HCM200d and HR80UK TRV heads

[DavidS]

A simple question that I hope someone has already done. Is the Honeywell HCM200D compatible with HR80UK TRV heads (Radiator controllers as they call them). The manual only mentioned HR50s. I am pretty sure that it is but it would be good to know from someone who has done this please.

I would also be interested to know of a source for the HCM200D (and associated boiler control, underfloor heating controls etc) for self-installation. There is an Austrian shop at http://shop.smuk.at for 399Euro (under £300) but this is the T model: is it the same? (I notice that they say they speak English which might be handy!)

(I notice that someone else has asked a similar question recently and apologise for re-asking, but I didn't want to divert answers to their post with my question)

Other places I have found with information:
http://www.hometronic.dk/SEEEMS/538.asp (has a Danish price list).

[tsoutherwood]

Hi

Both these links:

http://www.honeywell.hu/ecc/szabalyzo/pdf/hcm200d-um-en.pdf

http://www.honeywell.hu/ecc/szabalyzo/pdf/hcm200d-pd-en.pdf

do mention the HR80 (but not specifically the HR80UK).

I suspect that, as the HCM200 is dual frequency and supports a wide range of devices (more than the CM67 and family), the likelyhood is good.

Cheers

Tim

[tsoutherwood]

BTW, there was a press release from Honeywell that there is a new
HC200d-UK controller with some enhancements, but I haven't seen it on sale anywhere.

[DavidS]

Thank you, that is really useful. I probably won't buy the controller for a bit yet, but knowing that will help. An email to Austria is on its way shortly.

[tsoutherwood]

Please let us know how they (Smuk) are.

I did notice that of the two ways to pay, cash in advance and paypal,
that using paypal causes them to hammer you with a not insubstantial extra charge.

Cash in advance is no extra charge.

I did also notice that their P&P is a bit excessive (100+ quid for one HCM200t, 9 HR80s and one boiler relay).

OTOH, they are cheaper on parts than many UK suppliers, even if they would deal with end-users, so probably not bad overall.

Cheers

Tim

[kundrik]

Look here

http://www.heizungsprofi24.de/haustechnik/honeywell-centra/hcm200d/

I have HCM200d and HR80UK and they work OK

Slavo

[DavidS]

Final (almost) configuration setup

Here are the details of my (almost) final system in case it is of interest to others considering something similar:

I got the HCM200 from

http://www.heizungsprofi24.de

as it is not available except through installers in this country. They were very helpful even though i have no German and they had limited (but sufficient) English. The unit delivered was in English but the manuals were in German. However, they emailed me the English Manuals as PDFs.

I didn't get a power supply from them as the plug would not have been correct and Honeywell charge a lot for a 300mA 12V (ac or dc) supply. Got one round the corner instead.

The radiator valve heads are all HR80UK (10 off) which I got from UK Plumbing. Configuring these to work with the HCM200 is straightforward. I did have to replace all of my radiator valves though as they were Drayton TRV3s (or earlier) and they were not compatible with the HR80UK heads.

(By the way, UK Plumbing have been very helpful although delivery was slow because of parts coming from Europe. This included an unsolicited extra discount (or part refund) when the number of units ordered got reversed in the delivery to them by Honeywell.)

The boiler is controlled by a HC60NG (also from UK Plumbing) so that it only operates when one of the radiator controllers demands it. This means that the circulation pump is also only operational at that time (allowing for the necessary overrun controlled by the boiler). This has completely removed the short cycling that used to happen when I had manual thermostatic valves as the boiler was then working to maintain the water temperature even if all rooms were up to temperature.

I have left the hot water control on the old time switch because a) I didn't have the necessary components to connect it up to the HCM200 but more significantly because I couldn't see any reason to change it over not least as you can only run one manual "Lifestyle" program on the HCM200 at a time.

The only part of the house I have not yet sorted is one room with underfloor heating (hot water, not electric). I bought a wireless room thermostat (HCW80) which comes with its own HC60NG, but it didn't seem possible to make this work with the on-demand system for the boiler (the room is not often heated either). I don't think that the temperature sensor HCF22 (I think) is available in this country, so it may mean another order to Germany to sort that one out (plus a HC60NG to control the pump and zone valve for that room).

Finally a quick word about the programs that I have set up on the HCM200, as this is where it comes in to its own. The main program that runs automatically is a time program where you set, for each room, or zone, the switching times and temperatures that you require. You can then override these either by manually setting a new temperature for a room centrally (very quick and easy to do; it will run until the next switching time for that room) or using a lifestyle. You can run one of these at a time; six are quickly accessible using buttons on the unit, and a further 10 from menus. These just change temperatures for the zones that you have set and can be configured to run immediately, or in the future (with a defined finish time too). I don't know if you can queue them up.

