Complete heating management, including door/windows openings, schedule heating and manual override

francois09 · February 29, 2024, 9:13pm

Home-Assistant central heating management

This repository contains blueprints for heating system management. Github is here for details. It’s a followup of this topic

Pre-requisits

Having a on/off central heating system.
Using TRV like TuYa TV02-Zigbee control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT on wich you can change the mode (auto/manual) and the setpoint locally, and able to accept calibration value for T° sensor
Using specific T° sensors on the “best place” of each room
Using contact sensors for windows and doors on each rooms

Principle

I focus on some major ideas for building this set of blueprints:

Each room should be autonomous for requesting heating, and have some properties (schedule, comfort and eco T°, active or passive, etc.)
I don’t use TRV T° sensor to determine room T°. Too close from the radiator to be accurate.
I fake the calibration of TRV to be sure valve is open or closed when needed

How it works

Based on properties, and triggered by T°, properties changes, etc. each room will compute the T° setpoint, and if necessary activate a specific helper saying it needs heating. This helper set is used as a trigger for starting or not the central heating system.

The rooms are also able to determine if they’re linked to inside, outside, both or none. Depending on link situation, room climate valve can be set to off, or whole heating system can be stopped.

Room Link	Action taken
Inside	Nothing special (Valve reset to child-unlocked and on “heating” mode)
Outside	Valve is child-locked and stopped
Both	Flag setup for shutdown global heater (Valve reset to child-unlocked and on “heating” mode)
None	Nothing special (Valve reset to child-unlocked and on “heating” mode)

On non-winter mode, all climate valves will be set to “off” and also “child lock” mode, to preserve battery.

How to setup

First, you need to create global and room helpers. RO indicates automations don’t touch value, RW indicates value can be set by automations.

Room related helpers:

Name	Mode	Values	Usage
Comfort T°	RO	Climate valve T° range values	This indicates the standard comfort T° requested
Eco T°	RO	Climate valve T° range values	This indicates the economic (unused room, or night mode) T°
Planning	RO	Planification	Used for switching between Confort (on) and Eco (off) T°
Setpoint T°	RW	Climate valve T° range values	Current setpoint, manually set or based on planning
Manual T°	RW	Boolean	Indicating that Setpoint is manually determined. Set when TRV is manually modified
Heat	RW	Boolean	Indicating that the room need heating
Debounce	RW	Boolean	Avoiding race conditions on starting/setup climate valve
Used	RO	Boolean	Indicating the room (mostly bedrooms) are subject to planning. If not, T° is always set to Eco
Linked	RW	List (Inside, Outside, Both, None)	Indicating how room is connected to the house or the outside
Selector timer	RW	Timer	Wait until manual T° is selected. Manually selection send too much messages.
Active	RO	Boolean	Indicating the room is able to request heating. If off, no heat can be request, only valve changes allowed.

Global helpers

Name	Mode	Values	Usage
Winter mode	RO	Boolean	Indicating if we are in Winter (or heating season) or not
Room link timer	RW	Timer	Used to avoid reacting too quick on a room link status change
Always Open	RO	Binary sensor	Fake sensor that can be used in room link decision
Always Closed	RO	Binary sensor	Same as above
Heating automation pause	RW	Timer	Used to avoid boot side effects.

For each room you want to activate automation, you need to instantiate Room heating mode switching (heater_switch_mode.yaml), Room heating setpoint compute (heater_setpoint_compute.yaml, Room link status (heater_room_link.yaml) and Room heating request compute (heater_request_compute.yaml).
Then create only one instance for each of Heating system should start (heater_one_need.yaml), Heating system operationnal or not (heater_start_stop.yaml) and Heater boot management (heater_boot_management.yaml) to globally manage heating system.

How to use, and how I use it.

First, you need to create the plannings for all the rooms you want to manage. For example, my bedroom have a planning for every day, saying “Comfort T° from 6:30am to 8:00am and from 9:00pm to 11:00pm”. Meaning I’ll go to bed and wakeup on a comfortable T°, but no heating during the night or the day.

