💬 Floor heating controller

[openhardware.io]

https://www.openhardware.io/view/488/Floor-heating-controller

[gohan]

How do you keep the room temperature from fluctuating too much? I know floor heating has quite some "inertia"

[tbowmo]

This will just hold a constant temperature on the water based floor heating system. And doesn't take care of the individual rooms.

[gohan]

So they can get warmer or colder depending on the outside temperature, right? Unless you change the water temperature.

[tbowmo]

@gohan

Yes, that is true.. But we have now lived in the house for 11 years, and it haven't been a real problem yet
The heating system was created by the former owner of the house, I was just not happy with the adjustment method, where it sometimes was impossible to adjust the temperature.

Normally we adjust the thermostat 3 times a year.. in the fall when we turn on heating and it starts to get colder outside, in the winter when it's really cold, and then in the early spring when it's getting warmer. In the summer (more or less from May to September) we have the heating completely shut off.

Now it is much easier to adjust temperatures, as I can do it from my couch

[gohan]

Im astill on the hunt for a PID controller to implement in a heating system but so far I haven't found any good solution that is not really complex. At the moment I settled for a Netatmo for my house that does a very good job at keeping temperature constant and it was really plug and play and it was probably worth the 100€ I spent.

[tbowmo]

in this case I don't think that a PID controller would be efficient.. Before it was a partly mechanical solution, so it just open the valve if temperature is too low, and shut it off when it's too high..

So I replicated that functionality in my firmware. Although I have changed things a bit so I now can control the pump and valve individually. And might be able to save a bit on the power bill as well (pump is using 70W constantly)

[gohan]

You would use PID if you have a temperature feedback from the rooms, but in your case you are not interested so it doesn't matter much. Sure turning off pump when not needed is a good thing. I have colleague that also bought a few netatmo devices to control floor heating of some zones of his house and he is very happy.