Phantom Overrides - Can anyone help?

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  • Jemster
    Automated Home Guru
    • Dec 2018
    • 123

    Phantom Overrides - Can anyone help?

    Hey Guys! Been a while, how's everyone doing?

    I'm popping in because I'm getting close to throwing this whole lot in the bin and maybe one of you could help me out (or offer to buy it all ) Ok, maybe an overreaction, but this has become seriously annoying and is costing money due to unnecessarily firing up the boiler and burning our crazy expensive gas.

    One of my 11 zones is our living room. In there we have 4 radiators, each with an HR92. Everything was great except I came around to battery-change time of year. One by one I got low battery warnings and I replaced each pair as requested. Now I am stumped by phantom overrides and after having reset the controllers 4 times now, I am still getting it.

    Basically the radiator goes off at around 21:35 (I'm using the economy-off mode, so time is not precise) and for some darned reason, it ends up going back on again around 10:30 / 10:40 for about 10 minutes before going off.

    Thing is, by this stage of the evening, everything has gone off all over the house, so the boiler is firing up and heating things from cold again for absolutely no reason whatsoever and I cannot stop it from happening.

    The first time, it ran all night. So I added an additional schedule point at 23:00 for 10 degrees. This seems to be managing to turn it off, but it's far from ideal. If it wasn't for the double-off, it would still be burning all night. My schedule looks like this:

    00:00 - 10.0
    02:00 - 10.0
    10:30 - 15.0
    18:30 - 20.5
    22:30 - 10.0
    23:00 - 10.0

    (Note the ones I added at midnight and 2am just to make damn sure it finally turns off)

    I know from monitoring Domoticz that this is a regular event - it doesn't happen every single night, maybe 2 out of 3. I've even got to the stage of not fitting the tops back on the HR92s so I can reset the batteries again when I see it happening, but so far no joy.

    My theory is that the Economy-Off mode is making it turn off at an unpredictable time and this may be causing a communication clash somewhere, as I enabled this around Christmas time so that may not be far off when this problem started happening.

    Has anyone ANY idea how to fix this? The system is about 3 years old now so I wouldn't think Honeywell would have much interest in it. Generally on/off is stable otherwise. I'm wondering if there's a best time to reset the units, and whether they should all be done simultaneously or spaced out? I think the last reset was around 3-minutes past the hour and I did them all together in the space of about a minute.
  • Billywizzo
    Automated Home Jr Member
    • Nov 2020
    • 48

    #2
    Have you tried unpairing, not resetting, the HR92s, deleting the whole zone and then set it back up as a new zone and see if that works.
    If not contact customer support as when I had an issue they were really helpful

    Comment

    • therealfronty
      Automated Home Guru
      • May 2021
      • 140

      #3
      Do you get any messages in the fault log? I kept getting a daily sensor communication fault (not a low battery fault) with one of those round Honeywell wireless room stats, the stat itself said the battery was fine but I replaced them anyway and the problem has gone away. Which zone is calling for heat, maybe replace the batteries in all HR92s in that zone?

      Comment

      • Jemster
        Automated Home Guru
        • Dec 2018
        • 123

        #4
        No messages in the fault log. All the batteries have been replaced in the zone causing problems - ironically all was good until I started changing batteries but that seems to have tipped the zone over the edge into instability.

        I've had problems in the past with room stats but have one working reliably (in a totally different room) - when its battery gets low it causes havoc on the entire system. Half a dozen zones will drop out... at least I now know what causes that one, but it's all good at the moment.

        I killed the local-override setting for the troublesome zone a couple of days ago and it's not done it since. I mean, it might be a fix, but I am honestly a little tired of disabling stuff on this system that's meant to work. Practically every room has its Window sensor setting turned off, because they were getting triggered randomly and dropping the temperatures. Now dropping the ability to locally override as well ... it's not great.

        But is there an alternative yet? I want a system where the controller is part of the house, not part of my gadget collection. Sure, I like being able to control by phone, but I also want it as a full stand-alone heating system. Honeywell obviously have huge communication issues with their components, as many other people have noted here, and it would appear they are unable to fix them. But there's no point jumping ship to an alternative that may be just as bad, or have all its own problems to deal with.

        I get worried when I'm away from the house, nobody else in the family is techy enough to know what to do when it all goes pear-shaped and starts firing up the boiler in the middle of the night. And I shouldn't have that worry - is it too much to expect that after 3 years install-time, it could... just... work?

        Comment

        • Billywizzo
          Automated Home Jr Member
          • Nov 2020
          • 48

          #5
          Silly question but are any of the TRV heads weeping from the pins.
          One of mine started to weep and make the HR92 give comms faults and cause overrides to 20 degrees.
          I swapped it with another and that started to give the same faults, noticed the weep from the pin and the HR92 was wet/damp so guess it was the water from the radiator messing the HR92 up.
          Luckily I could change the gland seal on my TRV and fixed the leak and all now working fine.

