This Should've Been EASY

[jakkuh_t]

 

[Nystemy]

That baffle seems very featureless for 150 bucks....

I personally would have looked for something that either uses 4-20mA position control, or worst case PWM. (since these are simplest to deal with, but Modbus, CAN, DALI, etc also "work" but are more of a fiddle...) Also, air baffles follows somewhat of a standard, can just buy anything and then add motor control to it after, either through a simple servo motor and some 3D printed parts to cobble it together, or by an off the shelf motor with the features you need.

 

But seems you are at least taking a somewhat sensible route with the smart wireless non cloud based thermostats and letting the local home assistant server run the magic in the mechanical room.

 

All though, as far as in floor heating is concerned, it is really really slow, as in it tends to take a day or three for it to react to anything... It can be better to let the forced air do the "fine" tuning of the temperature, and simply let the floor heating do the bulk work during winter.

 

[ShindyAUSmarzan]

Can someone explain to me the advantages of using Home Assistant, over other platforms, for the automation, i have fiddled around with Open Hab a bit and found it to be quiet feature rich with a imo pretty good community and a lot of compatible systems.

[nullx]

Are you planning on installing smart valve controllers for the ball valves on the floor water loops? If so I'd be interested in which one you go with because I need one for my own house as an emergency water shut off.

[beavo451]

So there is some concern with this system.

 

The HVAC is either on or off. It requires a certain airflow over the evaporator. If you close off enough of the dampers and choke airflow over the evaporator, it could freeze (literally).

 

Also, without conducting a study, I doubt that there will be any actual cost savings. Cutting off airflow to an unused room isn't going to make the HVAC system any more efficient. The HVAC system will be still on and pulling full power. You also run the coil icing risk mentioned above. Unoccupied rooms should be set to have the damper open.

 

Example: Only the master bedroom is occupied. The system heat/cools that specific room while the rest of the (large) house is uncontrolled and just gets hotter or colder overall. Then you exit the master and start moving through out the house. The HVAC will then need to kick on for an extended period of time to cool or heat the house.  Plus the fact that the AC is running 100% no matter what dampers are open or close. So you are running a whole house AC to cool one room.

 

 

 

Edit: Yeah Linus really needs to read the YouTube comments. There are some serious concerns with the functionality of this system.

[maksakal]

Maybe this is too late, but over here in Europe it's all about heat pumps.

You can use the pipes in your floor for heating and for cooling. While renovating my house I chose a slow cycling system, which means it takes about 3 days for the system to change temperature. At first this seems a bad thing but actually it's good. Because the system works slowly it is very efficient. Also You actually do not want to temperature too change that much, you'd rather have the temperature to stay steady.

So if you isolate everything and you close all the holes so you don't have any draft, it doesn't matter how hot or cold it is outside. Inside it's always 21 degrees C, which is optimal for humans.

A prerequisite is that your house is isolated optimally. You don't need an AC and you also do not need a boiler. Everything is handled with 1 system.

I have solar panels (18kW peak) and it is enough to power the system. This means heating and cooling is free for me.

If it's not too late maybe look into a similar system?

[proximer]

It's disappointing that you didn't provide links to the hardware you are planning to use in the actual/final system.

[4thgenhvacguy]

As beavo451 said completely agree, zone damper system such as this are normally designed with variable speed indoor blower and multi stage outdoor condenser, they are very dependent on airflow , also by reducing the airflow to multiple zones he is correct saying it can freeze,  velocity accross the evaporator due to high static pressure can result in other things such as poor dehumidification also the lack of airflow on a single speed system can brick the compressor in the condenser.  Look into Bosch hvac products very universal multi stage condensers as well as the matching indoor blower coil or furnaces. 

[Psittac]

Please don't use a static compressor and static blower, your system will never work right.

 

I don't have any experience with multi stage systems because here in colorado it's single stage or go home, even large homes are built with multiple hvac systems all of which are single stage.  But I do know for certain that if you have 80% of your air flow blocked off it will cause several problems on a static system. (remember that a closed damper or register still flows air, closed registers still flow 30%)

[conorABC123]

In a couple years or so I can see the next video related to this:

 

"Bryant DIED. DIY Heat pump replacement!"

and then possibly the same video a couple years after that :D

[Daethz]

I actually wonder if this will turn out to be efficient, I always figured all of the warm air leaking in from a unused room would be inefficient unless the door and walls to that room where both insulated.

