SmartHome Controls
automating the infrastructure of the home
Heating controls overview
Intelligent Control
System Features
Temperature and Time Control
The smartZone Controller normally allows two occupation periods for each day of the week to be set up. During each occupancy period the temperature will be at a “comfort temperature” while outside of these times the temperature will be controlled to a lower “fabric protection” setting.
Holiday Setting
On the smartkontrols system, a single Zone Controller is designated as the Holiday Master and this will put the house into a holiday mode. This provides protection against condensation or frost damage, by a single adjustment. The system will then revert to normal occupancy on the programmed day, ensuring comfort conditions are achieved ready for the owners return.
The Weather Compensation feature will measure the outside air temperature and change the flow temperature of the heating circuit correspondingly to improve temperature control of the room.
Continuous Control
smartkontrols uses continuous control, where the heating/cooling is adjusted between ± 0 –100% to meet the actual requirement. This is combined with fuzzy logic to allow the smartkontrols system to automatically learn the characteristics of the property and adapt to them providing accurate temperature control.
The system automatically protects pipe work from frost damage by running pumps and opening valves when the outside temperature is near freezing. Valuable items can be protected from condensation when the building is unoccupied by ensuring the interior will be maintained at a minimum of 12°C to prevent the formation of condensation.
For each smartkontrols zone that is set up in the property, the system will measure the outside and inside temperature and then automatically calculate the optimum time to start or stop the heating or cooling of each zone based on its individual characteristics.
smartkontrols controllers incorporate techniques (i.e. Optimum Start, Weather Compensation) normally only ever used in much larger buildings, to minimise energy usage in the home and improve your comfort.
Some of these advanced features are described on the right, outlining how the system typically provides control of a property.
A warm floor makes early mornings a pleasure
Because the smartkontrols system is modular, it can be used to control all the plant in your home, from boilers to the lighting. This means that the intelligent controls can be integrated to provide optimum and energy efficient control and comfort.
Wouldn't it be nice if, for example, on a mild day your heating system switched on later than it does on a very cold day?
Unlike the conventional thermostat, which is just an on/off switch, these are intelligent controls which will interface with your heating systems, such as central heating, underfloor heating as well as air conditioning and then provide the optimum control. Whether your home is heated by radiators, underfloor heating or other heat source, the smartkontrols system operates a demand based control. This means that it is only running when heat is required. When it is not needed, it is switched off saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions
By automatically learning the thermal characteristics of your house and taking into account the outside temperature, the smartkontrols Optimum Start feature works out how early to turn on the heating so that you are always comfortable when you get up.
In a similar way, the Weather Compensation feature ensures that the temperature of the water provided by your boiler to your heating system is only as hot as is necessary to keep you comfortable.
If you are at home or away, smartkontrols controllers are always on duty - protecting the building and its contents against damage caused by excessively low or high temperatures. For particularly sensitive contents such as artworks, books etc, smartkontrols controllers can also provide humidity based protection.
Multiroom control
Each room is controlled separately via a smartkontrols Zone Controller which provides individual temperature control from a sensor located in the respective room. For master controllers the time is controlled as well. Slave Zone Controllers are available for rooms where the times do not need to be individually set, but where temperature adjustment is still a requirement.
Each room is controlled to the required temperature
Where it is not possible to have one smartkontrols Zone Controller for each room, an area will be formed of rooms that have the same occupation time profile and similar temperature requirements. For example, it is possible to group together a number of bedrooms, or a number of living rooms.
You may want to have bedrooms at different temperatures to your living space. Perhaps you have a guest annexe which is not occupied most of the time - it makes sense for the heating and air conditioning systems to be turned off in these areas when they are not being used.
Conventional thermostats are difficult to divide into zones but smartkontrols systems can control as many time and temperature zones as you require.
Remote Support - Peace of mind
Remote Support from our office enables our engineer to check your system operation
When you purchase a smartkontrols system from SmartHome Controls, it really is different from conventional controls in many ways. Every smartkontrols system comes complete with a 12 month parts warranty as standard and in addition we provide a one year dial up support maintenance package.
This means that should any problems with the system occur, we will provide remote telephone support during our normal office hours via a cellular modem to enable our engineers to dial into the system and check the status and perform remote diagnostics or adjustments.
So if your heating is not working and you have checked that the time and temperature setpoints that you have set are correct, you can call our helpline and talk to an engineer. Using the remote diagnostics they can dial in and see how your system is working. They may, for example, find that the system is demanding heat and the boiler has been enabled but the boiler flow temperature is low. This would indicate that you boiler has a fault and has tripped and we can recommend that you contact your boiler service engineer to resolve the problem in the shortest time.