Heating Fun

This is bad. No matter how well printed the labels are.

Did you know that if you place two Honeywell EvoHome BDR91 remote valve controllers within 300mm of each other they don’t work properly?

Neither did I. Until I woke up in a cold house and had to do some digging. Apparently the radio connections in the two devices interfere with each other. Or so the very helpful tech support person told me. I’ve moved them a nice long way apart and look forwards to continued warm toes.

Evohome Day 2

Today I completed the installation of the Evohome system. The system comes with two remote controlled relays, one for hot water and the other for heating. There’s also a remote temperature transmitter which you attach to your hot water tank. Once I’d done the wiring I had to take the controller unit around to each device and “bind” them together. This was slightly hampered by the fact that the controller has horrible battery life. The good news is that once I’d got the system installed I could then use an iPhone app to mange everything.

It’s been quite a pain free experience. These are my takeaways so far:

• everything works and looks to be well made (in the UK, which is amazing)

• the documentation is OK, but it glosses over some bits more than it should. However, once you get into the swing of how it works its fine

• the controller is very “last generation” with its resistive touch screen and Nmih batteries. However, the user interface itself is fine and seems to have been designed to make it easy to control your heating system, which is nice

• the radiator valves are a bit noisy when a little DC motor opens and closes them, but I think we’ll get used to this

I’ve not tried any of the fancy remote controlled features, but at this point I’m well pleased with how well everything works.

Evohome Heating Controller Fun

I’ve been meaning to do this for literally years. A while back I got all enthusiastic about replacing the radiator valves in the house with computer controlled ones, found out how much it would cost and then backed off a bit.

Earlier this week, armed with my “You’re not going to the MVP summit” bonus (in the form of a hotel room refund) I ordered a bunch of bits from these very helpful people and today a box arrived.

I’m using the Honeywell Evohome system. It’s been around for ages and has got consistently good reviews over the years. I like the idea of using something proven. The geek in me is intrigued by the If This Then That (IFTTT) integration. The Apple lover in me is rather upset about the lack of HomeKit integration but he’ll get over it.

Today I went round the house swapping the old mechanical control valves with the Evohome ones. The valves come with a couple of adaptors and these fit all but one of my radiators. At this point I’ve got a bunch of very clever but unconnected valves. Tomorrow I’ll install the remote controlled relays that will control the heating and then link everything together.