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Radiator output monitoring for heat loss calculation and balancing

 
DIY
Last Post by bobflux 2 months ago
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 tomasmcguinness
(@tomasmcguinness)
Trusted Member Member
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 27
Topic starter 26/03/2026 10:50 am   [#2912]

Hi all,

I shared some stuff about my radiator balancing software back in 2024 and there was a little bit of interest, so I wanted to post a follow up.

My original approach was based on the crude approach of balancing that assumed all the radiators had the same dT. The more I learned, the more I came to realise that rule of thumb didn't always apply (YouTube Video)

I also came to realise that using radiators might be a good way to measure heat loss on a room-by-room basis. If a radiator putting out 500W can only reach a temp of 18° when it's 0° outside, you can estimate the W/°C needed for the room. It can also help identify rooms with radiators that are sized correctly but which are simply not getting enough heat. 

Over the past year, I've continued work on my own dual temperature sensor. It is compatible with Matter and can be added to HomeAssistant, iOS Home or Google Home etc. I even designed a PCB for it. The sensor is battery operated with almost a year's life on a coin cell (I'm using much larger batteries for testing, which should give about 10 years of operation)

image

Temperature probes are then attached to each tail of the radiator to get measurements.

In addition to the sensor, I started building a monitoring platform too. This combines the measurements from the radiators with room temperature and radiator info (size etc) to calculate the output. This is build on the ESP32 chip and uses the Matter protocol too, so it supports any sort of sensor out of the box. 

image

By using the current outdoor temperature, it can calculate the heat loss of each room. All of the data is also pushed via MQTT for historical purposes.

It's not complete by any stretch and there are many more features I want to add, but it's been working away solidly for the past few weeks. Just in time for Spring to arrive and the heating to go off!

As ever, I have recorded a YouTube video which shows the system in action - YouTube

I will continue to refine my sensor and software over the next few months. I also plan to find out if a single sensor can do the job. 

What do you think?

 

PS My heat pump saga continues. My trench is dug (all 15m) and I'm waiting on the insulated primaries now!


This topic was modified 2 months ago by tomasmcguinness

Owner of a ridiculously oversized 35kW boiler and trying to make it as efficient as possible. 4.8kW solar PV with 5.4kWh storage. EV driver.
Follow my journey at https://www.youtube.com/@tomasmcguinness
Heat pump installation has started!


   
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bobflux
 bobflux
(@bobflux)
Estimable Member Member
Joined: 3 months ago
Posts: 87
26/03/2026 3:35 pm  

Nice!

I'm definitely subscribing to this 😉

I'm going to do something similar, but since I'm repiping everything, I will use manifolds with temperature sensors on every return pipe.



   
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