Zoned Heating with Vaillant Ecotec Pro and Auraton 2025 RTH for Two-Storey Flat

Question

Hi, I have a Vaillant Ecotec Pro boiler (non-condensing combi), this is controlled by a wireless Auraton 2025 RTH. I have a large two-storey flat, 11 radiators, each with a dial (the kind where you set a number from 0 to 6), a Danfoss type valve. As the whole family likes to sleep in the cold I...

Anonymous · Answer

I will answer you frankly, no offence, but you have a very demanding clientele and without "training" this clientele it is impossible to embrace this subject in such a way as not to incur (unnecessary) costs. I will give you in points how I see it:

1. each of the zoned rooms should be separated by solid doors with solid seals, solid doors are e.g. solid wood and not paper from Ikea.

2. the clientele serving these rooms should adapt to the necessity of closing the door behind them after entering or leaving the room, so as not to cause unnecessary circulation of air of different temperatures.

3. the temperature of each room should be set in advance and the radiator set to maintain this temperature. Unfortunately, this is impossible to manage without airtight 'zones'; air circulation is very fast and, e.g. due to the laws of physics, warm air always travels upwards pushing colder air downwards, so push the warm ones up to the first floor and the cold ones down (if possible) and then it will be easier to set the temperatures so as not to use electricity/gas/oil or even coke unnecessarily.

The door to each room definitely has to be closed at all times and be airtight, otherwise the temperatures will mix and nothing will come out of such a combination, which is unfortunately the truth. If you don't divide the rooms by residents, you'll be heating them to the maximum so that those downstairs are warmer, while those upstairs will open the windows because it's too hot and you won't get any heating, they'll let out everything you've heated. We went through this scheme in our house a few years ago.

bhtom · Answer

Welcome, . Well, someone invented thermostatic heads on radiators to regulate the temperature in a particular room individually, depending on your needs. Regards.

Lowell · Answer

Well, this is where I have a problem - the children upstairs go to bed and my wife and I want to sit still on the ground floor. At the moment I have a choice - either the kids sleep in 20 degrees C and we are comfortable, or we sit in the cold, or I run around the flat and turn the valves, only I still have to remember to set them back properly before going to bed. It's pointless, I'd like to embrace it with an app/screen.

Anonymous · Answer

Do you know how long radiators need to cool down? Turning on the radiator an hour before bedtime does nothing. The other thing is that in a country of IT/technology exploitation where 90% of the equipment sold is not working ... combinations are pointless. It would be quicker to use a well-thought-out ventilation system (additional ventilation grilles) and to play around with "sealing" doors, seriously. Electronics can't beat physics, any toy will be a waste of money. You need to start with a plan of the building (windows, doors, ventilation shafts, heating, heating efficiency, ventilation efficiency, circulation directions, thermal transmittance, thermal loss, insulation (doors, windows, roof)) and on the basis of all this put together a plan for heating specific (zoned) rooms. In my opinion, the whole thing should be thought out and designed in such a way that the taps at the radiators are never touched. This can be done by knowing the size of the rooms and the energy efficiency of the radiators, pump and cooker. There is a lot of calculating, planning and testing, but it is easy to do with the size of the radiators, very large ones downstairs and smaller ones upstairs, and so on and so forth. I saw a house being built two years ago in Finland, put up by a technician/builder (Polish), everything thought out from A to Z and do you know what he installed there? He has two isntalations (separate, independent) on one cooker. He can close/open them separately or together, the two systems work separately and he doesn't have one radiator in each room, but two (a large and a small one) and at the moment (I wrote him an e-mail 1h ago) outside the window it's about -4, in the basement +10, on the ground floor (where the kitchen, living room, 1 bedroom, 1 wc, 1 corridor) +22C and upstairs (3 rooms + 1 bathroom + 1 corridor) +18C. On top of this, my daughter lives in the rooms upstairs who likes it cold so she is around +16C but in the room next door at my cousin's house it is +19C. From this example I took the information about circulation, doors and even windows with 3 panes.
And they have no panels, no electronics, everything in "analogue" as it were.
The last thing is the insulation of the building. Draw examples and methods only from the northern parts of the globe and not from Poland! Northern Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, Russia and so on. There, they already have well-thought-out and specifically tested methods for cheap heating, because what they offer here in Poland, for example, is useless. Ordinary insulation, such as that used by 98% of builders in Poland, has failed to pass the test in northern Finland, where, in a good winter, you can even reach -40C on the thermometer. Windows and doors are also different; windows should have at least 3 panes and doors should be double-glazed. Circulation is also important, which means knowing your building so that you don't let the heat out into space, which means you can't do without thermal imaging in winter, because no building is the same. So my uncle has electric roller shutters which automatically close the windows when the wind blows (direction) or the temperature drops. A trifle, but they paid around €1,800 for the entire winter of 2020 (gas heating) when other people paid €3,800 to €4,500 per season.

WojtekRav · Answer

. It's one thing to save money, it's another to be comfortable with the heat. Without automation, it is difficult to adjust the comfort to one's current needs, and one has to get used to the needs that someone thought up at the stage of building the house because the heads at the radiators cannot be turned. A colleague asked what he could do to save money in his current state without demolishing and building a new house next door.. Turning down the heating in unoccupied rooms will result in savings, after all, physics tells us that heat loss depends on delta T, and if delta T is smaller, there will be less loss.

