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Managing heat in the house

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Old 06-12-2011, 8:39 PM   #1
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Managing heat in the house

Hi All...

My wife in I moved into Victorian Terraced house and due to the non-existent insulation the house can be quite cold in certain rooms & floors are really cold.

Now I plan to address the insulation problem in the new year with a whole load of insulating. However & the real reason for this thread.

Now I am a gadget man who works in IT & have been looking for something to help me manage the heat in my house better than the timer on the boiler.

What I am think I am looking for is some sort of wireless thermostats for radiators (which I know you can get... But...). That can communicate with some sort of device or software on a laptop or phone.

The management of these thermostats will allow me to manage when a specific radiator in a specific room goes on and off depending on which day it is. So I can then have the livingroom going on and off at different times from my bedroom.

Now from what I can see there is nothing obvious like that out there or at least not off the shelf.

According to tomorrows world in the 80s this would be available by now. I want my license money back after such lies!!!

Like I said I know there are thermostats that wirelessly talk to room thermostats bug is this the best I can hope for.

Anyone got any ideas.

Col
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Old 09-12-2011, 5:11 AM   #2
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TRV's on each rad would be a start, they shut off when the desired temp is reached in each room. if the boilers got to come on, it may as well heat a room until the TRV shuts the rad off from the system.

X10 do a kit , but I'm not sure it's 'trick' enough. Heatmiser do some stuff too.
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Old 11-01-2012, 4:10 PM   #3
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Or a few zone valves?
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Old 12-01-2012, 8:41 PM   #4
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How about Peggler programable trvs? We have these installed on radiators in the rooms that we use, all other rooms have normal trvs. These cost about £35 each, and allow you to control a room individually

Tony
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Old 12-01-2012, 9:34 PM   #5
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If you were to re-plumb it, i'd go for a manifold system, like underfloor heating. Each room or loop (possibly a couple of rooms if you wanted) would have it's own motorised head on the manifold so it can be used independently. It could be controlled by a stat in each room and all connected to a programmer. I'm sure a network unit could be added to be connected to computers with programs like you describe.

The only downside is that heating individual rooms isn't very efficient as the heat will disappear into the unheated spaces wherever that might be.
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Old 13-01-2012, 2:51 PM   #6
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Originally Posted by Andyh4324 View Post
..The only downside is that heating individual rooms isn't very efficient as the heat will disappear into the unheated spaces wherever that might be.
Nail on the head there mate
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