ASR-WR and the 2 Fibaro switches wired in parallel, which means that when any of these units is activated, the electrical contact is closed and the boiler starts to burn. I have no other wired thermostats installed

For the Danfoss units, I got some good quality 3v switching adapters (about €8 each), soldered their leads to a nail driven into wooden dowels the same size as an AA battery, which I then inserted into the Danfoss units. Easy and reliable. :)[/quote]
Nice DIY solution:) perhaps a good idea for other battery operated stuff as well:)
About the horstmann and the switches: isnt it possible to have a contiuously running scene with temperature settings as a trigger to activate multiple switches?
I am new in the zwave world (allthough very enthousiastic) and dont get the whole assosiation thing…
I’ve got my living room setup and all is run by scenes… no issues here since all things are operated locally and by phone/browser and some remotes activating scenes… what is an assosioation in this context (I understand that if you link specific switches to a specific unit that control of this will give issues but why would you create this link…? is this mandatory in some cases?)

16

The advantage of association is that it works even when your vera is off or in a bad mood, and it’s much faster. I have a bedside switch is associated to the reading lights, ceiling light and hallway lights. If I presss “off”, all lights die instantly. If I run the scene on Vera to turn of these lights, they go off one after another with about a second in between each light.

In case of the Horstmann stuff, associating the thermostat with the boiler unit is mandatory if you want to take advantage of the thermostat’s PID algorithm and built-in reliability (which you probably want).

17

Hi Intveltr, Thanks for all your input so far, I forgot to ask this last time.

As it sounds like you have 3 x HRT4-ZW linked to 1 x ASR-ZW and 2 x FGS221s.

Do I assume each HRT4 thermostat is grouped with one relay/switch. And do you do this simply so you benefit from the PID algorithm on the HRT4s?

Which means the choice of ASR or Fibaro is irrelevant as far as you are concerned?

Does grouping allow the thermostat and switch to work independently to Vera? How does grouping improve things?

Regarding

[quote=“intveltr, post:14, topic:172767”]I use 1 ASR-ZW in my setup, along with 2 Fibaro switches. The Fibaro units are a direct replacement of the Horstmann switch, but you will not be able to use the 2nd switch in these units. Z-wave equipment is associated to each other in association groups, which are a bit like channels. The problem is that these devices do not all assign the same meaning to these channels. To Fibaro switches, an “on” command on group 2 means turn on the second switch, but the Horstmann thermostats do not transmit anything on group 2 as far as I know (I tried controlling the second switch of a Fibaro unit from a Horstmann thermostat, but no dice)

I have the ASR-WR and the 2 Fibaro switches wired in parallel, which means that when any of these units is activated, the electrical contact is closed and the boiler starts to burn. I have no other wired thermostats installed …[/quote]

If acting in parallel, I’m a little confused why it was it not possible to link the 3 x HRT4-ZW to the same relay/switch? Have just one switch? Would that require grouping to be turned off and force you to use Vera to monitor the situation ?

Can the second switch on the Fibaro unit still be used to control something else’s ? E.g a light?

18

I have been using Vera to control the heating for 12 months now and it has been reliable.

I have an ever spring sensor reporting the outside temperature and a 1 wire sensor reporting inside temperature.

A z wave switch controls the enable line to the hear pump and an aeon HEM monitors power consumption

There is a daytime setback on the inside temperature which is overridden by a motion sensor, if people are in he temperature is normal.

After a lot of tinkering with scenes the result is good, the house is comfortable with different comfort temperatures set day, evening, and night. It never feels hot or cold, energy use is very reasonable.

We use a log burner for luxury heat in the conservatory where we sit in the evenings, the house is cooler than that.

Reliability has been good, Vera has only crashed and needed power cycling once in that time. I can check the house temperature over the Internet while I am away from home.

The down side was the learning curve, Vera standard scenes didn’t do the job, z wave temperature monitoring was too course at 1 degree resolution.

Having gained reliable temperature monitoring with 0.1C resolution and got some luua code running it all came together.

It was then a matter of working out what dead band to use and what temperature felt comfortable. This was trial and error and a lot of looking at data mine logs of what the temperature actually did and how it felt.

I discovered the set point needed to be a little higher when it was warmer out, this made it more comfortable as the radiators stayed warm when it was warmer out.

I discovered that my air source heat pump defrost cycle was broken if it short cycled, it would only stay defrosted if it stayed on for 30 mins or so.

Vera gave me the flexibility to adjust these things.

I also have 2 danfoss valves to zone control 2 rooms.

It was a retrofit into an existing system and has worked out well. If I was starting from scratch I wouldn’t have started from here.

Nick

19

[quote=“parkerc, post:17, topic:172767”]As it sounds like you have 3 x HRT4-ZW linked to 1 x ASR-ZW and 2 x FGS221s. Do I assume each HRT4 thermostat is grouped with one relay/switch. And do you do this simply so you benefit from the PID algorithm on the HRT4s?
Which means the choice of ASR or Fibaro is irrelevant as far as you are concerned?[/quote]

Correct. I got the ASR together with one of the thermostats, for the rest I used what I had lying around.

Does grouping allow the thermostat and switch to work independently to Vera? How does grouping improve things?

This setup does work independently to Vera. There’s no real improvement over using Vera, especially since you can implement PID controller in Vera yourself, but not relying on Vera does make it more reliable.

If acting in parallel, I'm a little confused why it was it not possible to link the 3 x HRT4-ZW to the same relay/switch? Have just one switch? Would that require grouping to be turned off and force you to use Vera to monitor the situation ?

You can do this, but you’ll have the 3 thermostats fighting over the switch. For example: thermostat 1 calls for a 10 minute burn over 10 minutes, and thermostat 2 calls for a 1 minute burn over 10 minutes. In this case, thermostat 2 will turn the heater off after 1 minute. The 1st thermostat won’t notice or correct that, resulting in a too short burn for thermostat 1.

Wiring 3 switches in parallel ensures that the burn cycle is always long enough, even though you lose some of the efficiency in the PID algoritm. In practice I find that most of the time it’s only 1 thermostat demanding heat anyway.

Can the second switch on the Fibaro unit still be used to control something else's ? E.g a light?

Yes, but keep in mind that both relays on the Fibaro share a common connection. If your heater is switched by mains power, you can use the 2nd relay for a light, but most heaters I know require a dry contact relay, so you can’t hook the common wire up to the mains.

20

Interesting to hear so many people say they wouldn’t trust Vera for heating. I have been using Vera to control my whole house Geo-thermal heating (radiant & forced air) for a little over three years without any issues. The winters in my area can be severe at times and I’m only home on weekends so Vera and the thermostats need to be reliable. I adjusted the manual z-wave thermostat temperature settings to 16c all the time and Vera controls all temperature changes above that. This way if for any reason Vera goes off line or fails the lowest the temp will go is 16c. I also have many temperature sensors though out the house that would warn me if the temperature falls outside the norm. This would give me lots of time to investigate the problem. I also have Vera controlling the power to my outdoor hot tub and monitoring the temperature, again without any issues for two years now. Maybe I like to walk on the wild side more than most.