Z-wave zoneheating part 1

Z-wave zoneheating system | Control heat per room please

With a Z-wave smart home thermostat (i.e. a secure Z-wave on/off thermostat) you can integrate your heating system into you smart home network. Most thermostats at the moment are on/off and not OpenTherm. 

After integrating your thermostat into your smart home system you normaly want to be able to controll the temperature in every room individualy, so not based on the temperature in the living room only as older systems do. This means you need a thermostat in every room (to measure the actual temperatur AND to be able to set a desired temperature). Although this is not an out-of-the-box solution its very well doable with a programmable smart home system. Click here when you want to read more about the differences between a traditional heating system and a multizone heating system based on smarthome technology. 

With our Z-wave smart home products you can add multizone technology to your heating system, what do you need?

- Z-wave controller  (Home Center 2  or a Vera controller)
- A Z-wave thermostat valve on every radiator (danfoss, eurotronic or Popp)
- A bypass in your system to prevent waterflow when all radiator valves are closed
- A smart home thermostat in every room
- A boiler actuator on your heater
- A smart scene that checks if one of the rooms need heat (activates the heater) and also copies the set-temp in the wall thermostat to the radiator valve(s) in the same room. Run the scene every x minutes to adjust the values when changed. Possibly you can set a trigger to run the scene when a variable is changed (depending on the possibilities of your smart home controller). When no room needs heat, the heater can be switched off. Due to the set temperature in the radiator valve other rooms will not accept heat as the radiator valve will close when desired temperature is reached.

Note : There still is an issue with modulating heaters, the only working modulating smart home solution is called opentherm. When you system supports opentherm you might be able to use this technology. In any other case you might only be able to use the on-off connection of your heater (which is always possible).

For more information see also this ROBBshop project.

We would advice you to take a closer look at the Honeywell Evohome system. This is a standalone multizone heating system with an api, which means that it can also be controlled from a smarthome controller like the Homey or the FIBARO Homecenter. There is even a OpenTherm version.
This last option would be our no.1 choice.