Then you have to set the room “Active” or not. “Active” allow a room to request for heating if T° is under setpoint. In my case, the entry room is only passive. Setpoint is fixed at 19°C, so if heating system is running, the room will acquire some residual heat, but never request for specific heating.

You then can decide if the room is “Used” or not. For example, my own bedroom is “Used”, but the friends bedrooms are only marked “Used” when I have people home. The living room is marked “Used” for example. “Used” means using T° scheduler for changing the setpoint T°.

When you change setpoint on the TRV, the room is marked as “Manual”, and the Setpoint T° will remain as selected. You can change it to “Not manual” into Home-Assistant, or (like me), press the knob on the TRV to select “Automatic”. This will turn back to non manual mode into Home-Assistant. But if you look closer, the TRV will turn back to manual. The reason is that I don’t use TRV “Automatic” mode with planning, I decided to use Home-Assistant planning instead.

The “Holidays” mode on my TRV is not yet used, but will probably be to say “The room is no more used, keep it on Eco T°”

Blueprints

Heating system should start

This blueprint is the global on/off heating system. It collects every heater requests from rooms, and decide if home heater should be started or not. It also check
for rooms links to determine if heating system should be shutdown.

Heater boot management

This blueprint is used at HA boot, to avoid receiving climate valve messages for a certain time. Sometimes, setpoint is received just after the boot, turning climate to be interpreted as a manual selection.

Room heating request compute

This blueprint compute the boolean (switch) helper of the room, based on Climate valve setpoint, and room T°. If heating is requested, it aslo fake the local_temperature_calibration to ensure valve is correctly opened. In my case, T° sensor is far from Climate, and close to my preffered location in the room.

Room heating setpoint compute

This blueprint compute the correct setpoint based on the room schedule and the potential manual setting, to determine and send it to the Climate valve.

Room heating mode switching

This blueprint take into account a manual change on the Climate valve, or the Auto setting to modify setpoint.

Room link status

This blueprint use the doors/windows status to determine if a room is linked to Inside/Outside/Both/None. When linked Outside, it stop and lock climate valve. It also setup a link helper to decide if we have to shutdown heating system or not.

Heating system operationnal or not

This blueprint is the winter mode heating management system. It turn off and lock every climate valve to preserve battery during non-heating period.

francois09 · February 29, 2024, 9:24pm

Ping @Patrick4 , @Monster_D , @AndySymons and @vajdum for new repo/topic

vajdum · March 2, 2024, 7:28pm

same different naming then before

means heater radiator or boiler? Use non-ambiguous wording

Descriptions in BPs - good, but could be even better.
Tell me what it is and what it is used for, like this:

      name: Climate valve calibration
#      description: Room TRV calibration value
      description: Room TRV calibration/offset number entity
...
      name: Selected T° setpoint storage
#      description: Room setpoint stored in Home-Assistant
      description: Input number helper to store room setpoint calculated by Heating Management
...
    request_heater:
      name: Request heater switch 
      name: Call for heat switch (RW)
#      description: Room specific boolean to request heating
      description: Input boolean helper as trigger for switching boiler on/off

      name: Occupancy
      description: input boolean helper. If on, room will be set to comfort T°, if room schedul is on (or even if room schedul is off?)

There are timers, but no note i have to set the timers to a distinct value. Propose default?

Using calibration setting to switch TRV off - doesnt take into account if TRV is already/needs to be calibrated to a distinct value.
Good for it not changes setpoint T°, maybe not so good for TRVs flash (i read somewhere about limited write cycles).

francois09 · March 3, 2024, 10:12am

Argh … Fixing.

francois09 · March 3, 2024, 10:16am

Heater means boiler, but will also name electric switches when I’ll include autonomous rooms. Only Valve or Climate is used for designing what is controlling radiator flow.

francois09 · March 3, 2024, 6:35pm

On the 2 first, I don’t think it’s necessary to write Number or Input number because it’s restricted in the Domain: selector. But ok to update description to be more accurate.

francois09 · March 3, 2024, 6:38pm

For now, I don’t care about real calibration needs, because I don’t rely on TRV T° sensor, but I will later try to adapt closer.

Any link for that ?