Drayton Wiser Experience on a large system.

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  • willrook
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Feb 2019
    • 9

    Drayton Wiser Experience on a large system.

    A while ago I had a few conversations here about what to do with my new heating system, so thought I'd post details of how I did it and a few glitches I had to solve along the way:

    My system: 2 Worcester Boilers into a low loss header with 3 outflow channels: DHW, Central Heating 1 (lower 2 floors), Central Heating 2 (upper two floors). Approx 15 rads on each of the central heating circuits. Each circuit on has a zone valve and it's own Grundfos circulator pump on it. All a completely brand new install in a large victorian house over 4 floors.

    Wiser system: Wiser 3 channel Kit, 2 x Room Thermostats, TRVs on all rads apart from the towel rails (3 of them, all on heating circuit 2).

    Wiring
    : This was the first time that the heating company that fitted our heating system had installed a Drayton Wiser system, and they needed to get in a little extra help for wiring the box to control the zone valves and pumps and 2 boilers correctly, but didn't seem to be too much of a problem in the end. They sorted the system to the stage where it was powered on and worked 'manually' and then I did all the smart stuff.

    TRV Bodies: I installed 30 odd new rads, and so needed TRV bodies to match up with the drayton TRV Head - I bought the Drayton TRV4 valve bodies on their own - found them on eBay and they were £8 each.

    Initial set up via the app.
    This was tricky, and has a number of glitches that got me quite angry at the time. My problem: Could create a local account (part 1 of the setup, ie. set up the system in our own house), and could set up an online account (part 2 of the setup), but then got errors every time their system tried to pair the online user account to my house/hub account. The Drayton customer service team were excellent on this front, and eventually made enough suggestions that it worked. They are very good at answering the phone (usually get to speak to a real person within 30seconds), and the same person called back or emailed frequently until the problem was sorted, so I didn't have to explain it over and over again). If you get this problem, the things I did that ended up sorting it were:
    • Put wifi router into manual channel mode, rather than auto-channel
    • Disabled mobile data on my phone while in setup mode
    • Used a separate laptop for the email verification part.
    • Deleted anything on the registration form that was 'Autofilled' by my phone and re-entered it manually, and entered house name as only a number, and place I live as ONLY the first word, and the Postcode with NO spaces


    Once I got passed this hurdle, it's worked perfectly.

    Signal issues
    My house is victorian, has thick solid walls, and takes 6 google wifi hubs to get my wifi-signal around the house satisfactorily. Signal was therefore high on my list of worries! I have been very pleasantly surprised...
    I have 3 'smart plugs' , One on each of the ground, 1st, 2nd floor, acting as signal boosters. I have had zero problems with signal, and they all work nicely! Have been really pleasantly surprised by it.

    TRV Noise
    I don't know how loud the honeywell/tado/heatgenius ones are, but the Wiser ones certainly don't wake me up, and i'm a light sleeper.

    TRV Look
    They look a lot less intrusive than the Honeywell ones

    Wall Thermostat
    Key info on this: it overrides any TRVs in the room, so good if you've got a room with multiple rads in when the TRVs are hidden behind sofas or something.

    Anyway, hope that is helpful to anybody looking at what to do; I would certainly recommend the system, as long as you're willing to get a little bit hands on at the start.
  • fezster
    Automated Home Sr Member
    • Dec 2017
    • 72

    #2
    If you're still around (or for anyone else with Wiser) - how are you getting on with this? Have you had any issues with it?

    I'm thinking of taking the plunge on a large-ish system too - 2 CH + HW zones with ~ 13 radiators in each.

    Comment

    • willrook
      Automated Home Lurker
      • Feb 2019
      • 9

      #3
      Originally posted by fezster View Post
      If you're still around (or for anyone else with Wiser) - how are you getting on with this? Have you had any issues with it?

      I'm thinking of taking the plunge on a large-ish system too - 2 CH + HW zones with ~ 13 radiators in each.
      Hi Fezter

      Getting on fine. Since I got the initial set up sorted, which was a little tricky as I mentioned below, it has been pretty much plain sailing. I had the whole system off for 6 months and when I switched it back on it went straight back to full functionality. Some of the TRVs had sat in their boxes for 8 months before being opened, and had old firmware. They took a bit of perseverance to get connected, but once connected, they updated their firmware, and worked nicely.

      There are a few outstanding things I'd like Wiser to add to their functionality, which are

      1. Better home/away geofencing functionality.
      2. Ability to group whole areas to boost them all at once (for example - boost all zones on the ground floor, or all zones on one or other circuit).
      3. Make their Heat Report available on the internet rather than just the App.

      Otherwise, no problems here. Valves don't wake us up, and we have three in our bedroom.

      All is well!

      Cheers, and if you need any help, just ask!

