Smart heating

kah22

I'm trying to becomer Smarter as well.

I'd like to  update my central heating system but where do I start?   

My home is a mid 60's detached house, oil fired central heating installed in mid 60's, it has a condenser boiler (outside) The house is zoned in two: the main house and a disabled facility.  The disabled facility controls heat but not hot water.

The main house has two controls, both Danfoss, they control 1. the temp of the hot water, and, 2 an old style programable system controling when the hot water or heating system comes on or goes off (main house only.) Both water/heat can work independant of the other.  With these exceptions all other hardware is upstairs.

Can I just replace the downstairs controls  i.e. the hot water control and the heating/water on-of controls or do I need to do more?  I have TVR's fitted on all my radiators but I never really reconed them! I also have Alexa and a few DLink smart plugs.

What hardware would you recommend ?

My nephew is an electrician so there is no difficulty in that area.

Kevin

FreeBear

kah22 said: What hardware would you recommend ?

Depends on how technically minded you are. There are several "off the shelf" systems that will do what you want (the boiler doesn't make much difference). Using a plug & go system, you will be held hostage to long term support by the manufacturer, and if it uses the cloud or links to their server, then you are at their mercy if they decide to discontinue support. There will also be issues when your broadband goes down.

There are a number of open source solutions that allow you to "roll your own" system using cheap, off the shelf hardware. You could probably put a system together for less than £100. But there is a cost in learning how the software operates and connecting everything together with minimal information/documentation. The plus side is you have full control over the software, and not limited by any one company deciding to pull the plug.

I've gone for the latter option (Home Assistant) running on a first generation Raspberry Pi because that is what I had kicking around. Also not afraid of software (had to modify some of the code and then write some new stuff), nor was wiring in the sensors a problem. I don't think it has saved much in terms of energy usage, but it has allowed me to program different temperatures depending on time of day. The graphs produced from the data collected has allowed me to tweak temperatures/times better suited for when people are up and around. Now wanting a faster computer so that I can add more sensors, collect more data, and produce more graphs.