Prices going up, bills getting bigger, so I'm looking to add a little intelligence to the heating system in the house.
We currently have manual TRVs and the heating & hot water timer is still the traditional 5/2 type. I'd like (as a short term solution) to replace the TRVs with controllable ones (probably Z-Wave - Danfoss or StellaZ) and then use the home controller to alter the desired temperature (set point?) at various times during the day. This way I direct the heating into the rooms that are occupied and not into empty ones when the boiler fires. I'm NOT looking to change the timer at this point!
For example set the bedroom to be 21 oC between 06:00 and 07:00, drop it back to 18 oC between 07:00 and 18:00 and then raise it to 21 oC between 18:00 and 22:00 and then drop it back to 15oC between 22:00 and 06:00. Other rooms would have their own cycles based on current usage.
My question is this - is this feasible and would it work? I know I can make it more efficient by porting the entire heating system over to Z-Wave or EvoHome in its entirety, but the finance committee is not convinced, so small steps. I know that depending on the TRV used, I may need to add room thermostats to record actual temperature before we go fully automated, but will we need them in the scenario described above?
Thoughts?
We currently have manual TRVs and the heating & hot water timer is still the traditional 5/2 type. I'd like (as a short term solution) to replace the TRVs with controllable ones (probably Z-Wave - Danfoss or StellaZ) and then use the home controller to alter the desired temperature (set point?) at various times during the day. This way I direct the heating into the rooms that are occupied and not into empty ones when the boiler fires. I'm NOT looking to change the timer at this point!
For example set the bedroom to be 21 oC between 06:00 and 07:00, drop it back to 18 oC between 07:00 and 18:00 and then raise it to 21 oC between 18:00 and 22:00 and then drop it back to 15oC between 22:00 and 06:00. Other rooms would have their own cycles based on current usage.
My question is this - is this feasible and would it work? I know I can make it more efficient by porting the entire heating system over to Z-Wave or EvoHome in its entirety, but the finance committee is not convinced, so small steps. I know that depending on the TRV used, I may need to add room thermostats to record actual temperature before we go fully automated, but will we need them in the scenario described above?
Thoughts?
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