          Another check to try is to remove one HR92, replace with a manual TRV head and see if the issue appears.
          Try it with each HR92 one by one to see if one of the HR92s is faulty.
          Last edited by Billywizzo; 19 March 2022, 01:04 PM.

          Comment

          • Jemster
            Automated Home Guru
            • Dec 2018
            • 123

            #6
            Originally posted by Billywizzo View Post
            Silly question but are any of the TRV heads weeping from the pins.
            One of mine started to weep and make the HR92 give comms faults and cause overrides to 20 degrees.
            I swapped it with another and that started to give the same faults, noticed the weep from the pin and the HR92 was wet/damp so guess it was the water from the radiator messing the HR92 up.
            Luckily I could change the gland seal on my TRV and fixed the leak and all now working fine.

            Another check to try is to remove one HR92, replace with a manual TRV head and see if the issue appears.
            Try it with each HR92 one by one to see if one of the HR92s is faulty.
            Just had a look… no, they’re not weeping. I had all the valves replaced when the system was fitted (all Myson) so they’re relatively low mileage

            Interesting thought about a manual TRV. I don’t have any handy but I could just try removing them one by one when it next happens. There’s 4 radiators in the room, it won’t harm to have one off, or even partially on just taking heat when it’s available.

            Shame the system couldn’t actually log WHICH valve made the manual override request. Then it would be easy to work out where the latest problem lies.

            In fact, just in general, logging, even if only for the past 24 hours, would be incredibly useful. Domoticz is great for showing me it isn’t working properly, but useless at telling me why.

            Comment

            • Billywizzo
              Automated Home Jr Member
              • Nov 2020
              • 48

              #7
              You could just set each HR92 as a seperate zone and all the same temps and set points so like having 4 rooms in one, then see if one of them faults and sets an override

              Comment

              • Jemster
                Automated Home Guru
                • Dec 2018
                • 123

                #8
                You're right, I could... but I hate to touch anything involved in the configuration of this thing. Took us long enough all that time back to get it working correctly, the last thing I want to do is mess it up because I've had the audacity to change the batteries. (The thought of having to set up 16 HR92 and 2 DT92 into 9 zones with all the scheduling I've accumulated over the years gives me a cold sweat )

                It's been 4 days now since the last random override event. Keeping the fingers crossed that disabling local override has calmed the issue down.

                I'd still love to find a replacement. Something a little more robust would be good...

                Comment

                • Billywizzo
                  Automated Home Jr Member
                  • Nov 2020
                  • 48

                  #9
                  If it is all working fine then thats good, I was only sugesting to delete the livingroom zone and set it up as 4 seperate zones, one zone for each radiator using only the HR92s in each new zone.

                  I am not sure of any replacement systems exept that hive now do something similar but I dont know anyone who has the hive individual radiator valves only the single wall thermostat.
                  Save money and energy with Hive’s Smart Radiator Valves by controlling the exact temperature of each room in your home straight from the Hive app.

                  Comment

                  • SteveP
                    Automated Home Guru
                    • Dec 2012
                    • 190

                    #10
                    I know what you mean about wanting the system to be part of the house and not part of your gadget collection - I’ve had evohome since it’s first launch in around 2010 and I still regard it as a brilliant “toy”. However, I lalso have not found something equivalent without the esoteric nature of evohome. I work in IT and feel that ii provide more support to my home heating system than I do to our major corporate applications 🤣
                    That being said, when evohome works it is brilliant and allows me the total individual room control that I would hate to go back to a single central thermostat controlled system which even with trvs just doesn’t compare. So I soldier on but am conscious that no one else in my family has a clue how to maintain the system and also very few plumbers would know either should they be called out 🤔
                    Regarding your issue, I have reported on this site similar issues and only last week the batteries in the kitchen reported low (and here is the beaut of this issue) the lounge and en-suite started having phantom overrides!! So it isn’t a solution to change the batteries in the zone with the phantom override as the rad that actually has a battery issue causes communication issues affecting other zones 😳
                    When I had tons of issues with phantom overrides after loads of individual zone tests and then a full reinstall and then individual battery changes, I just bought a new quality batch of batteries and changed every single thermostat and the problem disappeared.
                    The battery issue last week was easier as the system did report the low battery and I changed immediately and the phantom overrides stopped.
                    Such fun 🤩

                    Comment

                    • AndyP
                      Automated Home Lurker
                      • Mar 2021
                      • 6

                      #11
                      You may have nailed the root cause SteveP. The comms protocol is a simply 'fire and forget', and if two fire at the same time then probably neither get their messages. Low batteries may cause a device to go rogue and restart their timed message clock or simple mis read a message for another device and respond . You know you don't have a plug and play system when you find yourself loading up Domoticz on a Pi with a receiver so you can see the heat demands from your tablet such that you can find out why the boiler has fired up unexpectedly! Given the somewhat fragile design of the battery connectors , every time you replace you may in for another round and 'hide and seek' the problem.