      Comment

      • fezster
        Automated Home Sr Member
        • Dec 2017
        • 72

        #4
        Thanks! That's positive that it's been working OK, as I've read they had plenty of problems in the early days, which seem to have been ironed out.

        Do you know if you have a wall thermostat and trv in the same room, is the first device registered used to measure the temperature, or is it always the wall thermostat?

        Also, is it possible to group multiple rooms into one zone (eg. Kids rooms) and control them all at once?

        I plan on installing in the next few days. I know I'll be needing range extenders and missed out on the amazon £22 offer this morning.

        Thanks!

        Comment

        • fezster
          Automated Home Sr Member
          • Dec 2017
          • 72

          #5
          Finally taken the plunge with Wiser, with the amazon deal yesterday.

          Ordered the 3 zone kit (2 x CH + 1 x HW) and 10 TRV's for downstairs. Another 11 TRV's for upstairs are coming in a week, but I'll cancel them if I'm not happy with how the system performs.

          Had a few glitches initially - the first thermostat I tried to bind would not do so. However, after messing around for 10 mins and then pulling the batteries and trying again, it was fine. The other thermostat and all 10 TRV's bound easily enough.

          I was concerned about signal problems, so had ordered 3 range extenders, but they wont be delivered till later today. However, despite the furthest downstairs radiator being over 16m away and going through 2 walls, so far it has been fine.

          A couple of early observations:

          1. The TRV temperature seems to be at least a degree higher than the wall thermostat.
          2. The wall thermostat, annoyingly, switches it's display off after a few seconds, similar to Hive.
          3. The wiser heat hub seems to have some logic with regards to how often it fires the boiler. I need to spend some time looking at this, but if I have a single zone calling for heat - despite it not reaching temperature, sometimes the heat hub turns the boiler off (note - im not talking about the boiler cycling here). I've not enabled Comfort or Eco modes, so this must be default logic.

          I'll post updates as I evaluate the system. So far, though, I'd say whatever teething issues they had initially with setup and signal, have been resolved (aside from that initial glitch I had!).

          Comment

          • willrook
            Automated Home Lurker
            • Feb 2019
            • 9

            #6
            Originally posted by fezster View Post
            Finally taken the plunge with Wiser, with the amazon deal yesterday.

            Ordered the 3 zone kit (2 x CH + 1 x HW) and 10 TRV's for downstairs. Another 11 TRV's for upstairs are coming in a week, but I'll cancel them if I'm not happy with how the system performs.

            Had a few glitches initially - the first thermostat I tried to bind would not do so. However, after messing around for 10 mins and then pulling the batteries and trying again, it was fine. The other thermostat and all 10 TRV's bound easily enough.

            I was concerned about signal problems, so had ordered 3 range extenders, but they wont be delivered till later today. However, despite the furthest downstairs radiator being over 16m away and going through 2 walls, so far it has been fine.

            A couple of early observations:

            1. The TRV temperature seems to be at least a degree higher than the wall thermostat.
            2. The wall thermostat, annoyingly, switches it's display off after a few seconds, similar to Hive.
            3. The wiser heat hub seems to have some logic with regards to how often it fires the boiler. I need to spend some time looking at this, but if I have a single zone calling for heat - despite it not reaching temperature, sometimes the heat hub turns the boiler off (note - im not talking about the boiler cycling here). I've not enabled Comfort or Eco modes, so this must be default logic.

            I'll post updates as I evaluate the system. So far, though, I'd say whatever teething issues they had initially with setup and signal, have been resolved (aside from that initial glitch I had!).
            Brilliant. Glad to hear it's working.

            It's not perfect, but for me it was the best thing out there. Evohome needs to drag itself into the 21st century, and Wiser has beaten them to it.

            Hope that they will add 'control multiple zones at once' control as you asked about; that would be helpful, and just a simple software fix.

            Let me know how you get on with time!

            Comment

            • fezster
              Automated Home Sr Member
              • Dec 2017
              • 72

              #7
              So I setup domoticz last night and a dashticz dashboard - all the zones can be displayed and adjusted from it (!). Opens up a load of possibilities with regards to having a wall mounted display in the house to control the entire system.

              More details here: https://www.domoticz.com/forum/viewt...p?f=34&t=28585

              The Wiser Heat Hub is accessible over the network once you discover the secret key for it. This means all aspects of it are controllable using a Rest API.

              Comment

              • fezster
                Automated Home Sr Member
                • Dec 2017
                • 72

                #8
                Originally posted by fezster View Post
                3. The wiser heat hub seems to have some logic with regards to how often it fires the boiler. I need to spend some time looking at this, but if I have a single zone calling for heat - despite it not reaching temperature, sometimes the heat hub turns the boiler off (note - im not talking about the boiler cycling here). I've not enabled Comfort or Eco modes, so this must be default logic.
                Forgot to update here - this was, of course, due to TPI. Missed that.

