This is a pretty cool idea, but like the post above, I would add that it depends highly on the type of building and heating.
We have a well insulated house and floor heating. Currently driven by a Vaillant Gas furnace but soon we will get a heat pump.
Insulation, Heat Pump and floor heating all mean the system is pretty slow and stable, so working with room occupancy is out of the question.
What I would really love is a system that takes the weather report into consideration. Our heating has a sensor outdoors that measures the current temperature and sets the heater accordingly, but this does more harm than good because it doesn’t take into account how warm the rooms already are and also doesn’t know how warm or cold it will be in the next days.
A smart, maybe even AI driven system that checks the weather report, makes decisions based on current and future/predicted conditions and combines as many sources as possible (like using solar power when available etc) would probably yield the best results, but is unfortunately far too complex for me to even attempt.
I was making inquiries about heat pump system. It does look great on paper but in real life I’m not that sure. This system is made to mainly work with floor heating as it needs less energy. But there is also a draw back. As I know you can’t switch floor heating off. It takes days for floor heating to heat a house once it was turned off.
You can use heat pumps to heat radiators but price for that is absurd.
It is possible to make house heating in the way that every room has it’s on thermostat and that furnace can individually heat one room or even one radiator. But this is very expensive.
In my opinion the best was to simulate this is using smart trv.
My buderus gas furnace has outdoor temperature sensor. But its mounted on the side of the house that is never hit by a sun. Today on sunny side of the house was 24 degrees. Sensor is in the shade but on sunny side.
Room temperature rised to 22 without heating.
I’m waiting this winter to saw how exactly this setup will work.
We currently have all the hardware…room thermostats (smarthome), floor heating, heat pump (soon) and solar (soon) so all I really need is the software…but it’s a nice to have, not a need to have…
well good luck. I hope your heat pump will work. As I know it will but overall cost of running it might be much higher than expected because people doesnt usually count on regular maintenance, I heard that maintenance cost are high.
Maintenance cost is less than for a gas heater. The risks are mostly bad planning (too large heat pump will not run efficiently and break more quickly) and placement (wind direction). Wind direction is a concern for us, but shielding the heat pump from direct headwind is manageable.
I was planing to install water tank with integrated heat pump as a replacement for my water tank that use gas. But the guy who does installation for heat pumps said in friendly conversation not to do it.
He told me that head pumps does work but it requires some other things like very thick insulation, triple glazing, very clean environment. He pointed out that maintenance of those device will be high and in the end I will spend the same amount of money every year.
I don’t have any experience with heat pumps and know about it what I have been told.
Maintenance of my old buderus is every two to three years, just to clean it. I didn’t done any maintenance on it for ten years and it never broke down. Running 24/7 365 days,
Since we already have triple glazing and everything it’s fine for us. Maintenance for our gas heater is every year, will he the same for the heat pump but cheaper since it’s less work.
I just thought about possible smart heating schemes, and cam up with the following theory:
Most heating systems are based on outdoor temperature. So if it’s cold they will turn up the “Vorlauftemperatur” to compensate. They are usually based on the current outdoor conditions though, and with a we insulated house and a slow heating system like floor heating they don’t always work perfectly.
So…how about working with a temperature delta, based on the forecast? Essentially, look at the temperature and sunshine predictions 2-3 days in the future. If the temperature delta between inside and outside is going to be smaller in 2 days than it is now, then turn down the heating by 2°C for all thermostats (or the heater directly if you can control it) because the sunand warmth will heat your house back up for free then when it turns warmer.
If the delta in 2 (or 3) days is bigger than it is now, do the opposite…turn the temp up by 2°C since it is fairly cheap to heat a house to 22°C if it’s 18°C outside…and then you “bunker” the cheap heat for the colder days where it would then be set back to your baseline (for us that’s 20 in the living room and bathroom and 18 in the bedroom and some of the other rooms.
This would need quite a few conditions so that it doesn’t cause unwanted side effects, but might be worth considering? Or am I on a wild goose chase here?
Edit: I just found “Better Thermostat” for Home Assistant and will check it out…looks interesting.
