Radiators stay warm

[Den James 2]

I've installed two heat controllers on the bathroom radiators. Temperature is measured with the temperature sensor.

 

The installation went well. The firmware updated perfect. I can put in a schedule and it works manually.

 

But when the temperature is turned down, the radiator keeps heating. The temperature is now set to 17°, and the room is 20°, but the radiator keeps warming up.

 

Do I need to calibrate the controllers or could there be an other problem?

 

Thanks,

 

James

[petergebruers 1,268]

15 minutes ago, Den James said:

Temperature is measured with the temperature sensor.

 

Try without the sensor. So reset the sensor (keep the pin pushed until the blue LED blinks 3 times) then remove the coin cell.

It will take your FGT several hours to notice the removal and revert to "head" control. So please ignore the behaviour of the TRV the first 6 hours.

You can of course turn down the set-point right now so it stops heating.

 

15 minutes ago, Den James said:

The temperature is now set to 17°, and the room is 20°, but the radiator keeps warming up.

 

Yes. I have the same problem (in one room, but not in the other) and it does not affect all users. I cannot tell about the specific circumstances.

 

Why should you trust me?

 

I reported this issue to Fibaro, they investigated the issue and they are working on a fix. I have been in contact with Fibaro for several weeks.

 

You can help make this TRV better by creating a "Blackbox log" - see "advanced" page of the FGT. This logs holds all sensor information + debug information for Fibaro engineering. Then send it to me via PM and I'll forward it to the responsible person at Fibaro. I cannot post his name (yet) because I have not asked permission to do so. The logs are encrypted, so I cannot read them. If you do not trust me, send it to [email protected] instead.

 

Edited March 17, 2018 by petergebruers

[Den James 2]

Thanks. I'll get on to this .

 

James

[Orgli 15]

I had the same issue - but the failure was me / hardware...because of turning the head (in order to operate it manually like the old one) it loosed a bit so the valve wasn't closed completely.

[Jon798 1]

Since the update to v4.3 I am finding my valve crashes every so often (unpredictably). I am using it with HomeSeer, which shouldn't make a difference, but the child device "Application Status 1" will report a value of 202 (which HomeSeer wrongly translates as "Try again in 402 seconds") but from the point that value is reported, the valve does not respond until resetting the application status. That in turn sets the valve heating mode to off, so you then need to turn that back on.

 

Had high hopes for v4.3 but it's actually worse - got up this morning to find the valve had crashed shut at 2am and downstairs was freezing (we had snow and -5 degrees C overnight).

 

This wasn't happening previously with v4.0 - with that version, I had no crashes, but it just wasn't regulating temperature properly. Nor does it when it is up and running with v4.3 - set point of 18, room temperature of 23 and the valve still open, for example...

 

Now looking for an alternative product - having bought this in November and it still not working in March is not good. It's such a shame as from the specification it should be the perfect device, the design has so much potential and it looks good and works nicely in terms of user interface, but that's all very well if it doesn't do the fundamental job it should do.

 

Very disappointed and not holding out much hope that another firmware update will help

 

Jon.

 

[petergebruers 1,268]

21 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

Nor does it when it is up and running with v4.3 - set point of 18, room temperature of 23 and the valve still open, for example...

 

I understand your frustration.

 

Is this with an external sensor?

 

In that case, please try without the sensor. So reset the sensor (keep the pin pushed until the blue LED blinks 3 times) then remove the coin cell.

It will take your FGT several hours to notice the removal and revert to "head-only" control. So please ignore the behaviour of the TRV during the first 6 hours after the removal.

You can of course turn down the set-point right now so it stops heating.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by petergebruers

[Jon798 1]

Yes I am using the external sensor. That was one of the prime reasons for buying this product as the particular radiator in question has very little air movement around the thermostatic valve head so we would always have to set it high to get the radiator to push heat into the room, but resulted in lots of overshoot and the room becoming too hot after it had been heating for a while.

 

I will remove the external sensor, exclude, factory reset and re-include to HomeSeer and see if it continues to crash. Meanwhile I have ordered a Eurotronic Spirit unit to assess.

 

Have Fibaro indicated a potential timescale for fixing a problem with the external sensor?

 

Cheers,

 

Jon.

 

 

 

[jimicr 90]

Guys, I have 4 of these now. 

