jthompson Posted January 24, 2019 Posted January 24, 2019 That's interesting. So, would something like a Nest do that work for you (i.e. work out what energy it needs to use in your absence to maintain overall economy)?
PotNoodleTech Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 Are you using a pen to write this? Smart heating allows a much finer control of the boiler and zones within your house. This equates to greater comfort and/or energy saving. Why don't you want that? A smart pen! Technology, for technology's sake, is not progress in my humble opinion. Also, yes you may save money by being all 100% google smart, but if it saves you a few quid a month, and you spend £500 or £1000 setting it up, the you're not actually saving money, your spending the next 10 years paying back that capital investment. Maybe after year 10 you will be actually saving money, a few quid a month. But by then you'll need to get a new smart heating system as the latest and greatest will promise you to save even more money! (and you won't pay that cost back either.....)
Theblacksheep Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 (edited) yes you may save money by being all 100% google smart, but if it saves you a few quid a month, and you spend £500 or £1000 setting it up, the you're not actually saving money, your spending the next 10 years paying back that capital investment. Maybe after year 10 you will be actually saving money, a few quid a month. A Nest thermostat is £180 and it's two wires to attach to a combi boiler, it's not £1,000. A large survey in the US showed smart thermostats saved $130 a year, here's one from the UK where they saved £300 a year. If you have tried a smart thermostat and came to the conclusion that "its technology for technology's sake" fair enough. That's interesting. So, would something like a Nest do that work for you (i.e. work out what energy it needs to use in your absence to maintain overall economy)? No, it doesn't know if heating your house from 15-23 is more efficient than 20-23. You could program it on alternate days and see how long it is on for. Edited January 25, 2019 by Theblacksheep
Sheridan Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 We switched to Hive last year, mainly because the wireless thermostat packed in (on our crappy Worcester boiler - never buying one of those again!) £150 for their thermostat or £199 to install Hive and have the app controlled heating. Its worked well and we tend to just set the schedule and forget it - we have occasionally upped the temperature on the way home to make it nice and toasty.We've also just got some of the power adaptors so we have lights on a schedule as well. They seem to work well.
mavhc Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 It mostly saves money for people who don't manage their heating already manually but just leave it on all the time, which is why I want to spend what the tech actually costs, without the 400% markup 1
jmak Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 Similar to @Sheridan. The programmer we had only had a daily timer with the option for three on periods per day - no option for different times at weekends, no "boost function". I bought the Tado system for about £40 more than a decent programmer would have cost. I'm very confident it's more efficient than what we had previously. Can't guarantee it will save over a decent manual timer, but for £40 it's worth a punt.
Andrew_C Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 (edited) If you live on your own, and have a rigidly predictable life style, a timer and thermostat would be OK. On at 6:30 - off at 8:00 - on at 18:00 - off at 22:00 every weekday, with all day Sat & Sun. Great, marvellous, you wouldn't save much. In a household with 2 workers on different, weird timetables, and two kids with their own timetables; who is going to be home first? When does the last person leave for work? In this sort of scenario the savings would mount up much faster. More so if you can modulate the boiler directly; this eliminates 'overshoot' and maintains the desired temperature much more accurately. Edited January 25, 2019 by Andrew_C
Sheridan Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 I have to admit, with our Hive the heating bills are the same as before - but we pretty much had the schedule the same anyway! 1
PotNoodleTech Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 If you live on your own, and have a rigidly predictable life style, a timer and thermostat would be OK. On at 6:30 - off at 8:00 - on at 18:00 - off at 22:00 every weekday, with all day Sat & Sun. Great, marvellous, you wouldn't save much. Er... have you fitted CCTV in my house?!!! It's on at 6.oo, off at 7.oo back on at 16.00 to 23.00 Weekends are a bit slacker, 9.00 to 11.00 and then 18.00 to 23.00.
Marci Posted January 25, 2019 Posted January 25, 2019 (edited) I'm also using the Domiticz with an RFXTRX433E, it's pretty much only powering LightwaveRF switches but i want to replace the doorbell. Used to read electricity usage with a OWL but it has since died. Will be interesting to hear more about the setup on the meters. If you’ve got a meter with rotors, usually the 0 point on the dial is magnetic, so a reed switch will close when 0 clicks round on the far right rotor. Hook reed switch up to Pi GPIO, knock up a python script to watch for interrupts on that pin, which then increments counters (lifetime & daily, stored in flat file or dbase), do whatever maths needed to convert pulse to w/kw, then fire the figure to the relevant http endpoint for whichever device in domoticz that needs to be updated via the Domoticz API to give you total usage, daily usage, monthly usage etc. For realtime use via this method, closest you can usually get is pulses in last x-minutes converted to watts - you determine the x when you write your script. Or you can get a currentcost meter, clamp it on to your meter and read it from there which is more on-the-ball. If you haven’t got rotors, you can watch the flashing LED on the meter instead with an IR transceiver and count pulses of that instead via same method. If you haven’t got LED, do have rotors, but rotor doesn’t have magnetic 0, then usually the 0’s background is reflective so you can use an IR LED and transceiver and pick up the reflection to make the pulse instead. S’all covered in domoticz.com forums somewhere. Old bodged revision of the pulse counter script I used with my gas meter, fire script up on boot & leave running: https://github.com/PatchworkBoy/gaspulse/blob/master/gaspulse Edited January 25, 2019 by Marci
nathan Posted January 29, 2019 Posted January 29, 2019 I'm with @AButters on this in a sense in that if a house is performing well thermally, you shouldn't need much more than a dumb timer and thermostat. That's what we have and we don't see any overshooting of temperatures. Radiators are set according to our usage and preferences for each room and we have a fairly predictable pattern of being at home or not. We never touch the thermostat and would just advance the timer if we're at home during an off period. It depends on your lifestyle, for instance the away assist works really well for us so we're not heating an empty house.
localtech Posted January 29, 2019 Posted January 29, 2019 Another vote for Nest, had it installed with a new boiler about six months ago we have two thermostats one upstairs one down, I have it synced to my wife's phone so the system goes into Echo mode when she leaves the house. Have a look at there website I think the thermostats look better than the Hive and as far as I can see have a lot more functionality which my brother has.
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