#How to accommodate unscheduled usage of climate entities?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

last condor
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Hi,

I'm trying to reduce my heating bill by automating my heating system.

One issue I'm trying to tackle is people forgetting to lower the target temperature of a room after using it. For example, my bathroom always targets 16°C / 60,8 °F unless someone uses it. Then that person will typically sets the target temperature to 21°C / 69,8 °F. That person should put it back to 16°C / 60,8 °F when leaving the room, but sometimes that person forgets it. It results in the room being uselessly heated for an undetermined amount of time.

What automation would you setup to solve that issue? And not, teaching people to not forget it isn't a viable solution...

Also, a more complex use case is when you add a schedule for the room. For example, my kid bathroom is heated between 6h30 and 7h30 so that they're not too cold when we change their diapers. The same issue can arise when we want to heat that bathroom outside schedule.

sudden thunder
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And for the second, you have several ways, from a fixed automation to get that temperature at that schedule, to a more complex way using a calendar 🙂

past solar
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How responsive is the heating in the room and how long are people spending in the room? If it takes 15 minutes to reach your target temperature, you might need some way of predicting its occupation to kick start the warm up. Especially if you're on spending a few mins in there.

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As for specific triggers, it would be nice to know the expected activities in the room for a better understanding on the sensors and triggers you could use.

For example, you mentioned a bathroom. You could use humidity or temperature sensors to sense when someone is having a shower or bath.

last condor
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My current use case is for the bathroom. So it's usually 30 min -> 1h30 of usage depending on who is using. I feel like the room is hot enough by the time I exit the shower. That way I'm not cold when I dry myself and put on clothes. My wife will take much longer and will do god knows what kind of beauty ritual within that room.

sudden thunder
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I assume that the raise in the temperature is manual

last condor
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movement sensor seems like a bit overkill, but I would reuse for the alarm system to justify it, so maybe.

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Humidity sensor would make much more sense as it would also cover the automation of the ventilation.

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But I'll still need something more generic for other rooms.
Is it possible to have some kind of countdown? Say if there's a manual change to temperature, a countdown starts. Then when it's finished, it sets back the temperature the schedule would have set.
It would limit the cost of forgetting to a set duration.

past solar
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Sure, though it'll depend on how you can integrate your heating system or thermostat with home assistant

last condor
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For the moment, all radiators have TRVZB, and pumps react to them requesting heat (thanks to RBMINIR2). Then the heater provides hot water on demand (not connected to HA).

past solar
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Great, so then it seems like you have a way to control the heat directly

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You could set up a button in home assistant itself which raises the temp for 30 mins

last condor
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This is what I have for one pump:

alias: pump-sdj-on-off
description: >-
  Turn on or off pump if required
triggers:
  - entity_id: sensor.vanne_sdj_action_cvc
    trigger: state
actions:
  - service_template: >-
      switch.turn_{{ 'on' if (label_entities('heating-zone-sdj') |
      select('is_state_attr', 'hvac_action', 'heating') | select('is_state',
      'heat') | list | length > 0) else 'off' }}
    target:
      device_id: <redacted> # not sure if info is sensitive
mode: single
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I'm sharing, but I don't think it's relevant for this conversation.

sudden thunder
past solar
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Ikea does ones for about 5 quid

sudden thunder
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Yes

last condor
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I didn't expect them to be that cheap.

sudden thunder
# sudden thunder Yes

I have the ZigBee ones (discontinued 😔 ) but the new matter one's works fine AFAIK

past solar
sudden thunder
past solar
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They're great if you want something cheap to test with and don't mind figuring out the occassional false positive

last condor
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I'm confused, I thought ZigBee was the physical communication layer and Matter was an automation platform? Surely the new ones still need a communication layer, don't they?

sudden thunder
past solar
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Yeah, zigbee and thread are wireless network protocols. Similar in function but distinct

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Matter is like a communication standard. It sits on top, acting like a kind of glue

sudden thunder
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I said Matter because it's usually tied to Thread, but can work via WiFi, also.

last condor
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Ok, I think I have enough to get started. Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. I'll dig all this and come up with something.

past solar
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If you go with the ikea stuff, you'll either need a zigbee adaptor for the older kit, or a thread adaptor for the new stuff. Or you can buy ikeas own hub for about ~60 quid iirc

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The hub is more plug and play, while it sounds like you may already be familiar with zigbee adaptors

last condor
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I have the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2. It supports both ZB and Thread but can only support 1 protocol at a time.

past solar
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So a little more config

last condor
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So I'll restrict my search to ZB compatible stuff (my TRVZBs and ZBMINIR2 are using ZB).

past solar
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I use both for the same reason

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One ZBT1 for zigbee and a sonoff zigbee adaptor for thread

past rivet
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one thing you might be interested in are the "Versatile/Better Thermostat" integrations - VT is the one I use and it has some neat features such as tying the presence sensing directly to the climate entity controlling the room so you don't need any automations - and being able to set active and away temperatures for a number of preset temperature modes. You can easily set your bathroom to be "comfort - 20C" with a "comfort_away - 16C" when you go in, it'll heat up, when you leave, it'll stop heating
This can get really useful when you start scheduling stuff, as you can (for example) set your bedroom to have a warm morning temperature of 20C, but a cooler nighttime temp of 16-17, and give them away temperatures of 10 - so when you go on holiday you don't need to disable the schedule, it will just heat when necessary to keep the pipes from freezing