Today I'll get an external sensor for testing, do I need to exclude/ include the device to get it paired or can this be done while the head is all ready included?

 

Jim

[petergebruers 1,268]

13 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

That was one of the prime reasons for buying this product as the particular radiator in question has very little air movement around the thermostatic valve head

 

Yes. Same reason here.

 

I would like to repeat myself:

 

16 hours ago, petergebruers said:

I reported this issue to Fibaro, they investigated the issue and they are working on a fix. I have been in contact with Fibaro for several weeks.

 

Unfortunately, there is no ETA for that fix.

 

13 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

I will remove the external sensor, exclude, factory reset and re-include to HomeSeer and see if it continues to crash.

 

Thanks. By doing this you are helping both this community and Fibaro.

 

13 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

Meanwhile I have ordered a Eurotronic Spirit unit to assess.

 

I do not own one, but I checked the docs. Out of curiosity: what external sensor are you going to use with your Spirit?

 

4 minutes ago, jimicr said:

do I need to exclude/ include the device to get it paired or can this be done while the head is all ready included?

The sensor can be "joined"/"paired" or "reset" at any time. It is not a Z-Ŵave sensor, it uses a different procedure. The FGT is faster to detect it when the sensor joins, than when the sensor gets reset. But anyway it takes some time for the FGT to adjust. The exact algorithm has not been disclosed by Fibaro.

 

EDIT: I --hate-- it when the forum software merges my replies!

Edited March 18, 2018 by petergebruers

[Jon798 1]

I have an old Horstmann HRT4-ZW that I retired some years ago. That supports Zwave Multilevel sensor notification on an association group 5 according to its manual, which in theory should align with the Eurotronic incoming temperature message spec.  I will let you know if it works after I have had chance to set it up (probably next weekend now).

 

If it works out, I will look for an alternative temperature sensor that would be a bit more discreet - probably a DS18B20 wired back to a universal sensor or something like that (cost also an issue...)

 

I would still much prefer Fibaro got their product sorted!

 

One thing that has occurred to me, though - after reading some of your other posts around control systems fighting each other (modulating boilers vs thermostats etc.): Might the Fibaro have a problem where the hot water supply is not always constant? I'm in the UK and the boiler only comes on when the room thermostat (in another room) governs it, so there will be times when the Fibaro will be 'calling for heat' and only detecting cold at it's input.  That would make some sense looking back at when the valve has crashed - it generally seems to be when the set point on the valve is higher than the room temperature and the boiler would not be operating. Maybe worth exploring?

 

I have thought about trying the approach where the boiler is on all the time and cycles according to flow/return temperatures, but it still seems quite foreign to me so have't quite plucked up the courage to go that way yet - and certainly not until I would be prepared to put controllable valves on all my radiators (11) and I can't think about that until I find one that works!

 

Cheers,

 

Jon.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Jon798

[petergebruers 1,268]

26 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

I have an old Horstmann HRT4-ZW that I retired some years ago. That supports Zwave Multilevel sensor notification on an association group 5 according to its manual, which in theory should align with the Eurotronic incoming temperature message spec.

Thanks! I do not own one, but I have seen it mentioned a few times, but not in this context. I'd say it meets the specs.

 

26 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

I would still much prefer Fibaro got their product sorted!

 

That is why I keep trying to help other users on this forum. I can assure you, Fibaro is listening. I wish they "talked" a bit more though...

 

26 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

One thing that has occurred to me, though - after reading some of your other posts around control systems fighting each other (modulating boilers vs thermostats etc.): Might the Fibaro have a problem where the hot water supply is not always constant?

 

Oh! You have read my posts about thermostats and boiler control! I am flattered.

 

In general, all TRVs prefer (fairly) constant water temperature. Imagine, we would have varying 110 - 260 V instead of 230... We would have to adjust our dimmers all the time.

 

I do not know / cannot tell you how the FGT compares to other TRVs, when water temperature varies a lot. I have no data.

 

26 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

it generally seems to be when the set point on the valve is higher than the room temperature and the boiler would not be operating. Maybe worth exploring?

 

If you pair an external sensor, in some circumstances the algorithm fails. It has to do with temperature differential. Not exactly the one you describe, but what you say may be related. Fibaro has identified the bug but does not want to give more detail.

