Opportunistically heating when other TRVs are on anyway

[iainlane]

I've got 7 BT entities, and each can ask the heating system to turn on when they need heat (using zoned-heating underneath BT).

What will often happen is that one of the rooms will need to heat up, it'll get to its target and then shut off the heating system. Then a very short period later - a few minutes - another zone will do the same.

I have the idea that I could somehow look at all of my zones and if one is nearly below the target then we can heat up as long as another zone is heating. That should reduce boiler cycles.

Imagine this:

• Bedroom has target of 18C
• Kitchen has target of 20C
• Bathroom has target of 19C
• Kitchen is at 20.1C
• Bathroom is at 19.5C
• Bedroom drops from 18.1C to 17.8C

We'd turn the system on to heat the bedroom, and then since the kitchen is almost needing heat, we'd turn that one on too for as long as the bathroom is heating anyway.

Is this something I can already do? Has anyone done this? If not, any ideas or comments would be welcome. 🙂

[acaminiti]

Opportunistic heating is something I wanted to do myself in Node-Red. But have not have the time to really do it. This feature will be a real game changer for Better Thermostat.

I do acknowledge that it might "delay" the heating on the coldest room... But in my mind, I do believe that it would reduce the number of times the Boiler is turn on for heating "independent" rooms.