Underfloor heating control

[rillenkarren]

I live in an apartment block where the boiler, cylinder, main controls are located in the cellar. The rooms are primarily heated by underfloor (tiled) heating elements.
The seven heating zones are controlled within the apartment from a valve bank, a main on off and then a hand adjustable valve per zone.
The problems I have are
1) the control valves are not very finely adjustable
2) the heating is on all day even though no-one is living there during this period
3) there is no room thermostat or feedback to regulate the valves.
This results in excessive heating bills.
What I hope somebody could advise me on is whether this system can be retrofitted so that a central programmable control panel can set temperatures and heating time durations wirelessly ?

 

[Dan Robinson]

Pictures?

 

[rillenkarren]

Hi, what exactly do you wish to see pictured ? The only thing i could imagine being useful is this

 

[Dan Robinson]

Is this place actually in the UK?

The reason we/I want to see pictures, as with any other professional giving advice here is to make sense of the largely meaningless fluff many posters put in their requests for help.

In your case, I can see you have a heat meter and no actuators.

Putting actuators on the manifold pictures (would be nice of a close up of the valves along the top rail) would make it easily controlled with Evohome which will do exactly what you want.

The fun part is finding actuators to fit on the manifold.

 

[Echo the husky]

Is this place actually in the UK?

I wondered why the zone labels weren't in English!

 

[Dan Robinson]

Either that or the installers were German .

 

[Dan Robinson]

They were certainly cross eyed judging by the way the ports and pipes line up

 

[rillenkarren]

10/10 for observation ! yes you are correct the property is not in the UK.
i had a quick look at Honeywell evohome, that looks to be exactly what i need, if no suitable actuators are available is it not unreasonable to swap the manifold out for one which supports a suitable actuator ? From the valve "piston" i have about 2.5 inches of available space to the fascia panel. I presume that the actuators require their own 220v supply, there does not appear to be a supply in this cabinet but a wall socket is very close by. Am i correct in thinking that the room sensors and control panel are battery operated ?

 

[Dan Robinson]

65mm is a little close...and from the bath, 8 can't measure mine. However, from the pictures I don't think there will be an issue.

Worse case scenario would be the news to use Hr92 heads on each loop and that will definitely need for the space to be made bigger.


The phrase you need is..... "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs".

Depending on what configuration you get, Evohome is a mixture of battery and Mains powered devices. Sensors are battery powered. Actuators are mains.

Hr92 units are a combination.

They are battery powered and could be used to make a system that doesn't need mains power in the cupboard.

 

[rillenkarren]

what perhaps you cannot appreciate is that the cabinet housing the controls is set in a precast concrete wall so whatever there is available has to fit in that space envelope.
the valve threads are 30x1.5 the spec of the HR92 states also 30x1.5, you wrote that HR92 are a mixture of mains and battery but the datasheet of an HR92 states
Battery or chargeable batteries
Battery Type: LR6, AA, AM3
no mention of mains, are we talking about the same thing ?

HR92 is 96mm high, that might pass but it would be very close, are there lower profile alternatives ? perhaps the valves could be rotated 45° to gain a few mm.

the main room to be controlled is 15M x 5M and has three heating zones. If i want to maintain 22° in this room i will need one single zone sensor and 3 actuators HR92 if they fit, is that it ?
But that would only work to set a constant room temperature all day.
If i want to define on / off cycles i would need the evohome control panel which would replace the single zone sensor, correct ?

I presume the temp display on the actuators displays the water temp flowing through the valve or is it what is transmitted from either the single sensor or evohome controller ?

How does the system cope with a single sensor (or evohome controller) and three actuators controlling three valves for the same room ?

 

[Dan Robinson]

I meant it was a combination of actuator and sensor - however you can bind multiple heads to z single zone with a remote sensor.

If they don't fit in the housing, then you could use standard actuators and an HCC80. This would need mains power.

Regardless you need the Evohome control panel. That is the brain and hub of the whole system.

Sorting out what is what is probably best done by someone who is familiar with all the options.

 

[rillenkarren]

http://www.gruenspar.de/honeywell-evohome-gateway-starter-paket-pro.h

 

[Agile]

You need to review exactly when you want the heating.

One of the problems with UFH is the long warm up and cool down times. This can easily be two hours to heat the room to the target from cold.

But in a flat if there is another below and perhaps to one or more sides then the cooling will be far less than to the outside as heat will be gained from the other flats. In many blocks I visit, even without any heating, they often don't go below 17 C.

Many will say that the saving in turning the heating off will be very small. I don't agree with that common view and would say that the saving will be say 8/24 or 33% if not heating for 8 hours. In many ways having a set back temperature when unoccupied of say 15 C will enable significant savings as well as a far faster heatup.

If the occupation is on the same hours every day then a fixed timed control is adequate but if the times vary then remote control by WiFi will be needed to ensure maximum comfort and savings.

I do have to say that a system like that without any controls seems very odd to us in the UK where energy is very expensive.

Tony

 

[Dan Robinson]

Tony - look up Geofencing.

OP - that link didn't work.

Tony - Evohome, as with many controls, use optimisation to predict the warm up times. Setback is a given.

 

[Agile]

Exactly!