Very interesting situation: I have a relative who lives in upstate NY and has a tankless hot water baseboard heating system. During a -5 degree F day in February the tankless system went into error mode and stopped circulating hot water. (Nobody was home - they went to Florida for the winter). The next door neighbor saw water pouring out of the siding and called the city that subsequently turned off the water main. Having no heat and the harsh temps - the distribution piping and radiators froze and the piping split allowing water to flood the house.
Having put together two raspberry 4b systems running homeassistant (in a container environment on debian 11) in two unrelated situations, I put together a third system for this house. Obviously the piping was replaced and the house underwent restoration. Additionally the tankless system got a new controller board plus a box full of related components. Not trusting this for the following winter, I put together a “plan b” in the event the tankless system failed again. (Navien directed the owner to disconnect the power for some time then re-establish power to clear the error code(s) and the system will resume normal operation.) Ha-ha
First and foremost, I got internet installed in this home (previously they only had cable TV and it was nearly impossible to “sniff” off the friendly neighbors because this house is a literal faraday cage consisting of aluminum siding.) I put a zigbee outlet module between the Navien controller and the house power system. This allowed the “reset” to occur without human intervention. Then a high rez camera was installed looking at the front panel of the Navien so the error code could be seen if it actually trips.
Secondly two high output electric space heaters were procured and plugged into high output zigbee outlet modules – one on each floor. The front panel controls were set for max heat and fan then situated to circulate as best to hopefully keep the area from freezing. The fun part which is the subject to this automation: a temperature module at each floor monitors the room and from homeassistant automation was created (this is the actual yaml code)
alias: downstairs space heater on below 50
description: “”
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:- sensor.lumi_lumi_weather_temperature
condition:
- sensor.lumi_lumi_weather_temperature
- condition: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.lumi_lumi_weather_temperature
below: 50
action: - type: turn_on
device_id: 8b1f5d4dda6c3e4dda019f1368310f53
entity_id: switch.space_heater_down_switch
domain: switch - service: input_boolean.turn_on
data: {}
target:
entity_id: input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_trigger
mode: single
then a notification is sent via email. Helpers were necessary to prevent repeated notifications
alias: test_input_boolean_downstairs_temp
description: test_input_boolean_downstairs_temp
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:- input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_trigger
from: “off”
to: “on”
condition:
- input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_trigger
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_trigger
state: “on” - condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_change_notification_sent
state: “off”
action: - service: notify.254_grand
data:
message: 254-Grand downstairs temp below 50
title: downstairs space heater on; temp below 50 - service: input_boolean.turn_on
data: {}
target:
entity_id: input_boolean.input_boolean_downstairs_temp_change_notification_sent
mode: single
Once the temperature rises above 55 the space heater zigbee module is switched off. This configuration was tested by putting the temp modules in a freezer and monitoring the process. Ideally this will never actually happen but for whatever reason if Murphy prevails, plan “C” would involve bringing in the HVAC company – since the owner is in Florida.
It took some fiddling to get the notifications to work without flooding the email inbox. If the reader finds this to be of some benefit you may contact me for the logic on the helper process.
A caveat to this process: the cable company provided their own cable modem and router; however, it was completely locked down. Ports needed to be opened to communicate with the pi (running debian 11 Linux) on port 22. Port 80 for the HA web page and a few other things like SMTP and SSH were necessary. The solution (as has been done in the other setups I have built) was to use an open source router OS on a compatible router. I have had good luck with dd-wrt and the Linksys E4200. The software is open source so no cost. The router cost was somewhere around $40.
I hope this might help someone else or at the very least leverage some of the logic in a similar situation.