@tommybronze3451
Slight comment on the heating the room back up. Problem that you've whitnessed is that most thermostats in HASS follow a simple logic: if temp < target temp -> black the heating to the max. Problem with that is that floor will internally heat up and water returning to the combi boiler will be HOT, making it run at low lever and dropping a lot of heat into exhaust stack. (not an ADD) but tado seem to have a decent algorithm for that (or it's side product of measuring temp on the radiator pipe, but it allows the radiator to heat up and the it switches it off allowing it time to release the heat into the room. This makes heating slightly slower but WAY more efficient. At the moment I'm investigating how to best replicate this in hass, but most thermostat extensions are crap and don't give one a lot to play with.
@prvashisht
Whenever I start working, I connect my laptop to external monitors at home. (I live alone so others would need to adjust this part accordingly) Whenever the number of monitors changes on my laptop from 1 to 2, I turn off my bedroom heater, and turn on the office one. Same thing in the evening when I disconnect.
@robert.wigley
Not knocking the HACS Octopus Energy intregration via API, but if you have smart meters connected to the DCC (i.e. SMETS2 or upgraded SMETS1), get a Hildebrand Glow instead and pipe your energy data into Home Assistant locally via MQTT and get instant power readings and gas every thirty minutes.
@armlemos81
I’m now considering combining the thermostat for AC (essentially for cooling) and TRV (for heat only) - what do you think I should do to accomplish that? Do you use separate thermostat? Thanks and good content
@Solarusdude
HVAC engineer here. Depending on your DAIKIN fancoil models, they also may have a heat function. One criticism of radiant floor systems is that they are slow to warm up and they perform best over long cold periods. Contrast that to heat pumps which warm up quickly and work better during shoulder heating periods. If your fan coils support heating, there is an opportunity to configure your controls to select which heating option is preferred. You can use the heat pumps as a supplemental heat source in case the room temperature falls too low. Additionally, you can set a lockout of the radiant system if the outdoor temperature is too high, letting the fan coils bridge a small temperature gap even when it’s relatively warm outside.
@alfonsmarklen1345
I have been looking into lowering the power bill for my parents by running a dynamic heating profile depending on the outdoor temperature, e.g. lowering the target temperature up to a few degrees on especially cold days.
@EsotericArctos
The Airconditioning automations are something I have been looking into for a while, but struggled to find. I am in Australia, so split systems are fairly common. Mitsubishi airconditioners are really easy to integrate into home automation as well. There is a project online that uses an ESP chip and connects directly to the same port that connects to the genuine mitsubish wifi module. They've been good for me :)
@RichardCorden
Great video. You mention in the video that you didn't do too much research on what you'd need - but I was wondering if you can share your tips on where you'd normally search? My system is 18+ years old and so has no remote connectivity. I have a few A/C units that are controlled via a wired thermostat, and I have underfloor heating that works with simple "on/off" thermostats on each floor. So before I can even think about automations etc - first I need to "smarten" everything up.
@markgreen5007
Great video. It would be great have a walkthrough of how you created the energy dashboard and linked to Octopus. I'm with Octopus, have solar and battery storage, but just can't seem to get anywhere with the creation of an energy dashboard. Really need some help or a step by step guide if possible please. Thanks for the great honest and informative videos, they really are helpful for another UK HA user. With disabilities having a smart home can really help.
@fbenniks
Hi, cool video, i did not know about the scene snapshot! i will definitly apply that to my hass setup! A tip: heatpumps(ac's) dont like starting and stopping of their compressors, the more start and stops the more power the system uses and reduces livespan of the unit. My local daiking installer said to use the modulating capacity of the units when automating. Instead of turning the AC off try increasing the temperature step by step so the unit kicks in to a lower modulation. I meassured my Daiking units to go as low as 40Watts. I turn them off after 25 minutes with a open window detected by increase target temperature 1C every 5 minutes. Often the door/window is closed before that time is up. I still saved energy but avoided a compressor restart including the resulting power spike and hardwork that the unit has to do on startup.
@noandbody
I’m building a new smart home from the ground up and I’m implementing a lot of the same stuff, nice to see you had the same ideas. One thing we do that helps is to automatically open the exterior blinds to let in or block the sun depending on interior temperature. For the in floor heating, you can get electric valves to control the amount of water to a given circuit to lower the temperature in the bedroom at night without turning the heating on/off. We’ve got solar panels installed which I’ve hooked up to all systems (dynamic car charging capacity, AC units set to “undercool” the house to use up more energy, buffering heat in the boiler when we’ve got some extra capacity or in the future a lower spot price, remote start for the washing machine). Around here we barely get anything for the power we transfer to the grid so it makes more sense to use it as much as possible.
