Central Heating Repair, Boiler Servicing, Plumbing Services in Kent Surrey, London UK

Honeywell hometronic

If you live in a medium to large home built before 1980
( eg: 4 bedrooms upwards), have a look at the

home eco control system

Hometronic;

lowers household energy usage
divides your radiators into up to 16 areas
reduces emissions
improves comfort wherever heating is needed
full remote control options from anywhere in the World
designed and supported by the World leader in building controls

We believe this product represents the future in domestic heating!

In the UK, our housing stock is predominantly quite old and poorly insulated. If you live in such a property, whilst you can insulate the loft, and fit double glazing, older properties will always be difficult to keep warm economically in the winter.

Honeywell's Hometronic is sold in the USA, and most of Europe. It was designed over 7 years ago in Germany for domestic use, to reduce energy consumption and improve comfort.

The application of Honeywell Hometronic to your house immediately gives you up to 16 individually controllable areas of central heating. You decide which areas of the property need most or little heating, at which times of the day.

What is involved?
Conversion to Hometronic is achieved by fitting a Honeywell HR80 valve to each radiator.

Typical Hometronic installation – HR80 valve

The pipework and the boiler will, in most cases, remain unchanged. This is ideal for older properties where the upheaval and disruption of reconfiguring pipework to achieve zoning would otherwise be unacceptable.

And there are no wires, either; a low level radio signal is used.

If you have three radiators in the lounge, Hometronic can treat that as one room; so you still have 15 potential zones left to use across the house.

Let’s say we have now equipped every radiator and towel rail in your house with the Hometronic HR80 valve. We haven’t had to pull up the carpets or disturb your oak flooring.

We can now fit the Hometronic Manager in a convenient location; this will control all heating and hot water requirements from one simple interface.

Hometronic Manager control panel

Having fitted the HR80 radiator valves and the Hometronic Manager, all your old timers, thermostats etc are redundant.

You can now programme your bathroom towel rails to come on between 7am and 9am……………even in the summer.
You can make your lounge 20C between 7pm and 10pm. But when you are not using the lounge you can schedule it to just 12C ...............saving energy
If you work from home on Mondays and Fridays, your home office can be heated to 19C on these days, 14C on others.

At times when you are not occupying certain rooms, Hometronic can be scheduled to turn the temperature down in those areas.

If you turn down your room temperature by 1ºC you will typically save 10% of your energy cost heating the room (source: Energy Savings Trust).

Now let’s look at how many rooms are not being used right now, in your house.

How many people live in your house?
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.

You wouldn’t leave all the lights on all day all over the house?

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.

How do Hometronic savings compare to other ways of reducing the fuel bill?
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.   You would be surprised how little fuel is used creating hot water for bathing, showering etc.

Energy use of a boiler in typical UK house
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 a proportion of the 15% problem.

Hometronic is focused on the 85%, your 'space heating'..

Product trials with Hometronic have shown that it can save up to 25% of a larger property’s space heating bill.

Other advantages of Hometronic:
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.

How does it work?
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, although some of our energy conscious customers have had a good try.....

What types of heating systems can it control?

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

What type of boilers will it work with?
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.

Is it complicated to operate?

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.

What if I just want to make a room warmer, right now?

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.

How is it installed?

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.

Typical Costs?

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.

Control Options
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.

What experience do Hot Water & Central Heating have with Hometronic?
Our owner 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.

Please click through to our 'installation blog' where you can see some actual Hot Water & Central Heating installations of Hometronic.

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