What hardware for automation of heating would you recommend?

Hardware
1

Hey all,
I have just installed Home Assistant yesterday on my Synology NAS by recommendation of couple of friends. It found a few devices in my apartment.

When we bought this new apartment ~dozen years ago, we redid all the electrics and put UTP cables in the walls for smart home. However years passed and I did not get to use them in any way. :frowning:

Now Iā€™d like to start with something. The most required thing to automate is heating.
I have 2 rooms and kitchen with radiators in each of them. Also I have water floor heating in Kitchen, hallway, bathroom, living room.
Each of the valves (mechanical at the moment) has a UTP cable near it.

What I would like to achieve - is to replace the valves with some electric versions, which could be powered/controlled over the UTP if itā€™s possible. And somehow integrate it into Home Assistant.

I have Awair 2nd sensors in 2 rooms, which tell me the temperature, humidity, CO2, PM2.5. They have been added to Home Assistant already.

I also have other UTP cables in walls in Kitchen, and both rooms which can be used for some sensors. And also we put UTP cables near the floor in each of the 4 rooms in case of need temperature sensors of the floor.

So, Iā€™m not sure this is the right place for such questions, but if you can suggest something that I could use in my situation - I would appreciate it.

2

Thereā€™s hundreds of options from off-the-shelf thermostats which work stand-alone to the most basic relay boxes.

There are many ā€œwax discā€ valves for wet radiator systems, which might be low-power enough to run over Cat5e. Hereā€™s an example being taken apart by BigClive:

The issue is going to be voltage drop - (say) 3W at 12V is 0.25A (no, donā€™t attempt mains voltage over UTP - not safe) so might loose energy in the cable resistance. Commoning pairs might help.

As for control, Iā€™m running a large heating system from a Sonoff 4CH + a Sonoff Dual - the relays switch the zone valves, and HASS does the rest.

If this helps, :heart: this post!

1 Like
3

Thanks.

I suppose, that heating valves suited for 48V do not exist? I havenā€™t found any specifically for use with UTP cables :frowning:

4

Sorry - not looked for wax valve options as Iā€™ve no idea of your locality (Iā€™m in the UK).

Iā€™d probably have flood wired like you did (also have Cat5e everywhere after delivering beer to a building site manager and appearing on-site with telco safety gearā€¦), but TBH, battery Zigbee / Z-Wave valves are now more commonplace albeit with the need to replace AAA/ AA batteries.

Youā€™ve got a lots of options for WLAN APs, and BTLE repeaters using PoE, though! :slight_smile:

Also donā€™t forget that IEEE PoE can be cheaply adapted to anything from USB to 48V, and just passively connecting a DC supply down Cat5e can do any SELV voltage, so you could adapt any radio valve to not use batteries.

Thereā€™s a custom integration to run advanced climate control using HASS which might be worth a look. Personally, I like basic functions like thermostats to run on ā€œhardwareā€ with HASS only as a control plane - e.g. ESPhome on a Sonoff / Shelly controls the valve with a local temp sensor, but HASS sets the desired temperature. That way a HASS failure doesnā€™t cause you to freeze!