 

If you were on a Fibaro controller, instead of "Homeseer" you could generate "blackbox logs. See post #1. With that log Fibaro could tell "it is this bug we found and fixed or it is something else"

 

26 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

I have thought about trying the approach where the boiler is on all the time and cycles according to flow/return temperatures, but it still seems quite foreign to me so have't quite plucked up the courage to go that way yet - and certainly not until I would be prepared to put controllable valves on all my radiators (11) and I can't think about that until I find one that works!

 

It would be unwise of me to say "just do this" because heating systems vary a lot. But I'd say, if your system was designed for TRVs then you can try. As long as you have any kind of TRV on all radiators (and we are talking about "an average home").

 

I talk to a lot of users, also in private, to discuss this. I might invite you to some of these discussions. They are not "secret" but it is easier to discuss in private. At the moment, I take a break because last week I spent soooo much time on this FGT...

Edited March 18, 2018 by petergebruers

[Jon798 1]

OK. After excluding, factory reset and re-including without the external temperature sensor, the application crashed again at 12:19 UK time.

 

The set point was 20, the room temperature was around 18/19 (using another sensor) and he boiler was off, so this is consistent with the valve crashing when it wants to warm the room but no hot water is circulating.

 

Obviously too small a data set to be sure, but I will continue to monitor.

 

Cheers,

 

Jon.

 

 

[petergebruers 1,268]

24 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

After excluding, factory reset and re-including without the external temperature sensor, the application crashed again at 12:19 UK time.

 

You mean it reports this:

3 hours ago, Jon798 said:

the child device "Application Status 1" will report a value of 202 (which HomeSeer wrongly translates as "Try again in 402 seconds")

 

I do not know what it means... On a Fibaro HomeCenters it can (at a minimum) report one of these:

• Valve calibration error
• External sensor removed
• System error

It is not documented, I'll try to find out more.

 

If you mean it did not open or close... It can also do some kind of PWM to control the valve. I mean: it sounds like PWM, I do not know if the algorithm is actually doing some kind of on/off control...

 

Edit: nope, I cannot find "202"

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by petergebruers

[Jon798 1]

Yes - it reports value 202 in child device "Application Status 1".  Once it has done that, the whole device no longer responds to a Zwave poll, nor does it open or close the valve.

 

The only "fix" is to either exclude/include the valve, or to send 'reset application status', which causes the mode to be set to 0 or off, and the valve closes.

Setting the valve mode to 'heat' again (after a short delay) opens the valve (if demand for heat is there).

 

My suspicion is that the 202 value equates to "Calibration error", which others here have reported seeing more of since v4.3, but there's no way I can be sure. Fibaro don't seem to want to send a sample unit to HomeSeer so they can integrate it properly (I have asked via Fibaro support).

 

Cheers,

 

Jon.

 

 

[petergebruers 1,268]

Thank you for reporting back.

 

14 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

Yes - it reports value 202 in child device "Application Status 1".  Once it has done that, the whole device no longer responds to a Zwave poll, nor does it open or close the valve.

 

14 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

My suspicion is that the 202 value equates to "Calibration error", which others here have reported seeing more of since v4.3, but there's no way I can be sure.

 

I did a quick test... If I remove the head, then force calibration (enter menu, select WHITE) I sure get "Error occured - head calibration failed. Try again."

 

But I can still send a different temperature, my controller confirms data exchange and the LED ring changes to the correct color.

 

So I cannot confirm it is a calibration error.

 

19 minutes ago, Jon798 said:

Fibaro don't seem to want to send a sample unit to HomeSeer so they can integrate it properly (I have asked via Fibaro support).

 

Sigh...

 

And [email protected] was unable to tell you what 202 means?

 

I am out of ideas...

[DennisDM 3]

why the @#!$!$!@$# is Fibaro not saying anything here? i think this company is really bad. whats can we do to get a full refund?

DOA is not possible anymore after all this time and warranty is not going to solve this because then they will replace or repair. 

 

Don't get me wrong, after the update the system works way better but it still isn't perfect. i think it should be by now. ANd i hate the lack of communication by Fibaro and the time it takes to fix this.

 

I use the external sensors. but some rooms stay a bit colder. other rooms get hotter than the setpoints.

 

Edited March 19, 2018 by DennisDM