Hi, I used the Qubino ZMNHJD1 modules which are Zwave because they were the only ones I could find that supported the pilot wire heating standard at the time.
I am not aware of many Zibgee solutions for pilot wire radiators although I did find the following link which may be of interest:
The other option is to look at WiFi radiators, there are quite a few of these systems available depending on your country but then the problem may be interfacing these with Home Assistant (Zigbee and Zwave make this much easier).
I think it is too early to consider thread as the products need to be developed first.
Would you mind sharing your card config for simple-thermostat - I’ve managed to get so far but can’t quite match up with your design which I’d like to use as the basis for my zigbee-based heating solution.
It’s not super complicated though it requires a set of calculations and operation modes,
For each zone:
schedule temperature - the temperature for the zone
weather cut - a calculation that cuts temperature based on weather, sun. 0-2 degrees
boost - a calculation that may boost this zones temperature by 1 degree when other zones are in demand, to reduce and align furnace firing
These 3 add together to make the target temperature. An automation picks this up and sends it to the climate entity for the zone.
The schedule temperature gets set by automations to run the heating schedule, morning wake-up, nighttime cooldown, etc.
In additions I have 3 operation modes:
normal - aka following the schedule
override - temporary overrides, primarily I use this since I have a Woodstove, when the stove heats up, the zones are set into override, since the stove will start creating heat
away - what happens when I’m away for more than a day.
Cheers - I got 99% of the way until I realised some of the missing entities are down to my devices - I have some Zigbee (Moes) TRV’s and they only provide “HEAT” on the hvac_mode attribute which is what was confusing me. Really odd that the TRV doesn’t have an “OFF” mode and I’m yet to find a way to simulate it with a template/dummy device which sets the setpoint to 5 degrees if the mode is set to “OFF”.
Schedule by calendar: set the temperature of each room with a local calendar and as many heating events as you like
Multiple thermostats: One or more thermostats per room: multiple thermostats are synchronised together. Works with smart TRVs, any smart thermostat, or Generic Thermostat
Manual override: a change on the thermostat, dashboard or by voice assistant remains in effect for a defined period (default 2 hours)
Door or window open: heating turns off heating in the room if any door or window is left open for a defined period (default 3 minutes) – optional list of zero or more closure sensors.
Occupancy: heating turns off heating if a room is left unoccupied for a defined period (default 1 hour) – optional list of zero or more motion or human presence sensors.
Warmup period: occupancy is ignored for a defined period at the start of a calendar event (default 2 hours)
Away mode: set all rooms to a temperature specified per room (default 5C) when there is no one at home
Background temperature: used when there is no calendar event (default 5C but specified separately from the frost and away temperatures)
Zone control: can switch one or multiple heating zone valves, or a boiler that needs a heat demand switch, based on heat demand from a group of thermostats
Notifications: if thermostats do not respond to a new setting, go offline, or come back online
Robust: Graceful degradation when a thermostat or a sensor is offline
Battery-efficient: conserves TRV battery life by only transmitting real changes
Code generator: uses mail merge (!) to automatically generate YAML code for helpers, timers, template sensors, groups, automations, and dashboard cards from a single EXEL spreadsheet that lists zones, rooms and thermostats
Hi, thanks for sharing this as it looks like a great piece of work.
Unfortunately it does not look like it would be suitable for my heating system. This uses electric radiators where the temperature setpoint is set on the radiator using the control pad. This is known as the “Comfort” setting and the automation system (HA or whatever) selects a defined preset (Comfort, Comfort-1C, Comfort-2C, Eco, Away etc.) and sends this to the radiator rather than a temperature setting (e.g. 21C).
I realise that this is unusual but the home is wired for this arrangement which includes a 4th signaling wire to each radiator (which I control in zones via a Qubino ZWave module).
I will definitely revisit this as I expect to be moving home in the near future.
Some TRVs also have modes like ‘comfort’, ‘background’ and ‘away’. In my case, the trick is to set them to ‘manual’.
If that is not available in your case then the blueprint cannot be used as-is because it is based on sending a temperature to a ‘climate’ device. However, you might be able to fork it and make a version that schedules modes instead of absolute temperatures?