                Comment

                • EvoPhil
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • May 2019
                  • 12

                  #9
                  fezster, I've responded to your post (#5) on another forum but I've also been on this one for a short while as well. I've look at (and downloaded) the domoticz files etc but I have no clue about how to run or use them. Any chance you can point me to an useful guide or provide me with an idiots guide please as I'd be keen to see what useful info etc I can get through this system. Cheers!

                  Comment

                  • fezster
                    Automated Home Sr Member
                    • Dec 2017
                    • 72

                    #10
                    Yes sure - do you have domoticz installed on Windows? I run mine in Docker, so it was slightly more complicated, but on Windows should be relatively easy.

                    Once installed, download the Drayton Wiser plugin from here: https://github.com/bloob00k/domoticz

                    Put it in your Domoticz install folder\plugins.

                    Make sure you have python 3.7+ installed and then restart Domoticz. You should see a browser window open and the Domoticz main page.

                    Then go to Setup -> Hardware. In the "Type" dropdown, you should see Drayton Wiser. Add that.

                    You will need your Heat Hub's ip address and secret key. You can find how to get these from here: https://github.com/connor9/python-draytonwiser-api

                    Let me know how you get on.

                    Comment

                    • skiv71
                      Automated Home Jr Member
                      • Apr 2013
                      • 14

                      #11
                      This system is doing my nut in.

                      Chose it, because as far as I can see, its one of the only system's on sale which has 'by design', the ability to have each device as a 'main mover', i.e. bring the boiler on when 'duty' is required. Yay, I thought!

                      Seem's their control loop algorithm is a farce.

                      In all my years of automation (industrial / commercial) using PLC's / Scada control, you specific a setpoint, and as long as you were <= sp - deadband, heating would 'call', duty on... achieve setpoint, duty off.

                      With this system, they operate a fuzzy on / off, around the actual setpoint, with no figure for duty on / off.... but what's worse, when the difference between sv and pv is small, say 0.5 deg, the system calls for duty, but the TRV which initiates that call, is only open by a small margin (say 10%), and the result is a luke warm radiator, incapable of raising its own temp (and thus satifisying).... so the boiler just runs, and runs, and runs... Meanwhile, the bypass (and other rads with old school TRV's), continue to 'load' the system, burning gas.

                      The 'only' way I've found, to get the system to work and maintain comfortable room temps, is manually control the heating with setpoint swings, whereby you change the setpoint on the app (one way or the other), to either bring it on, or shut it off.

                      Just ridiculous...

                      I've been in touch with drayton, but the 1st line support have never heard the words 'deadband', 'duty', or 'satisfied' and in the period of a week, have failed in their promise to escalate this to the software team responsible for such ludicrous cloud control.

                      Very dissapointed, completely 'mickey mouse'
                      Last edited by skiv71; 19 December 2019, 03:44 AM.

                      Comment

                      • DBMandrake
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • Sep 2014
                        • 2361

                        #12
                        Originally posted by skiv71 View Post
                        This system is doing my nut in.

                        Chose it, because as far as I can see, its one of the only system's on sale which has 'by design', the ability to have each device as a 'main mover', i.e. bring the boiler on when 'duty' is required. Yay, I thought!
                        For the record, both Evohome and Tado V3 (with TRV valves) allow any and all zones to call for heat from the boiler. It's one of the things I like about my Evohome system vs a traditional system where only one zone is actually able to call for heat from the boiler.
                        Seem's their control loop algorithm is a farce.

                        In all my years of automation (industrial / commercial) using PLC's / Scada control, you specific a setpoint, and as long as you were <= sp - deadband, heating would 'call', duty on... achieve setpoint, duty off.

                        With this system, they operate a fuzzy on / off, around the actual setpoint, with no figure for duty on / off.... but what's worse, when the difference between sv and pv is small, say 0.5 deg, the system calls for duty, but the TRV which initiates that call, is only open by a small margin (say 10%), and the result is a luke warm radiator, incapable of raising its own temp (and thus satifisying).... so the boiler just runs, and runs, and runs... Meanwhile, the bypass (and other rads with old school TRV's), continue to 'load' the system, burning gas.

                        The 'only' way I've found, to get the system to work and maintain comfortable room temps, is manually control the heating with setpoint swings, whereby you change the setpoint on the app (one way or the other), to either bring it on, or shut it off.
                        It's a little bit hard to follow your explanation when you say "no figure for duty on / off" etc.... ? Also, you seem to be expecting a deadband around the set point however none of these systems use a dead band as far as I know. (Evohome definitely doesn't have a deadband) Any deadband is only going to cause the temperature to fluctuate unnecessarily. In some control systems where there is a penalty for making an operating point change (such as consuming fuel in a guidence system) a deadband can be appropriate, however if there is no "penalty" then there is no reason to have it.

