Hi All,
I used Evohome several times before to great success and looking to upgrade my new property. It's a bit different as it has quite a "industrial" heating setup but I was hoping it could be used pretty easily.
I'm happy with the DHW setup so will leave that alone.
The property is split over four flours and each has it's own physical zone valve located near the boiler and a conventional thermostat located in the landing.
The boiler has built in cycling protection so I'm not worried there.
The easy answer would be to manually lock open all the zone valves and then use a BDR relay for the boiler linked to an evohome controller and fit HR92's everywhere for zoning.
I'd prefer not to do this as the property is reasonably large and pumping all zones for a single HR92 requesting heat is a massive overkill. Also the boiler room is a significant distance away from the property and I suspect the signal would also be blocked - so any rewiring in the boiler room is tricky at best. The pipework from the boiler to the property is 28mm so represents a reasonable amount of water to pump for a single radiator requesting heat.
The next option would be to replace the existing thermostats with 4 x BDR relays and setup up 4 zones with zone's BDR linked to its zone valve. This would "ok" (but not ideal) as it means I can't further subdivide the floors into zones that can demand heat.
One option would be to implement the 4 BDR's and override the rooms that I don't want to use (spare room for example). Then if needed bring them back into sync when occupied. It's "ok" and works for a couple of floors but the ground floor has rooms with very different heat profiles so it's not ideal.
Now I know I can bind a single BDR relay to multiple controllers so yes it could be solved with additional evohome controllers but this feels like quite an expensive option and frustrating if this can't be achieved with a single controller and multiple zones.
If it were possible (but I suspect it is not) to have a single BDR relay bound as an actuator to multiple evohome zones then it could be achieved.
Just trying to get a little more control within the physical zone - if you could map the same physical BDR relay on the same Evohome Controller to multiple controller defined "virtual" zones (as a zone valve actuator) then job done.
So for example in the evo home controller "Zone 1" could be the lounge (physical pipework Zone Valve 1) and then "Zone 2" could be the kitchen and dining room (also physical pipework Zone Valve 1).
Thus if you could wire the physical zone valve for that floor to a single BDR but configure both virtual zone 1 and zone 2 to use the same relay actuator as the zone valve then it'll work perfectly. What I'm not sure of is that last step of mapping the same BDR relay to two virtual zones on the same evohome controller.
Am I missing something obvious? I'm struggling to find a method to achieve this and I don't see why it should be so difficult!
I used Evohome several times before to great success and looking to upgrade my new property. It's a bit different as it has quite a "industrial" heating setup but I was hoping it could be used pretty easily.
I'm happy with the DHW setup so will leave that alone.
The property is split over four flours and each has it's own physical zone valve located near the boiler and a conventional thermostat located in the landing.
The boiler has built in cycling protection so I'm not worried there.
The easy answer would be to manually lock open all the zone valves and then use a BDR relay for the boiler linked to an evohome controller and fit HR92's everywhere for zoning.
I'd prefer not to do this as the property is reasonably large and pumping all zones for a single HR92 requesting heat is a massive overkill. Also the boiler room is a significant distance away from the property and I suspect the signal would also be blocked - so any rewiring in the boiler room is tricky at best. The pipework from the boiler to the property is 28mm so represents a reasonable amount of water to pump for a single radiator requesting heat.
The next option would be to replace the existing thermostats with 4 x BDR relays and setup up 4 zones with zone's BDR linked to its zone valve. This would "ok" (but not ideal) as it means I can't further subdivide the floors into zones that can demand heat.
One option would be to implement the 4 BDR's and override the rooms that I don't want to use (spare room for example). Then if needed bring them back into sync when occupied. It's "ok" and works for a couple of floors but the ground floor has rooms with very different heat profiles so it's not ideal.
Now I know I can bind a single BDR relay to multiple controllers so yes it could be solved with additional evohome controllers but this feels like quite an expensive option and frustrating if this can't be achieved with a single controller and multiple zones.
If it were possible (but I suspect it is not) to have a single BDR relay bound as an actuator to multiple evohome zones then it could be achieved.
Just trying to get a little more control within the physical zone - if you could map the same physical BDR relay on the same Evohome Controller to multiple controller defined "virtual" zones (as a zone valve actuator) then job done.
So for example in the evo home controller "Zone 1" could be the lounge (physical pipework Zone Valve 1) and then "Zone 2" could be the kitchen and dining room (also physical pipework Zone Valve 1).
Thus if you could wire the physical zone valve for that floor to a single BDR but configure both virtual zone 1 and zone 2 to use the same relay actuator as the zone valve then it'll work perfectly. What I'm not sure of is that last step of mapping the same BDR relay to two virtual zones on the same evohome controller.
Am I missing something obvious? I'm struggling to find a method to achieve this and I don't see why it should be so difficult!
Comment