RGBW controller 2 for water floor heating

[DariuszP72 0]

Hello,

Did anybody used RGBW to control valves for the water floor heating? Did you try to connect temperature sensors? If yes, what is your experience?

Thanks for sharing.

[ErlingK 2]

Hi, I have under floor water heating in every room of my house.

When I first started with smart home I tried a HeatIt Zwater to control the actuators.

Discovered that it worked ok, but for some of the rooms where it was longer between off and on again the floor got cold in between.

So I tried using the RGBW controller in step modes to control flow when it is getting close to desired temp ad above to maintain the temp.

I have some lua codes for this and interval/duty cycle controlling of my danfoss and uponor actuator that I’m changing to, if it’s interesting.

My next step will be to measure turn and return temp from every room. Was planning on using the inputs of the RGBW but have not ordered temp sensors yet.

I'm also interested to know if anyone has any experience with this?

[DariuszP72 0]

Hello, Thanks for sharing.

Actually the house is still under construction and I will have 3 levels, each with floor heating and separate control "box" with 4 loops/ valves maximum (open or close, no any of the intermediate step position). For the purpose of investigation of the potential solution I bought Z-water from Heat-It and temperature sensors. Actually these sensors will be placed into the floor (just for information purposes). Room temperature will be regulated by the virtual Thermostat in Fibaro from the room sensor which is integrated with Heltun switch. Normally I would proceed with Z-water however this would be much more expensive solution in my case then just using RGBW controller.

I made a first trial with RGBW yesterday but i faced 2 problems. One was with regards to proper temperature measurement (0 value indicated) and then changing the role of the RGBW output to binary switch (now multilevel switch). I suspect that because of the second problem I cannot use a RGBW output neither create a virtual Thermostat.

Any advice or comments from you side? And Lua code will be useful, perhaps in the next step. What actuators/valves do you use for step control and how do you want to use information about water temperature?

More comments from others would be welcomed.

[ErlingK 2]

Hi, and sorry for the late answer but have been away for work. The reason I use step or cycle is because I don’t have floor sensors now. I might put some in if I’m remodelling in the future. In some rooms I have just a temp sensor, in others I have the HeatIt Temp 2 and the rest I have my favourite the HeatIt Trm3. I use the Climate panel to set the different schedules for each rom, and the quick app thermostat that are not linked to any units, just the standalone one. The thermostats only job is to display set-temp, set manual set-temp and change temp with the climate schedule.

 

Then there is the lua scene that gets the temp from the thermostat, temp sensor and compares the actual temp with the requested. Then I choses the right duty cycle or step for the rgbw output. I use the rgbw in output/input mode, and then I get 4 channels to control 4 actuators. I use some Danfoss actuators that was there when I bought the house and I’m currently changing to Uponor with new manifolds and distribution boxes.

 

I knew that Uponor had a way of controlling their actuators in step, so I contacted them but did not get any good answers. I decided to do some testing myself. First I tried to control the 230v version with a dimmer 2, but the dimmer was not sensitive enough. Then I got the idea to control the 24v version with the rgbw. It worked perfectly, only thing is it uses some time to close when going from a higher to a lower step, but floor heating is slow so it’s not a big problem. I think almost all of the actuators are created almost equal with a wax motor, so I think you could control most of them in steps if you wanted! They open based on the current that generates heat in the sealed wax cylinder.

 

My plan for the inputs on the rgbw was to measure the temp of the water going into a floor and then out again to get the delta value of the water. It is said that optimal delta is about 6C, and use it in the step controller scene. I’m also implementing an outdoor regulator to the shunt unit to get water-temp based on outdoor temp.

 

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