                      Comment

                      • therealfronty
                        Automated Home Guru
                        • May 2021
                        • 140

                        #12
                        Originally posted by SteveP View Post
                        So I soldier on but am conscious that no one else in my family has a clue how to maintain the system and also very few plumbers would know either should they be called out 🤔
                        I feel your pain, my wife has zero interest in anything IT or gadget related, having Evohome has definitely improved our comfort levels but I am solely responsible for adjusting schedules, changing batteries and troubleshooting the odd problem when it arises. It's the same with the wifi/netflix/sky box, the wife and kids are the first to complain if anything goes wrong - I do wonder how they would all cope if I wasn't around any longer!

                        Comment

                        • Jemster
                          Automated Home Guru
                          • Dec 2018
                          • 123

                          #13
                          Ahhh I love spam filters. Turns out the notification from the 25th went in the spam bin so I hadn’t seen the last few replies. Technology is wonderful…. when it works. And yeah I’m a software developer, amongst other things so I feel qualified to moan about these things

                          SteveP, you’re in exactly the same situation with the same battery observations. I am not sure why a battery dying causes such havoc with the entire system. Why the firmware can’t deduce this fact (given that we know it monitors battery levels) and handle it cleanly escapes me. The dts92 I have trashes at least half a dozen zones when it dies.

                          Oh and just to add to the ever changing scenery, yesterday for the very first time ever in 3 years, the heating bdr91 started flashing the red light at 2.5 second intervals. It recovered after half an hour or so, but I’ve never ever seen that before. And nope, nothing has been relocated and nothing has been placed in ‘line of sight’ of the controller. So another total mystery. It hasn’t even got a battery and no other controllers are reporting low batteries.

                          Wonder if there’s a gap in the market for a reliable, easy to use, multi-zone system… this hardware may do the job if we just put new firmware on all the devices

                          Comment

                          • Jemster
                            Automated Home Guru
                            • Dec 2018
                            • 123

                            #14
                            I'd been monitoring this for a while and, through the power of disabling overrides, it has all been good.

                            Last weekend I noticed it was a fairly normal temperature in there but the system was showing 15 degrees, so I thought I'd try and work out which HR92 it's taking as the temperature monitor (there's 4 in the room) and I'd adjust its offset.

                            So to do this, I thought I would swap over all the HR92 displays to show current temperature instead of the set-point... but to do this I had to disable override (I didn't realise disabling override actually disables you doing anything at all with the hr92, but there ya go now...).

                            After a bit of faffing around not getting far, I had a better idea and thought I'd swap over to using the EvoHome controller as the temperature sensor as it's located in a sensible place in that room. All was well, except I forgot to disable the local override capability. A couple of days later I remembered and re-enabled it.

                            I've just had a look at my domoticz graph and every single night it's been doing this stupid phantom override:

                            Screenshot 2022-04-29 at 10.36.47.jpg

                            The schedule for the zone is set at 20.5 degrees until 22:30 when it's set to 10.0 degrees. The Eco mode is turned on (hence the 17.5 set point) and evidently the system thinks it can go off at 21:30 as it drops to 10.0, but at 21:40 it then decides to ramp it back up to 17.5 until the full 22:30.

                            So now I've got the same problem with override disabled, and using the EvoHome controller as the temperature sensor.

                            I... I... well... I don't know. I've no idea what to try now besides a total delete and re-add of the zone and all the schedules.

                            Edit: Well, I've now removed all the hr92 batteries and am going to put them back one by one. But interestingly, even though Local Overrides is most certainly set to off, as soon as I turn on an hr92, the zone overrides to 20 degrees. For the first few minutes, overrides are possible - so if a battery connection was intermittent, this could still cause an issue.

                            Hey here's an even better one - after a day running the zone with 2 missing HR92s, the controller has flagged them as actuator communication failures... and what's it done? Turned the frickin boiler on. So despite EVERY single zone showing 0% heat demand, all I can assume is the one zone that shows a warning triangle is forcing the boiler to start up and our non-thermostat bathroom radiator to be full blast.

                            Wow. Just wow.
                            Last edited by Jemster; 1 May 2022, 02:00 PM.

                            Comment

                            • G4RHL
                              Automated Home Legend
                              • Jan 2015
                              • 1580

                              #15
                              I had a phantom override yesterday. Getting up at 05:00 I heard the boiler firing up. Nothing was set to be on and I don’t use Eco mode on the boiler. The app showed me that in one room the temperature was configured to 19.5 C until 07:30. The room was set to 10C from 22:00, it had not been used during the day, other than 2 hours in the morning. No reason for a manual override nor could there be an accidental one. No fault showed in the log. I cancelled the override and all has been fine since. I have no idea what could have triggered this. I have discounted human error as to have this override manually it could only be configured in the app or via the Control Panel and only I use those and know I did not change the setting.

                              Perhaps we have a ghost?!

                              Comment

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