@oldtapes3697
Really good ideas for further integration of HVAC into HA. Couple of points though, those Daikin splits are most likely reversable so can be used for space heating as well as cooling, these generally run at 300-400% efficiency in heating mode so may work out cheaper for space heating than running the underfloor heating and depending on the quantity of units you have across the house you can quite likely use them to reduce the heating season for the boiler. Somebody else also made a comment about zoning heating and using more energy, this is true but depends on the type of gas boiler you have (condensing vs non condesning), if you have a condensing boiler it would be worth monitoring the flow and return temperatures because you need a certain differential between the two to get the most efficiency out of it, this could be quite easily monitored within HA and automations configured to ensure that the loading on the system is correct to ensure condensing. If your boiler is not a condensing boiler then feel free to zone away. Lastly given that you apparently have space for outdoor units, have underfloor heating and your house is well insulated it would be well worth looking into replacing the boiler with a heatpump, in terms of running costs it should be pretty similar to gas (assuming it is sized and fitted correctly) but you can also load shift with them so can take advantage of variable electricity tarrifs to minimise cost (such as running the heatpump for hot water over night on cheap rate electricity)
@Jammy-Bread
I did not know you were an Aussie! Great video, thanks!
@JaneTaubman
Thanks for the tip on running the pumps I will steal that one. BTW I found the HACS Heatmiser integration more reliable than the Homekit one. I also have a couple of DateTime helpers for when we go away and schedule taking the heating out of standby, based on our expected return less 6 hours, so the house has time to warm up and I don't have to remember to do it.
@Klaus-macht-Bilder_de
Thank you for showing your setup and the automations. We have a similar setup with a central gas heating (ZigBee contact reading 0,1m³ impulses on the gasmeter) and AC from Daikin in 3 rooms. One important finding was, that in the "inbetween" times, when heating usualy starts or stops, heating with the AC can be much more efficient than running the gas heating system. Further AC heating can heat up a room in a very short time - from 16°C base to comfortable it is just ~20 minutes, the used energy is surprisingly low and most of the electricity we can get from the solar roof. By lowering the circulating water temperature of the gas heating and mixed heating whe were able to lower our gas consumption by app. 30% and electrical energy for AC during winter was ~300kWh only (50% solar). For the schedues I use Node Red (HA) with the "Light Scheduler"-Node.
@dmiller9786
Good video. For the maintenance pump run you could check the weather forecast and delay for a hot day. Controlling AC by a door requires caution as it could lead to many more on/off cycles than normal. There is short cycle protection built in to the AC, but its minimal.
@Debilinside
One correction I would like to add: Thermodinamically heating to a constant temperature is consuming more energy than letting it go cooler and heating back up. The reason is quite simply. How quickly something cools down depends on the temperature difference. So water cooling down to 100 to 50 C is much faster than cooling down from 50 to 20. Heating things back up is pretty straightforward, it requires the same amount of energy to heat something up in 10 steps over the day 1 degree at a time (assuming there is no heat loss) or 10 C at once in one step. So if we add that 2 together actually keeping something at constant 21 degrees will consume more energy than letting it cool down to 19 degree during the night and heating it back up to 21 again as the temperature diffrence between 19 and outside is less than 21 and outside. Being said all that generally its preferable to keep everything at constant temp if your house has decent insulation and air tightness (so you dont loos heat quickly) The energy difference is very marginal in this case but the comfort and general feel of the house is MUCH better at constant temperatures. This is a typical case of theory being really clear on the matter, but in practice there are so many factors and personal preferences that its difficult to see the math behind clearly.
@timbo8000
Thanks for the tip on running the heating system periodically! I’ve set it using a calendar automation so I can see when things are due to happen. I’d not thought of using Home Assistant as a Facilities Management system before! First time with calendar automation and first time with using Scenes for snapshots, too. The only problem I have is that the Tado integration doesn’t seem to want to go back to Automatic mode.
@JasGawera
Thanks for the video. I have the same thermostats, good to know HA can handle them. Though they are off most of the time as either the room is not in use, or they are covered by the central heating. I have a few hive controlled zones too. These are in HA. Though not much automation yet.
@gooney0