Honeywell Evo home set up after reset

SunnyCat

A few months ago we bought a house that turned out to have a nice Honeywell Evo home system installed. The previous owners didnt leave us any info on it, but I managed to get my head around the main bits (making sure the house was more less warm and we had hot water). Though there were still some parts that we couldn't figure out (for example, we know there is underfloor heating in the living room, but it never turned on - thankfully it's open plan with kitchen, which did turn on, so we didn't have a problem with it being cold. Also some heater sensors were returning a comms error, which we didn't know how to fix).

As time went on,  the problem with heated floor not working became less urgent, but we had one heater in the hall that just would not speak to the system and has been constantly on. We've temporarily ignored that until today another heater came on in a room when it shouldn't have (25 degrees outside!) and it appears to have been a result of yet another comms fault. I've been thinking to do a system reset and this just pushed me to do that. It turned out to be a big mistake, as the reset wiped not only the settings, but also all zones and bindings  So now instead of a wonky heater the whole thing is a mess (the heater did stop working though!)

In any case, I am now trying to make sense of all this and let me tell you, it's super confusing. 
We have underfloor heating downstairs, which used to be divided into 2 zones (I think! We were never 100% sure, as one didn't work... but we do know that the entire downstairs should be heated). There is a large pipe with a bunch of smaller pipes (which then go under floor) and each of them has a cable that goes into a long rectangular frosted box with many LEDs - Honeywell Home Underfloor Heating Controller (HCC80R). Then on the same wall there are three square panels, each with a button and two LEDs - Honeywell Evohome Wireless Relay Box BDR91T1004. I understand they are used to bind the free roaming thermostats - Honeywell Home T87RF2033 Single Zone Thermostat, but we only have two of those and never really understood whether that is it or if one is missing. Then I have 6 radiators across the house with thermostats - Honeywell evohome HR92 Radiator Controllers - on them. Lastly, there is a boiler and hot water tank with Hot Water Kit. Any clues on how to set this up? 

ETA: added the proper names of Evo home system

Gerry1

SunnyCat said:

A few months ago we bought a house that turned out to have a nice Honeywell Evo home system installed. The previous owners didnt leave us any info on it

Did you not have a survey done?  Did you not ask about the heating system?  I hope the boiler uses gas and that the underfloor heating isn't electric, otherwise it'll bankrupt you !

Talldave

Not an Evohome expert I'm afraid,  but have experienced 2 properties with UFH & radiator setups. You will find that each UFH circuit on the manifold has an actuator triggered by the control box. That in turn uses the signals from the thermostats to call for heat from the boiler when any one or more of them call for heat.  You'll need to do some detective work to find out which circuit(s) go where and which thermostat controls which actuator(s) - there may not be a 1 to 1 mapping, and you've possibly lost your pairings too! Knowing Honeywell,  the receiver boxes may have an override button.
The actuators I've seen have a manual override - useful to force a circuit on for testing.  But, you need a way to call for heat from the boiler, otherwise there won't be any hot water flowing to the manifold. And of course because UFH runs cooler than radiators it takes a long time for any playing around to show results!  You need to find a user manual for the UFH control box - if you're confident with electrics you may be able to "fake" a thermostat input to get the UFH up and running and work out why the living room doesn't work.
The other complication of UFH is the flow rate adjustment.  I spent hours in a new build rental trying to work out why the floor was cold hours after the builders had allegedly got it running, only to discover that all the flow adjustment thingies were shut off!

Try to collect manuals for all the elements of the system and work it out bit by bit. Interesting times ahead!!

SunnyCat

We did get a survey done. It mentioned the system and pointed out one of the underfloor valves drips a bit. It didn't explain how to operate it, which I didn't really expect from a survey... The previous owners (or rather the EA, as we never met the owners) said they would leave all relevant info and paperwork on various things and ended up leaving a few assorted manuals, but not much on specifically how the system was set up. I'm not really looking for a discussion on how we arrived at this junction, I would like some help with set up of the evo system specifically.

SunnyCat

Talldave said:

Not an Evohome expert I'm afraid,  but have experienced 2 properties with UFH & radiator setups. You will find that each UFH circuit on the manifold has an actuator triggered by the control box. That in turn uses the signals from the thermostats to call for heat from the boiler when any one or more of them call for heat.  You'll need to do some detective work to find out which circuit(s) go where and which thermostat controls which actuator(s) - there may not be a 1 to 1 mapping, and you've possibly lost your pairings too! Knowing Honeywell,  the receiver boxes may have an override button.
The actuators I've seen have a manual override - useful to force a circuit on for testing.  But, you need a way to call for heat from the boiler, otherwise there won't be any hot water flowing to the manifold. And of course because UFH runs cooler than radiators it takes a long time for any playing around to show results!  You need to find a user manual for the UFH control box - if you're confident with electrics you may be able to "fake" a thermostat input to get the UFH up and running and work out why the living room doesn't work.
The other complication of UFH is the flow rate adjustment.  I spent hours in a new build rental trying to work out why the floor was cold hours after the builders had allegedly got it running, only to discover that all the flow adjustment thingies were shut off!

Try to collect manuals for all the elements of the system and work it out bit by bit. Interesting times ahead!!

Thanks so much for this... I will digest your response and see what I can do to play with it

thorganby

You can download the user guide and installation manual from here:
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1083533/Honeywell-Evohome.html

matelodave

I'm guessing that you really should go around the whole system with a pencil and paper to work out what is connected to what and how the system is configured before you can really understand what is going on.

As Tall Dave says, sorting it all out is a bit of an art, but you also need science as well.

Generally the u/f heating will have two manifolds, a flow and return and all heating loops will be connected to them, one of the manifolds will have acuators which open/close the flow under control of the manifold controller. The other will have flow rate controls which just regulate the flow - they my also have flow indicators on them to indicate the flow rate - ideally leave them alone. The actuators are generally quite slow acting - taking a minute or more to open or close so don't expect them to just cick open and shut.. Depending on your system layout you may find that there are several circuits to each zone (so there my be multiple actuators controlled by s single zone command)

The manifold controller will operate the actuators under control of the master controller which I guess takes in info from the temperature sensors and will operate the pump, boiler and control the actuators depending on the settings so you need to fully understand the system configuration both from a wiring and a set-up point of view before you can determine what might be wrong.

Depending on whether it was put in by an EVOhome  installer or enthusiastic  DIYer might make a big difference to how it's all been put together but you need a methodical approach rather than just diving in and trying to sort out one thing. There will be a lot of interactions between the various components just to get heat or hot water especially if it's all software controlled by a master controller so a problem in one place might manifest itself somewhere you might think is unrelated.

Make sure that all the components are still "bound" to the master controller as it may only need one to be missing to cause all manner of problems

Mouldymeat3

Our U/F heating has 6 zones controlled from a box linking the wireless roomstats. I have had two valve actuators pop (blowing the local fuse), replaced with new lower powered modules. If these actuators are not nipped down, hand tight, the water flows regardless of the demand.