How to turn the thermostat (boiler) on/off?

Hi everyone,

I’m relatively new to Home Assistant and could not find anything on the docs or the forum on my case.

I’m trying to create a multi-zone heating solution that consists of a thermostat, which is connected to the boiler and a Zigbee TRV + temperature sensor in each room. I managed to set up virtual thermostats for each room with binary sensors, so I know when there’s a heating demand from either of the room.

Based on heating demand, I want to turn my boiler on via a thermostat, and I can’t figure out this part yet.


I can use an automation to change the hvac_mode to heat, but it won’t turn the boiler on if the current_temperature is higher than target_temperature. I was thinking about changing the hvac_action attribute, but it’s not possible to do it via automations GUI and I couldn’t find if it’s possible to do it via yaml. Does it mean that playing with the target_temperature is my only option?

Any help would be appreciated.

You turn the boiler on by making target_temperature higher than the current_temperature, that is how thermostats work.

To make what you want work, I would do one of these:

  • activate a boost mode (if your thermostat supports that)
  • make an automation that raises the target temperature for a certain amount of time and then drops it back to the previous target temp
  • make an automation that raises the target until the heating demand has turned off
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Thank you @apmillen for confirming that raising the target temperature it the way to go, since my thermostat doesn’t seem to have a boost mode.