[El_Darbo]

How did you go about having local polling with the ecobee in home assistant?  I was looking on their integrations page and it was only showing that it was cloud polling.  

[tr6scott]

If this were my house, I would call in a consultant and review the existing AC technology. I also agree with the comments here, I really can't see this working out like he is thinking it will. The update frequency, ie loop time needs to be really really slow for the heating system, and 1950's technology ac system is already not efficient... tossing a bunch of controls at it does not make it efficient. (30 years control engineer here, doing industrial control upgrades for years, but none of it HVAC... I would call a HVAC guy)

 

[tr6scott]

Another concern, heat radiates, warm air rises... So basement rooms, with coils below the concrete floor, and coils above your head, on the 1st floor, are both radiating heat into the basement space. Now put in a server room with a ton of convection heat, where heat is rising as warm air, and thermostat in middle of wall, sees ideal for a very warm head space with cold basement floor trying to cool down the space. 

 

One more concern that would need to be reviewed, is the different thermal mass of the loops. I think this would lead to different pid tuning values to get the system stable. The basement with a huge thermal mass of the concrete would seem to behave much different the loops on the main and second floors.

 

 

[Justinalot]

How will you deal with Dirt and Dust using the FANS on the Ducts? Love the new house upgrade, should make some great Videos for the Future, really interested in the Ubiquity side of things and how you have that all set up.

[4thgenhvacguy]

The biggest problem with single stage is the pcm blower motor and single stage compressor,  that's why with a variable speed system with an ecm blower motor and multi stage compressor solves most of these issues , as the demand decreases the blower speed and compressor speed will decrease depending on called demand either up or down , a system doesn't have to have 80 percent loss to have a negative impact as little as 30 percent can cause issues that won't be noticed at first , I have done hvac from Maine to Tennessee and Louisiana,  airflow is airflow requirements do not change base on location , capacity will change depending on location conditions. 

[KouKouKaChu]

As I suggested in the previous vid, my solution does not require a proprietary system, bit the main proprietary system is proprietary. You can have a secondary system as a backup, bit their "proprietary system" is capable of working when there is no internet connection, but with a decent and unitary UI. Still being better than a cobbled together system like you're going with.

[Video Beagle]

@jakkuh_t I looked up the Ecobee3 Lite after you mentioned, as I've been looking at smart thermometers and my system also only has 2 wires. You didn't mention in the video, but it looks like for a 2wire system, it needs an extra power adapter. Did y'all use that? Or was there another method you did?

[Dorner]

On 8/1/2021 at 11:06 AM, tr6scott said:

If this were my house, I would call in a consultant and review the existing AC technology. I also agree with the comments here, I really can't see this working out like he is thinking it will. The update frequency, ie loop time needs to be really really slow for the heating system, and 1950's technology ac system is already not efficient... tossing a bunch of controls at it does not make it efficient. (30 years control engineer here, doing industrial control upgrades for years, but none of it HVAC... I would call a HVAC guy)

 

Thank you for this. I just bought a house recently and was waiting for Linus' video on this subject to see what he would do. This confirms what I thought, I'll have an HVAC guy come in and evaluate what I can do with my existing setup.

 

In your opinion, would it make sense to use a PLC rather than just smart relays for this kind of home automation? I happen to work at an engineering company where we (not myself) use PLCs for critical industrial equipment that will cause problems if they fail. I imagine smart relays are as reliable (depending on brand of course) as PLCs, asking more if it makes sense in terms of flexibility.

[Required]

On 8/1/2021 at 12:59 AM, maksakal said:

While renovating my house I chose a slow cycling system, which means it takes about 3 days for the system to change temperature. At first this seems a bad thing but actually it's good. Because the system works slowly it is very efficient. Also You actually do not want to temperature too change that much, you'd rather have the temperature to stay steady.

Sadly in my Sleeping Room the Concrete Floor is way to thick an I have a quite similar effect. Sadly its South Facing that mean it get the full Sun.

That mean when the Sun shine its getting damn Hot in Spring and Autom and damn cold when the Sun not shine.

[jlowens76]

was it ever mentioned what the newer bigger module was that would run tasmota? I need some in my life

[Tedi Xhihani]

@jakkuh_t Are you guys okay with making the designs for the home (with the removal of all personally identifiable information) available to the community? Although it's out of reach for most of us, it is definitely a dream build and having it all in one conspicuous place would be a bonus. By designs, I'm referring to the designs of the heating/cooling/lighting/layout.