Some short background: last year, I purchased a full Netamo kit (Smart valves + thermostat that control the Heater) but “it didn’t meet my expectations” (inexistant support and not doing the job it was meant for) so as I heard a lot of good things about, I decided to go with HA as I can host everything at home and not rely on an external service.
Today I purchased the HA Yellow with POE and a PI4 compute board somewhere else so we will be looking at Zigbee and Matter protocols.
I work in IT so there is plenty of things that I will not be afraid of, but I really have no clue about purchasing the right devices to achieve my goal which is primary have a smart heating system.
I’m looking for:
a smart thermostat with or without an heater controller. My heater is an old De Dietrich gas heater with command on/off (I was able to install Netamo without issue)
a heater control if Thermostat doesn’t have one
smart radiator valves (0.5 degree precision would be nice and of course, something that actually work)
I would say for me the most important is that I can control everything from HA and everything works together but as I also start with HA, there is a lot of things I still need to learn.
I find it imperative that my heating system can run standalone, without any home made hard-and software. Totally cool proof. This is also because I am renting out rooms.
So, ESP devices for me are a no-go (for heating. I have tens of them)
What I settled for in the end is something like this (I found one for half the price, need to search for the link if interested): WiFi controlled thermostat
It basically switches a relais, but can be controlled by HA via WiFi.
6 of them will be used in a floor system.
If you have a standard home with a single thermostat it can directly control your boiler.
There are multiple variants, also for electric (floor) heating.
For hot water I make a generic thermostat with a temperature sensor on the hot water cylinder and the appropriate zone valve.
For heating (hot water radiator) I have TRVs, a heat demand template sensor for each, and an automation to switch the zone control valve when there is demand.
You have a different kind of heating, I know, but the logic is the same. If your thermostats map to the climate domain then you should be able to use Heating X2
Some useful starting points here to research. Looking to add SMART controls to Elson Coral Si unvented cylinder. So far I have found https://www.tsmart.co.uk/ so it looks like I can control the immersion 3kW when on summer setting for hot water via heating the static thermal store.
The winter setting when I switch the red handle needle valve back open by a quarter turn - opens the constant District Heating Flow and Return from the corridor. As the pipe stat is hot, when the non SMART Programmer requests hot water and or heating, the 3 port valve opens to the heat exchanger and then 50% of flat side of heat exchanger goes to the radiators and 50% to a recharge coil in the bottom of the cylinder.
100% to either CH or HW if only one is demanded, but more cost effective to do both at the same time.
Need to come up with a value for money SMART Programmer and Room Thermostat. Existing 20 years old Honeywell items are functional. But not SMART. Honeywell website for retrofitting is pretty useless.
Personally refused to use District Heating for 4 years as there are no plans via Freeholder for decarbonising the District Heating. Soilstack Heat recovery seems the best value to replace most of gas heating.
Freeholder is insentivised to leave gas on 24/7 all year due to probable commissions from the energy company.
Personally planning to move 210 Litres Elson Coral Si to a stand above a kitchen appliance. And put a bigger and better insulated cylinder in the thermal store room with a heat pump linked to a MEV upgraded to MVHR. Connection to District Heating to be maintained but not used.
Plug-in solar panels look like will be made legal this summer. So should be able to buy a throttled output PV system without Planning Application requirements, throttled to about 800w or 0.8kWh. So might be able to over panel to maintain maximum output. Best to get a battery system to store charge.
This is the year to make significant SMART upgrades!
