Heating & ventilation
Learn how home automation can contribute to a healthy, comfortable indoor environment
Find out how smart tech can make managing comfort levels simpler
Incorporating smart heating will help your home perform efficiently, without you having to lift a finger. Easy-to-use controls and pre-programmed settings allow your heating and ventilation to work in tandem, achieving optimum performance. “When utilised properly, smart heating is one of the cheapest and most convenient ways to improve energy ratings, cut heating bills and reduce CO2 emissions,” says Sam Jump, product manager at Wunda Group.
Heating zones
Smart heating will separate your home into zones – and in a more sophisticated way than simply dividing upstairs from down. “There’s a definite trend towards multi-zoning the same underfloor heating system, for instance,” says Darren Palmer from Baulogic. This means that your ground floor’s UFH network might be split in three – let’s say for a snug, an open-plan kitchen-diner and the hallway. You can set the temperature accordingly – perhaps a balmy 22°C for the cosy reading room, and a cooler 20°C for the hallway, with the kitchen-diner at 20°C as your home intelligently monitors any excess heat that might be given off while cooking and adjusts accordingly. “Our system has hidden temperature sensors in all the light switches so that you have more accurate readings and control over each room,” says Darren.
Energy management
With a traditional heating setup, keeping a close eye on the different temperatures in each room can require a lot of involvement from you, the user. Programming these in advance takes the pressure off. “Incorporating smart heating ensures comfort, pure and simple,” says Paul Foulkes from Theben. “Rather than wasting energy on heating areas unnecessarily, or experiencing cold spots in the house, you get a steady temperature, and can better manage this against occupancy and your ventilation systems.”
Zoning off your home will help you save on bills, too. “You can easily turn off the heating in the rooms you don’t use, while keeping it on in the ones you do and monitoring those settings, further helping you to reduce energy consumption,” says Sam. Some systems can even react to occupancy based on motion detection or body heat sensors. So, there’s no need to have the guest bed warmed up the same way as the master, for example, saving you energy and money.
Ventilation & air quality
There is a number of solutions, some of which can be incorporated into your smart home, while others operate better as standalones. For example, MVHR (mechanical ventilation and heat recovery) runs all day, year-round to extract moist, stale air and replace it with a fresh supply from outside – while recycling the warmth in the colder months. “MVHR systems are usually either off or on, so from an efficiency perspective there’s no particular benefit to integrating this into your wider smart home,” says Darren.
There can be other advantages, however. “While MVHR is a perfectly efficient system itself, our smart home features sensors that will measure the indoor air quality,” says Joe Miles from Atamate. “So, if it drops below a certain level, the ventilation will kick in or boost – and this is all done relative to occupancy, too.” This results in a healthier home, that automatically optimises your air quality.
Smart rooflights like those from Velux with temperature and moisture sensors can bring in fresh air, help to cool the home, and will close automatically when it starts to rain. Integrate them into your wider system and you gain another level of control; when you hit the ‘goodbye’ button and leave for the day, for instance, the roof windows will close behind you.
Motorised blinds
These can be incorporated to help battle overheating, as well as for pure convenience – simply set up your system so that if the temperature goes above a certain level while the heating is off, your blinds close to block out any unwanted passive solar gain. “Most things like this can be automated and integrated, you just need to get the experts involved early on,” says Paul.