Domoticz & Block heating -> can only control individual radiators

[Redguy]

I live in an apartment that uses block heating. There's a central furnace system that delivers warm water to all tenants to use for heating their homes.
The only way to control this is by the valves on the individual radiators themselves and/or by mounting a motorized valve on the inlet pipes to the house.

At the moment we use HR20 programmable thermostat valves but to be honest.. They SUCK ! I had a look at the open HR20 project but that has been dead for years ,so instead of investing and hacking into that am looking for a better solution.

Honeywell EVOhome looks great, but that is VERY expensive. I would also like the system to respond to whether or not there is somebody present at the house. I work irregular hours sometimes, or work from home for a few days a week, nothing fixed.

I recently started building up a domoticz system (including an RFXcom unit) and would like to integrate this, but i am unsure what to choose.
I have a bunch of 24V servo motors meant to be mounted as a valve on the radiators, but they only do on/off, nothing in between.

The Smartwares valves or individual radiator controls from the evohome series are affordable, but i cannot find anything on the way they regulate etc. will these do some dynamic regulating or just on/off as well ?


So what do you guys suggest ? any experiences with these kind of systems ?


Should i just install the on/off motors and hook them up to domoticz ? Are the smartwares valves a good choice ?


My thoughts on the smartwares/honeywell valves is that they will do their job even when the domoticz node is down, while the "dumb" valves will go dead if that is the case.

[blackdog65]

It may be worth looking at EQ3 MAX!
https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/EQ3_MAX!
I use this (and several others too) and it works well independently of Domoticz too.