Multiroom Setup advice - am I right?
I have a Zipabox. I now have
1 x MCOHome Thermostat / Boiler Control
6 x LC-13 Danfoss Valves
1 x Devolo LC-13 Valve
Could someone confirm I am on the right track, I believe that:
1. Since the LC-13 (except Devolo) does not feed back temperature I will need a thermostat for every room one is installed in. Weirdly the Devolo does feedback it's temperature. If only I could flash all the others with the Devolo software!
2. Multiroom relies on Virtual Switches to control a boiler, this means I need a Virtual Thermostat Pro license for every zone as you can't throw a virtual switch from a Thermostat Zone
3. Instead of 2, I could simply have a 7 day battery powered thermostat for each room. Not sure how I would tell the boiler controller to fire if any thermostats are requesting heat.
4. Only way to fire MCOHome manually is to ramp it's set point up high.
Right now I think the MCOHome is a dud. I'll literally be using it as a boiler switch, unless anyone has any better ideas for it?
Anyone got number 3 working or are you also using Virtual? Basically, right now each room I want to control costs over £100, making it a very expensive heating control system! (Assuming I buy Temp Sensor, Radiator Valve, vThermostatPro)
Thanks
Graham
The same question
Hi,
1 - im not aware it can be flashed. It also should have a little hardware difference in a form of a sensor that reports. Popp valves are similar as Devolo, but danfoss is different.
2 - anyhow you would combine, the only possibility to have an easy multiroom heating system, where if any room requires heat a heating source would be switched to on is via virtual thermostat pro. With radiator valves it is also possible to via a rule set up an output to on (i cannot remember which post it was), but that requires a pro rule creator.
3 - exactly for this did danfoss make its battery operated room sensor which is however expensive. if you would buy thermostat pro for each room, it would be cheaper to buy multisensors than danfoss room sensor
4 - you mean to switch the output on? If yes, I guess so as it is not designed as a switch but as a thermostat. Why not replace with a z-wave dry contact switch?
Either way it would not be cheap but on other end it would be true multiroom heating system and they are more expensive as central ones.
Hi,
1 - im not aware it can be flashed. It also should have a little hardware difference in a form of a sensor that reports. Popp valves are similar as Devolo, but danfoss is different.
2 - anyhow you would combine, the only possibility to have an easy multiroom heating system, where if any room requires heat a heating source would be switched to on is via virtual thermostat pro. With radiator valves it is also possible to via a rule set up an output to on (i cannot remember which post it was), but that requires a pro rule creator.
3 - exactly for this did danfoss make its battery operated room sensor which is however expensive. if you would buy thermostat pro for each room, it would be cheaper to buy multisensors than danfoss room sensor
4 - you mean to switch the output on? If yes, I guess so as it is not designed as a switch but as a thermostat. Why not replace with a z-wave dry contact switch?
Either way it would not be cheap but on other end it would be true multiroom heating system and they are more expensive as central ones.
Someone tried to explain to me once what Virtual Thermostats are for; I still don't understand them.
Once you're able to get temperature readings for each zone, you can either: just have the boiler directly linked to a thermostat in the coldest part of the house, so that if that area needs heating, the boiler comes on, and then have rules operates the valves for the other zones as needed; or, have a rule that turns the boiler on if one or more zones needs heating, and then other rules to operate the zone valves separately (I think that's more or less what Attila said). Having a Pro rule creator is a good investment in the long run.
I don't know how your heating is set up, but mine (radiant floor heating) has a zone which is always open (because you don't want to have the possibility of having the boiler on but all the zone valves closed, for safety reasons). That zone is where the master thermostat is located, and it's linked directly to the boiler. I have two thermostats on the other two zones. I can manipulate all three thermostats (Tado and Nest) from the Zipabox either by direct integration (Nest) or HTTP requests (Tado).
I also have an air-source heat pump (installed at a later date for radiant floor cooling), and I can use this in place of the boiler for heating too (turns out, it's a lot cheaper). In that case, all I have to do is ensure that the boiler stays off (by lowering the set point way down), and use the Z-Wave Fibaro dry contact switch that they installed to operate a three-way valve to switch the radiant system over to the heat pump. Another switch of the same type switches the heat pump off and on. I use the thermostats' reported temperatures to figure out when heating is needed, but otherwise I dispense with the thermostats altogether (I could just as well have three temperature sensors). All the control logic in done via rules. Obviously doing it that way requires a bit of work, but it can be done. In my opinion, the results can be better than those of the "smart" thermostats, which aren't actually all that smart in my experience.
Someone tried to explain to me once what Virtual Thermostats are for; I still don't understand them.
Once you're able to get temperature readings for each zone, you can either: just have the boiler directly linked to a thermostat in the coldest part of the house, so that if that area needs heating, the boiler comes on, and then have rules operates the valves for the other zones as needed; or, have a rule that turns the boiler on if one or more zones needs heating, and then other rules to operate the zone valves separately (I think that's more or less what Attila said). Having a Pro rule creator is a good investment in the long run.
I don't know how your heating is set up, but mine (radiant floor heating) has a zone which is always open (because you don't want to have the possibility of having the boiler on but all the zone valves closed, for safety reasons). That zone is where the master thermostat is located, and it's linked directly to the boiler. I have two thermostats on the other two zones. I can manipulate all three thermostats (Tado and Nest) from the Zipabox either by direct integration (Nest) or HTTP requests (Tado).
I also have an air-source heat pump (installed at a later date for radiant floor cooling), and I can use this in place of the boiler for heating too (turns out, it's a lot cheaper). In that case, all I have to do is ensure that the boiler stays off (by lowering the set point way down), and use the Z-Wave Fibaro dry contact switch that they installed to operate a three-way valve to switch the radiant system over to the heat pump. Another switch of the same type switches the heat pump off and on. I use the thermostats' reported temperatures to figure out when heating is needed, but otherwise I dispense with the thermostats altogether (I could just as well have three temperature sensors). All the control logic in done via rules. Obviously doing it that way requires a bit of work, but it can be done. In my opinion, the results can be better than those of the "smart" thermostats, which aren't actually all that smart in my experience.
Replies have been locked on this page!