fireplace mode

[ajhuitsing]

Hi, and kudo's and thanks to you creating this very intruiging and nice project !

Would it be possible to add a 'fireplace mode' : this is a mode in which (temporary) the room temperature isn't taken into account in the control-loop.
This would provide for a operating mode in which the main room is (temporary) being heated from an additional heating source, and would normally duck SAT's controlling loop because of the extra heat generated. We want avoid cooling down the remaining part of the home.

background: we have a A/C unit in our living room which I'd like to switch on for a short period to quickly heat up the room: but then the (SAT)thermostat will switch off and the remaining part of the house cools down. The iSense thermostat I'm trying to replace has an option called 'fireplace mode' in which the room temperature sensor will be ignored temporary.

[sergeantd83]

Hi and welcome! Do you have TRVs in your installation?

[ajhuitsing]

no we don't have TRV's in the living room (yet) : there it's a underfloor heating. On the first floor we've radiators, some of them with TRV's for experimenting ;-)
the problem is that we essentially just want to have the A/C unit to 'kick' push some heat into the living room while not decreasing the amount of heat generated by the central-heating boiler for the remaining part of the home

[sergeantd83]

So the idea is to pass only the Heating Curve value to the controller instead of HC + PID? Am I correct?

[ajhuitsing]

yes - as far as I understand the inner-workings of SAT - the idea is that SAT would provide a binary input which controls ignoring the room temperature, and rely solely on the heating curve. That binary input could then be used from home-assistant to enable/disable 'fireplace' modus as required (for example in an automation)
Maybe it's possible or even needed to 'freeze' the amount of room temperature influence right at the moment the binary switch is being enabled? I've thought of creating a room temperature proxy-helper from within home-assistant just to implement this idea? or would this be a bad approach?

[tbrasser]

So in sat comfort mode it doesn't matter 1 room gets hot, if others still demand heat the central boiler will work on that error.

[sergeantd83]

Actually this is a ( another ? ) special handling we need to implement. This will be available only in installations without TRVs installed. We still need to discuss it internally about how we will implement it.

[tbrasser]

Huh? Then how does comfort mode work currently?

[ajhuitsing]

So in sat comfort mode it doesn't matter 1 room gets hot, if others still demand heat the central boiler will work on that error.

note : in our case currently not all other rooms have TRVs which could indicate heat demand unfortunately

[sergeantd83]

Huh? Then how does comfort mode work currently?

Comfort mode is an option for multiroom heating with TRVs in which continues heating the secondary rooms based on the TRV readings. In installations without TRVs, SAT needs a “trigger” to work without the PID control loop involved, in order to keep heating the other rooms, since the Inside Temperature sensor isn’t working properly due to an auxiliary heating source ( Fireplace, A/C etc ). This trigger will be the “fireplace” switch