                        The challenge of balancing radiator valve opening for water flow and heat demand (duty cycle) for the boiler is not as easy as you make it sound, and there might be a slight disconnect between your expectations and what is possible to achieve using traditional TRV valve bodies which lack any sort of feedback mechanism to let the control system know whether water is flowing or not. (TRV valve body pin displacement to water flow rate is extremely non-linear)

                        I'm not familiar with the precise workings of the Wiser system however I know the control system of Evohome inside out, so I'll describe that and see how it lines up with your expectations and how the Wiser system seems to be working for you.

                        On Evohome there is a +/- 1.5 degree C "proportional band" around the set point, so if a zone is <1.5 degrees below the set point the zone will always wirelessly call for 100% heat (duty cycle) from the boiler, while if it is >1.5 degrees above the set point it will always call for 0% heat.

                        Within the proportional band there will be an intermediate heat demand calculated by the self tuning PID controller in the HR92. Because it has an integral component it can achieve the set point precisely regardless of what actual heat demand it requires. So it could be calling for 20% heat at the exact set point or 80% etc...

                        It also seems to use self learning heuristics to tune the differential parameter, by measuring overshoot after a step change in set point. For example it might overshoot the target by 1C when going from a 10C set point to 20C but the next day it will overshoot less and after a few days of the same set point cycles it adapts to the point where it can hit the target bang on without over or undershoot. (Only if the room has reasonable lag characteristics though)

                        When it's maintaining the temperature around the set point there is no deadband that I'm aware of, it will make small, subtle adjustments to keep the temperature as steady as possible.

                        Every zone calls for heat via the central controller and the controller then takes the highest head demand from any zone and sends that on to the boiler relay which does TPI with a default cycle time of 10 minutes, although this can be changed. There is a minimum on time of 1 minute which means there needs to be at least a 10% heat demand before the boiler relay goes on at all.

                        If you use Opentherm instead of the relay the 0-100% heat demand is instead translated to a call for heat of (I think) 10-90C instead of a duty cycle, and of course the boiler itself will clip the lower and upper limits as appropriate, so not all of that control range is useable.

                        One of the major challenges I've seen which Evohome gets mostly right but still stumbles with slightly is trying to balance the opening of a valve with the call for heat demand - it's not easy due to the extreme non linearity and interaction with differential pressure in the system which can vary with the activity of other zones.

                        The way Evohome handles it is to perform a "calibration" of the TRV valve body by compressing the pin down until a certain amount of resistance is met, this becomes the 0% position, it then counts out X number of rotations of the collar that controls the pin based on whether it's set to short or long stroke mode. Typically long stroke mode will hit the limit stop on the collar. This end becomes 100%.

                        With most TRV valve bodies this works out so that the bottom 30% of pin travel is essentially "lost" due to the compression of the washer in the valve - over that bottom 30% of pin movement no water will flow. From about 30% to 70% you have a somewhat "linear" region where the valve position can modulate the water flow. Above about 70% there is little or no increase in water flow right up to about 100%.

                        An HR92 in Evohome takes that 0-100% valve position and passes it through a lookup table which results in:

                        0-30% - heat demand 0%
                        30-70% - heat demand increases with a slow linear ramp.
                        70% - 100% - heat demand increases with a steep linear ramp.

                        So below 30% no water flows and there is no call for heat.
                        Between 30-70% there is little change in call for heat but a lot of variation in water flow - the radiator temperature is primarily controlled by water flow.
                        Above 70% there is little change in water flow but a large change in heat demand called for from the boiler - the radiator temperature is primarily controlled by the flow temperature coming from the boiler.

                        This works fairly well but inevitably there is a bit of "luck" in that 30% pin position corresponding with water just starting to flow through the radiator. If water didn't start flowing until say 40-50% you can be in a situation where there is a call for heat from the boiler but water can't flow through the radiator. Likewise if it starts flowing below 30% you can be in a situation where heat called from a different zone can cause this radiator to start heating up at an opening where it doesn't actually want any heat. Neither is desirable.

                        Unfortunately there is no direct way for the TRV to know whether the valve body is actually open enough for water to flow and if so how much. There is a lot of assumption about the valve body characteristics built into the algorithms. The HR92 does have a stroke setting which changes those assumptions between two different sets which does increase valve compatibility however it's possible for a valve body to simply not be properly compatible if for example the compression range of the washers is too long or too short.

                        I suspect the problem you're seeing with the Wiser system is that the TRV unit is not calibrating correctly for you valve bodies, or the valve body properties are not fully compatible in terms of pin travel, pin length, washer compression and position vs flow characteristics. Or the wiser valves just aren't very good...

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