What setting for Summer?

[DorrisMancer]

How do people set their controllers in the Summer with the current firmware?

• If it's set "off" then it's necessary to go round the house checking for, and resetting, any manual overrides (which are useful on a chilly evening, or for a towel rad when having a shower).
• Alternatively, every zone could be re-programmed to set 5 degrees at midnight and 02:00 (for example) to automagically reset any overrides (but it's a pain to have to reset every zone, and then to do it again in the Autumn).
• I've not investigated the "custom" setting - is it any use for this?

[DBMandrake]

How do people set their controllers in the Summer with the current firmware?

• If it's set "off" then it's necessary to go round the house checking for, and resetting, any manual overrides (which are useful on a chilly evening, or for a towel rad when having a shower).
• Alternatively, every zone could be re-programmed to set 5 degrees at midnight and 02:00 (for example) to automagically reset any overrides (but it's a pain to have to reset every zone, and then to do it again in the Autumn).
• I've not investigated the "custom" setting - is it any use for this?

By "current" firmware do you mean the regular firmware or the beta firmware ?

In summer during the day when I want everything off I usually just use the Heating Off action, as this allows me to leave the hot water active.

In the Beta firmware if any zone set point (at the controller) is more than 2C below the measured temperature the heat demand from the HR92's in that zone will be ignored, so that takes care of anyone turning up an HR92 as although the valve will open the boiler won't come on.

If I want to turn on a bathroom radiator alone with the beta firmware I would probably just use my custom action - which is set for 5C permanent. In effect that makes it like heating Off but with the ability to manually override zones.

Maybe the custom option will suit your needs ? Just set the custom action schedule to be 5C at midnight and 2am every day of the week, and apply it to all zones. When you switch to custom all zones will go to 5C, however if you override any zone manually it would go back to 5C at midnight or 2am respectively.

By the way you can also rename the custom action - call it "Summer" for example...

Custom also lets you exclude certain zones so for example you might want to exclude bedrooms which have schedules that only have them on at a low temperature overnight and off during the day - that way if it did get cold in the middle of the night your custom schedule isn't preventing your bedroom radiator coming on but is still preventing the rest of the house coming on.

[DorrisMancer]

Thanks. It sounds as if a renamed "custom" is the solution.

...
In the Beta firmware if any zone set point (at the controller) is more than 2C below the measured temperature the heat demand from the HR92's in that zone will be ignored, so that takes care of anyone turning up an HR92 as although the valve will open the boiler won't come on.
...

As mentioned in another thread, this isn't a good solution because the valve will still open


(By "current" I meant the version that is in current usage by most users)

[wilfman]

Current Firmware - With heating off, the challenge is someone can accidentally or deliberately turn a specific rad on and this will stay on permanently as there are no set points to turn it off.
Beta Firmware - Turning rad on will adjust valve on radiator but not turn switch on boiler so for most systems good. What would be better IMO is to take advantage of the HR92 features where available and "LOCK" radiators when in off mode. This makes it clear to the user turning on the radiator that it is not possible and the valve on radiator will not come on.

Because of current limitations in current firmware I use the custom schedule set to 5 deg with set points across the day. So if someone turns on radiator it will only stay on for a few hours. However this is just a fudge.

[mtmcgavock]

As others have said, I use Custom Action renamed as Summer. All zones set to 16oc, with set points throughout the day so if one does get overridden locally it'll take it back down to 16oc.

Heating Off doesn't work for me as like DBMandrake I like to override our bathroom towel rails to dry towels in summer.

Although I forgot to turn ours back down tonight and our en-suite is currently at 30.5oc whoops

[G4RHL]

I don’t change the schedule a lot other than to drop a set temperature in a couple of rooms by a degree. The system takes care of itself. It is not going to come on if the house is warm so mostly I leave it alone. One room I use at about 06:00 in the morning often comes on, and it is set to, but not for long.

[paulockenden]

Once it's proper summer I just use Off.

But it feels wrong - the comfort temperatures set for the winter months should keep the heating off in summer anyway. My use of Off is more of an insurance policy.

[G4RHL]

Once it's proper summer I just use Off.

But it feels wrong - the comfort temperatures set for the winter months should keep the heating off in summer anyway. My use of Off is more of an insurance policy.

Theoretically we should not need to make any changes and just let Evohome keep the house at our accustomed level, but we feel the temperature differently due to the humidity changes. And also age. If where you live the Summer months are hot enough not to need heating then yes Off is the best solution.

[DorrisMancer]

... If where you live the Summer months are hot enough not to need heating then yes Off is the best solution.

Not if someone turns-up an HR92 and doesn't turn it down again.

I've now set all zones on one controller, and all but one zone on the other, to custom (renamed summer) which is simply a series of sets to 5 degrees spaced throughout the 24 hours of each day. The one zone that has its own cycle is the airing cupboard, which is set to 21 degrees at the same time as the DHW heating starts. My thanks to whoever suggested this - it's the ideal solution.

[oshingler]

Coincidentally I started thinking about this exact same thing a couple of weeks ago. I decided to over-engineer a solution in true home automation geek-style. I am now testing a SmartThings webCoRE piston I wrote which runs in the early hours of the morning, checks the weather forecast for the day, and sets the mode to Off or Auto depending a combination of the temperatures. Yes, the logic for deciding what to do could be a lot more complicated and accurate (using 'feels like' temperatures instead maybe), and also it could run twice (or more often) a day... lots of potential but I thought I'd see how this goes to start with.

CheckWeatherForEvohome.jpg