Getting the best out of a heat pump - is Homely a possible answer?

cathodeRay · 2023-01-03T10:37:51Z

Homely, currently only available for Samsung and Midea heat pumps, claims to be a 'smart' control system for these heat pumps, smart insofar as it can tune the weather compensation to suit varying conditions, thus solving the basic weather compensation curve's Achilles' heel of being a 'dumb' curve. Apparently it uses modbus and RS485 to interact with the heat pump, which makes sense, the Midea unit has these. No doubt Homely have plans to make it applicable to other brands in due course. Has anyone had any real world experience with Homely? If so (a) does it work as in achieve more effective (rooms more reliably at desired temps) and efficient (lowest possible COP at all times) control and (b) what if any monitoring does it do (and if it does monitor, can the data be downloaded, or is it a pencil and paper job, as it is with that blasted Midea app)? Lastly, how does it compare to the various open source home automation projects like Home Assistant and domoticz? Clearly it is proprietary, and it only manages an ASHP, but does it do that better or worse than the open source projects. The latter, so far as I can tell are still at the 'enthusiasts' stage, fiendishly complicated to set up, and more often than not definitely do not work 'out of the box'.

Page 34 / 34 Prev

Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs)

Last Post by Transparent 22 minutes ago

397 Posts

43 Users

109 Reactions

53.7 K Views

RSS

Transparent

(@transparent)

Illustrious Member Moderator

Joined: 4 years ago

Posts: 2743

22/11/2025 7:20 pm

OK - thanks @vanq

What we're (jointly) about to say here, might sound contrary to the way in which you've imagined your heat-pump works.
Please don't immediately rush to a specific conclusion because the underlying concepts are more important than "How do I add Homely"!

I'm going to tag @jamespa and @majordennisbloodnok initially, but others might join in.

Your heat pump is unable to perform as it should because it's having external controls imposed upon it.
The present arrangement is what we'd expect to see for a boiler running on gas or oil.

The basic idea is that the Areona 3 is meant to run continuously, and not have thermostats and time-clocks switching it on/off.
Its own native firmware will adjust the Flow to meet the heat demands of the house.

The ground floor UFH manifold needs those valve actuators removed, and replaced with the manual knobs which it probably came with.

Those knobs are then turned so that the flow through each loop is balanced.
That's where the sight-glasses at the top are needed.

Each pipe loop will have a different length, and might also be constrained by having more bends than the others.
You will end up having the manual knob fully open for the longest pipe-loop, which is the one with the most resistance to flow.

By this stage you will be picking up something heavy to throw in my direction...
... because all those thermostatic controls don't come cheap!

You will wondering how the Heat Pump "knows" how much heat to send into each room.

The answer lies in the original Heat Loss Survey which was completed before the system was designed and installed.

The Heat Loss for the whole house has been used to define the required size of the heat-pump itself (in kWh),
and the heat loss for each room is used to define the UFH pipe runs within that room.

The installer calculates for each room:

the length(s) of pipe required to meet the heat demand
the distance between each each pipe within the floor

... based on the known temperature of the water leaving the heat pump, which should be around 50°C.

That might not be what actually happened for your particular house, but that's how it's meant to be.

The obvious situation when things won't be right is when a house which has existing UFH changes from using a boiler to a heat-pump.
But we'd need to know more about the history of your installation in order to advise further if that's the case.

Let me stop there and give you a chance to contemplate your next question...

Save energy... recycle electrons!

ReplyQuote

Page 34 / 34 Prev