So, my automatic program is something like the following:

(Everything is set to be at a standby temperature 14 degrees or so when not heated):

Weekdays:
Bathrooms on whenever anything else is on (not zoned at all).
Kitchen is the only other zone heated in the morning (pointless heating the bedrooms as it either wakes us up or is on too late to bring any benefit before we leave).
Then everything back to standby temp until mid afternoon.
Kitchen and study on when the kids get in from school.
Lounge added at 6pm, bedrooms a bit later.
Weekends have their own settings for each day.

(One advantage that I didn't consider of this zoning is that the boiler has enough capacity to heat part of the house much more quickly than when it was trying to heat the whole place in one go).

I hope that this is useful to someone!

[jpdw]

How much did it all cost?

I'm soon going to zone our heating (though not the Honeywell HCM200 gear) in an effort to make it more effective (and hopefully burn less gas) so it's good to read how much quicker you find it "reacting".

[DavidS]

Cost of HCM200 System

Let me see:

11 off HR80UK CM Zone TRV Heads @ £66.98 from UK Plumbing (approx£750)
1 off HCM200D @ €498 plus 20 Euro shipping from Heizungsprofi24.de (say £400 pounds)
2 off HC60NG @ £64.20 each from UK Plumbing (£130 with shipping)
1 off PSU from local supplier @ about £7.00

Still need to get the temperature sensor which will cost around €100 plus shipping (about £90). Not cheap but certainly less than getting the plumbing zoned by a plumber even without the control gear.

That gives a grand total of just under £1300. I have not included the cost of the new rad valves in that which were around £15 each (3/4" bsp versions because I have hospital-type radiators).

[jpdw]

http://www.heizungsprofi24.de

BTW.. Link that works:

http://www.heizungsprofi24.de/

(took me 15 minutes and googling to realise David was missing just a single character in the URL!)

[jpdw]

Still need to get the temperature sensor which will cost around €100 plus shipping (about £90). Not cheap but certainly less than getting the plumbing zoned by a plumber even without the control gear.

So did you keep the flow/return as just a single zone that is on whenever >0 room zones have a heat demand (and apols if this was explained above.. I may have missed something). I'm thinking of per floor zoning (traditional zone valves) then motorised valves in all or main rooms (possibly bog standard TRVs in less heated rooms).

That gives a grand total of just under £1300. I have not included the cost of the new rad valves in that which were around £15 each (3/4" bsp versions because I have hospital-type radiators).

From the piccies, it looks like the HR80UK zone heads fit onto the TRV valve in place of the usual manual TRV body. Did you find anywhere to see you just the valve part or did you have to purchase complete TRV (and now have a drawer full of spare TRV bodies) ?

[MichaelD]

I went for Honeywell TRVs to ensure compatibility, but it does leave a stack of TRV bodies spare. Anyone need one?

[chrispsoft]

Very useful thanks. Are you still happy with your system and did you investigate linking up to a computer or the web at all? Thanks in advance.

[DavidS]

Working well now

I am happy with the system now, yes.

I eventually moved the controller as it was possibly too close to a DECT phone (about 1.5m away) and nearer to the boiler controller. It is all behaving now.

To explain a bit more, I fancy what was happening was that the controller was periodically losing communication with one or more of the valves. As a result it would go into a failure mode which includes cycling the boiler every 10 minutes, presumably as a frost protection measure. Given I have a 5m overrun on my boiler and a fairly large fan this was pretty wasteful. This seems to have stopped happening now.

Another suggestion that I would have coming from this is to set a lifestyle (say the last one) to have all rooms at a low, but different temperature, so you can check that they are all communicating and thinking that they are in the same room.

As for internet, no I haven't pursued that at all. I think that the controller would be massively improved by running from a computer though as setting it is pretty tedious and no one else in the house tends to touch it. Fine tuning or adding a room for just a day or two e.g. because of visitors, is a bit of a pain to manage. As a result no one else in the house touches it! If the communication with the valves wasn't encrypted, I would be quite tempted to explore that.

Finally, I notice that there is another system on the market now - it is referred to elsewhere in these forums but I can't find it just now!

[chrispsoft]

Many thanks for the update.

Can I ask some more questions please: Is the unit multilingual? Are the valve motors noisy at all? Have you ever needed to update the firmware?

I have also been looking at the HouseHeat/HouseTech solution which is much cheaper but I have some reservations: It is only available in German (including the labelling on the plastic covers), I can't find out who makes it and what backup I could get, not sure if you can upgrade the firmware. Having said that the system is much cheaper.

Any more comments would be gratefully received - big investment I feel and hence a big call!