Honeywell hometronic
- lower energy costs
- reduced emissions
- improved comfort
2.4 people is of course the National average. But let's assume 4 people.
How many separate rooms do you have in your house? A typical 4 bed home will have at least ten areas/rooms.
At any time we believe at least 75% of them will be unoccupied. You don’t use your bedrooms during the day, or the upstairs hall. Or the Dining Room. You aren’t usually in the bath at lunchtime.
No one turns all the lights on all over the house just because it is dark outside. But in most homes in the winter, that is what is happening with the heating.
And heating is typically 10 times more expensive than lighting to run.
Firstly, let’s look at typical energy use in the home. If your house was built before 1980, your boiler will typically use 85% of its fuel on radiators or underfloor heating.
Hot Water consumption in a pre 1980 property typically accounts for only 15% of the energy consumption of your boiler.
So you can see that whilst you could add solar panels, these would only address part of the 15% problem. A system like Hometronic is focused on the 85%.
Product trials with Hometronic have shown that it can save up to 25% of a larger property’s space heating bill.
Some houses have areas that never get warm enough in the height of winter, such as lounges with triple aspect windows and three external walls.
Such rooms will tend to lose heat faster than the rest of the house due to poorer insulation.
Hometronic will sense the heatloss in the room and run the radiators (or underfloor heating) for longer periods than other parts of the house. The energy is only used where it is needed.
We see many houses where the room thermostat is turned up to 26C or higher, so that a room elsewhere in the property can keep warm enough. This is very wasteful.
Every radiator is fitted with a battery operated Honeywell HR80UK valve head. It takes just 2 AA standard batteries, which typically last 2 years.
Each HR80UK has a small electric motor inside that can open and shut the radiator valve. It has a precision temperature sensor mounted in the top, that reads the actual room temperature (to 0.1C) and relays it to the Hometronic Manager control panel.
The Hometronic control panel will have been set up by you to determine what temperature the room should be for that time and day of the week. If the room is cooler than your desired preset temperature, Hometronic Manager will communicate by radio signal to the valves on the radiator(s) to turn on. At the same time, your boiler will receive a signal to turn on.
The whole house is controlled in this way. In principle you could have the temperatures in the combined rooms of your house changing up to 1600 times a week. As far as we know this limit has never been reached.
- radiators and towel rails
- underfloor heating
- fan convectors
- electric heaters
- electric underfloor heating
- blinds and windows
- vented hot water systems
- unvented hot water systems eg: Megaflo
Any boiler that can be turned on and off. Gas, Oil, Electric, Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), heat pumps, solar thermal.
System boilers, open vented boilers, combination boilers. High efficiency modern boilers, low efficiency old boilers.
Because we are controlling the use of energy, savings can be made whatever the fuel source, or the efficiency of the boiler plant.
No. Hometronic is a very flexible product and can also turn security lights on and off, run airconditioning, open blinds etc.
Honeywell understand that the typical homeowner likes control, but not complexity.
So the Hometronic controller has six simple buttons, called ‘lifestyles’. These relate to you.
Lifestyle buttons
So you may have lifestyle button labelled ‘summer’. This would control your hot water and possibly heat up towel rails in bathrooms at certain times.
A button marked ‘Guests’ could lift heating temperature in spare bedrooms at night and heat more reception rooms during the day. It can run the hot water for longer periods to allow for more usage.
We will set these buttons up for you, based upon your requirements.
As described above, the Hometronic Manager controls all the rooms according to your requirements, based upon the time of day and temperature.
But sometimes you may wish to use a room which normally would be preset at a lower temperature at that time of day.
Just turn the adjuster knob on the radiator to your desired temperature (there is a digital display on each valve), and the radiator will come on. It is that straightforward.
Behind the scenes, you radiator communicates with Hometronic Manager, that then instructs the boiler to come on until your desired temperature is reached.
HWCH will survey the system and discuss your requirements in a site visit. We will design the solution and install all electrical and plumbing controls, including Hometronic hardware.
We will arrange for our systems integrator, Sensible Heat, to spend half a day with you programming the system to your exact requirements.
Hometronic typically costs a similar amount to a solar hot water installation, in other words, £3500 or more, depending on the size of the property.
The Hometronic Manager is a very flexible unit designed for being used by non-technical householders, who wish to save energy. Some of our customers would like to do more. For instance, if they wish to manage their heating from elsewhere, we offer a web browser interface as an optional extra. The web interface can also be networked within the property on PCs and Macs, of course. Finally, the Hometronic can be 'systems integrated' into the latest home control systems used for video and audio etc.
Our MD has Hometronic in his own property.
Over the last couple of years we have completed a significant number of Hometronic systems, (4 in July 2008 alone). We can put you in touch with our customers so you can hear what they say.
We work closely with our partners Sensible Heat, who are the UK sole distributor for Hometronic.
We will shortly be linking to an 'installation blog' where you can see a selection of our installations, some of which feature Hometronic. | |