Anonymous · Answer

Next winter, on the basis of the new prices of gas, electricity and all the rest, the fellow will start demolishing and remodelling, seriously, you'll see. Then he will be very, very sorry that he didn't start today, after all, the new thermal windows with 4 panes of glass are still priced quite decently, so guess how decent they will be when a few hundred thousand people start looking for them. We gave 8999 PLN gross for a cooker in our cottage and today the same cooker (identical) costs over 17000 PLN. A year ago, good coal cost an average of 800-1000 per tonne and today it's almost impossible to buy the same thing for 1500-1700 PLN. Don't worry, we won't just have to screw in taps and install automatics, it's just the beginning. This is the beginning of the end for those for whom buying a piece of land and building a shed was the only way not to end up in a big city at a railway station, in a city where an M2 used to be 100-200% more expensive than buying land and building a shed somewhere 20km from the city. The time has come for those who didn't like the 500-900 PLN monthly rents in S.M., don't worry, they'll finish people off with the cost of maintaining their houses, because the cost of heating and hot water alone (for a family of 5) already exceeds the standard annual rent in S.M., and that's what it's all about, and it's going to get worse, which is why my parents sold their M and bought a house outside the EU, and are leaving in May. I recently did some calculations (a sort of examination of conscience intertwined with current prices and my possibilities when I start working) and it came out that I will pay off my dream house, car, profession, children and wife in Poland when I am 120 years old. Seriously! Studying and renting a cottage and other things over a period of 5 years costs about 50,000 PLN, multiply by 2 children. Add to this the house near the city for 1,500,000zł and the interest over a period of 20 years (the second amount). Add to this the development of the house, maintenance, fees (where year after year for gas alone it will be 4,000-5,000 PLN) and it comes out to a total of about 3,470,000 PLN over a period of 20 years of life.
And now take into account your current earnings, i.e. the average net PLN 2,400 (PLN 3,100 gross), and it turns out that to raise PLN 3,470,000 you need about 1,445 months, which translates into 120 years. And that's just my studies, my children's studies (which I don't have yet, but I plan to have two someday), a simple villa somewhere 20km from a big city and every 5 or 6 years a good car. Is that so much?
Even if I started to earn the same amount in 3 years' time (offered today by 90% of employers), i.e. 4800 PLN, it would take me 60 years to achieve what I dream about, do you understand? I am only 15 years old and I already know that this is mega-unrealistic and I am very, very glad that my parents gave up and chose a country where this slaughter has not yet reached (and will not reach in the next few decades).
Here, there is no room for thought but to rework and streamline while prices are still affordable because there is no way to expect things to get cheaper, it will be exactly the opposite.

Lowell · Answer

Here mate you have swum a bit My annual heating expenditure is around 2000-2500£. Even assuming a 50% increase in gas prices, it does not make economic sense to carry out a major refurbishment. I just want to improve comfort without a major refurbishment and save on gas at the same time. Added after 16 [minutes]: . Thank you for all your advice.I have tested these heads and find that this product, for me, is pointless (maybe for a small flat with district heating it would be ok, but when you have 10 radiators and your own boiler, no more):- Workmanship - for me it's cheap Chinese plastic, the adapters made of such material that potentially after a few screwings and unscrewings the threads will break off. According to Murphy's Law, the head will of course damage itself when I'm away and the family is left with either a cold or perpetually hot radiator or radiators. The cap that closes the lid - I'm afraid to unscrew it so as not to damage it.- The valve, when screwed on at 100%, still has some play, unlike traditional valves with a 0-6 knob. This does not give the impression of robustness.- Smart home - the head's smart options are very poor. Above all, any kind of history preview is missing. I was hoping for something like a WiFi smart outlet, where we can see the current consumption, plus we can track consumption for the past days. It would be useful to have a history of the temperature or opening over time. I know that this can be done by connecting the heads to a more advanced smart home system, but I was hoping for this kind of functionality already in Tuya.In the end, I decided to replace my Auraton 2025 RTH with a Volt Polska Comfort WT-20 radio thermostat Wi-Fi power supply. Here I will be able to do simple automation, e.g. when both my wife and I are away from home then, change the temperature to night time, and in turn when I want to sit at night in the warmth, I will fire up the daytime temp and simply turn the heads in the bedrooms by hand and that's it.

Anonymous · Answer

Well, it smelled like a silent crypto-advertisement to me anyway, so I'll be quiet, it's a waste of words, my colleague knows perfectly well what pumps, what valves and he is super knowledgeable about it, personally I think that the post is not a problem but an advertisement, that's why I end my participation, I've already been through the ads on the electrode

Lowell · Answer

.Hmm, an advertisement for what?

Anonymous · Answer

I wonder if there is any chance of sealing windows with wifi, which would be cheaper than seals and even full doors....

Lowell · Answer

.Mate, how can I advertise something if I have just written that it is, in my opinion, crap? And as for simple physical measures, thanks for the suggestion, I just checked at the weekend and I actually have something wrong with one window in the house. In the kitchen the temperature at the window handle and at the window sill is noticeably low (at the other windows this problem is not present) also I am checking what the issue is. I'll repeat the test when it's really cold, for the moment it's 7 degrees C in Gdynia. External doors to the stairwell - I hadn't thought of that, also to be checked.

Anonymous · Answer

Spring is on its way, today +8C on the gauge, ladies, let's take it easy, it's almost summer. On the Gydzha peninsula in Russia it is now -42C and -47C was on New Year's Eve.

Zoned Heating with Vaillant Ecotec Pro and Auraton 2025 RTH for Two-Storey Flat

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