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PICAXE to control hydronic/radiator heating...

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DamonHD:
I'm trying to get started with AVR / ATmega but I am struggling a little at the moment.

It's all somewhat less friendly than PICAXE for trying to program in place.

Rgds

Damon

SparWeb:
Hi Damon,

I have an extraordinarily stupid question to ask.  It's partly for the sake of asking (I have already spent 5 minutes researching the question, but apparently it's too stupid even for google to answer) and partly for the sake of confirming what I think the answer is.  Also bear in mind that I live in Canada, I am no stranger to central heating systems, but on the other hand I have never actually lived in an apartment building.  Except for on year, but I can still plead my case for ignorance, due to the fact that I never actually turned the heat on in that apartment because the surrounding neighbours literally cooked me from all sides.

Is your TRV control system designed to automatically regulate the temperature in the apartment?

If your answer is yes, then "WTH?".  I have had programmable termostat controls in my house(s) for years and years.  They are 25 dollars at every hardware store in the country.  Are you trying to compete with that?

Probably not that simple:  If your goal is to provide a central programmable control for differential temperature regulation in multi-room apartments whose heating is delivered from central boilers to radiators, then that's a bit more complex than the prog thermostat I have.

But - does that imply that such a thing is NOT already on the market?  Or is it ridiculously expensive?


Heating costs are very low here.  For comparison's sake, I spent 310 dollars on heating my house with natural gas last year (the extraneous fees and taxes were 227 dollars).  Or roughly 200 GBP + 150 GBP.  My house's furnace is probably only 80% efficient therefore a good candidate to replace, however the annual savings cannot be greater than 60 dollars.

DamonHD:
Hi,

0) This is a project aimed at reducing the UK's carbon emissions from domestic heating, and for the householder, energy costs.  This is improving energy energy efficient, dear to FL users' hearts.

1) The aim is to regulate each room's temperature separately (possibly with a schedule built in), using heat from a central boiler, without any plumbing changes.  It's an easy retrofit to an existing radiator system.

2) Some of this tech does exist on the market, indeed I can point you to some long lists of alternatives to what we're doing, but not necessarily with the right combination of features, and all closed products with non-interchangeable parts (ie you can't mix and match manufacturers easily), thus driving up costs and risks for the end user.  We're attempting to provide a common reference base that multiple manufacturers/implementations can share to get round this.  (Our implementation may also be good for research work as its should be easily upgradeable for monitoring and recording too.)

3) Thermal insulation is notoriously poor in UK houses, and needs improving.  In parallel, only heating the parts that you're actually using has the potential for up to a 50% energy saving or maybe several hundred GBP/USD for a typical household.  I have observed some of this improvement even with my prototype.

4) One aim of this is to make the savings easy to achieve without fiddling around with complicated schedules and so on: the system that doesn't need programming and continual manual adjustment is the one most likely to be used, IMHO.  And actually it's already been nice to be able to just flip on the heat briefly in my room for a few minutes without going to the other end of the house and messing with the house stat.

Does that help?

Rgds

Damon

SparWeb:
Great!
Given the amount of effort and collaboration that is going on in your project, I had noticed that the definition was hard to narrow down, for a casual observer.
Reading more on your project website, I did find this explained, but it did not draw my eye.

It's much like the project that Ghurd,  I and a few others collaborated on a few years ago: the auxiliary dump load control for wind.  I've found it difficult to explain the point clearly enough to a number of people, now.  They either don't get my point, or seem to ignore it, even when they have already stated that they want to put the energy going out the diversion load resistors to use.  Last month, a fellow posted because he was trying to hook up an extra water heating element and control it with a SSR, triggered by his diversion load.  The purpose is the same, but his design is flawed, and I failed to convince him that I've already solved his problem for him.

It will probably be easier for you to communicate the purpose and advantages of the openTRV when you've got your next version ready for more people to try out in the autumn.  You seem to be better at that sort of thing than I am.

DamonHD:
We shall see!  B^>

Rgds

Damon

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